It’s official: Chrome is the web’s most popular browser

It’s finally happened. Chrome is now the world’s most popular web browser. Microsoft haters the world over, rejoice.

According to figures from online research company StatsCounter, Google’s browser overtook Internet Explorer — which has long dominated the broswer wars — some time last week.

Of the most popular browsers, Chrome is the only one that has shown real and consistent growth over the past year. Both Internet Explorer and Firefox have been on the decline, although the latter has shown some measure of recovery in the past week. Safari’s growth meanwhile has been much slower than Chrome’s.

That said, one version of Internet Explorer appear to be bucking the trend. According to StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, IE9 is showing usage spikes over weekends:

We have previously noted that Google’s Chrome peaks at the weekend at the expense of IE. This seems to suggest that many home (as opposed to business) users prefer Chrome to IE. However, having drilled down further into our data, we have released a new statistic which allows the comparison of Chrome (all versions combined)* with the individual versions of other browsers. This shows that while IE6, 7 and 8 usage falls off at the weekend, IE9 spikes. This indicates that IE9 is bucking the trend of previous IE versions and is gaining home user traction.

Still, it doesn’t look like Chrome’s growth is about to slow down any time soon.

In April last year Memeburn actually predicted that Chrome would become the web’s dominant browser. Back then though, our projections suggested that it would happen some time in late 2012. Looks like Chrome grew faster than even we were expecting.

Google’s also winning when it comes to mobile browsers, at the moment that is. The native Android browser is in a constant tussle with Opera Mini for mobile supremacy, with the two frequently overtaking each other.

The graphic highlights just how far BlackBerry has fallen, laying claim to less than six percent of the market. Perhaps most impressive though is the growth of UC Browser. The third-party browser now lays claim to just over eight percent of the mobile web market.