Chrome passes Firefox in web browser charts, IE9 usage increasing

If you listen closely, you can hear distant chants of “We’re number two! We’re number two!” coming out of Mountain View. Yes, Google Chrome has passed Firefox to become the second most popular web browser worldwide.

Chrome isn’t the only browser with something to cheer about this month, either. Internet Explorer 9 posted good numbers last month, too, with Microsoft’s latest now sitting at the top of the charts among users running Windows 7. On the overall chart, IE was up half a percentage point. That might seem like small potatoes, but that half a point nearly matches Chrome’s growth over the last month. It’s also the first real gain for IE in more than a year — it’s had break-even months, but generally Firefox and Chrome have been piling on the hurt on an ongoing basis. Read more...