What just happened? With Chrome spending years unchallenged as the world's most popular browser, it's more interesting to see what's happening further down the rankings, especially in the battle for third place between Microsoft's Edge and Mozilla's Firefox.
Statcounter's report for August shows that while Edge remains in third position behind Chrome and Safari with a 3.56% market share, Firefox has been closing the gap over the last couple of months and is now trailing by just 0.02%.
It was back in May 2021---or April, if you go off NetMarketShare's figures---that Edge finally overtook Firefox. The Microsoft browser's share has grown slightly since then, and while Firefox initially fell, it has now reached 3.54%.
Don't be surprised to see Microsoft extend its lead once Windows 11 starts rolling out on October 5. The company is making it more difficult to switch from its default browser in the upcoming OS---something many have called yet another heavy-handed tactic from the Redmond firm, which has long been accused of forcing people onto Edge.
While Edge has been on the rise since Microsoft made the move to a Chromium-based version, Firefox has seen its user numbers plummet in recent years. The company's own Public Data Report revealed that the browser had 244 million active monthly users at the end of 2018, but by the second quarter of 2021, the figure had fallen to 198 million. That's a loss of 46 million people in three years.
Sitting below Firefox, though not by much, is Samsung Internet with a 3.06% share, followed by Opera on 2.17%. None of this will concern Google, of course, which has a nearly 65% share, while Safari is second on 18.75%.
Statcounter's data covers desktop, mobile, tablet, and consoles.