Chrome Mac, Linux betas push browser into No. 3 spot
The release last week of betas of Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux pushed the Google browser’s share past Apple‘s Safari and into the No. 3 spot, a Web measurement company said today.
Google shipped betas of Chrome for Mac and Linux on Dec. 8. Prior to that, only rougher, less stable “developer” builds were available to users.
According to Net Applications, which tracks the browser habits of 160 million unique visitors each month to the 40,000 sites it monitors for customers, Chrome’s share jumped to 4.4% for the week of Dec. 6-12, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over Google’s slice of the browser pie for the month of November.
Chrome’s share during the week topped Safari’s 4.37%, said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of Net Applications. “It appears that Chrome has made a substantial surge in usage market share,” Vizzaccaro said in an e-mail.
Google accelerates the development of the extensions of Chrome. Even then, his navigator was not provided with additional plugins. For the American giant, it is a matter to recover the delay on Firefox.