Chrome up, Chrome down in browser share battle

Google's Chrome browser lost usage share for the fifth time in the last seven months, while Mozilla's Firefox gained share for the second consecutive month, a Web measurement company said Wednesday.

Net Applications, which calculates browser usage by tracking unique visitors to approximately 40,000 Web sites, pegged Chrome's share for July at 18.9%, a two-tenths of a percentage point decline from June. Chrome has been in decline this year: Of the six months in which Chrome went into the red since Net Applications began tracking the browser, five were in 2012.

Firefox's share grew by one-tenth of a point to end the month at 20.2%, Net Applications declared. The open-source browser is up nearly half a point since its four-year low of 19.7% in May 2012.

But Net Applications' numbers were again disputed by rival StatCounter, which tallies browser share differently, counting page views, not unique visitors, for about 3 million websites. And unlike Net Applications, StatCounter does not weight the results by each country's pool of online users. Read more...