The big picture: The global desktop web browser battle has long been a one-horse race dominated by Google's Chrome. According to the latest data from StatCounter, Chrome controlled 65.38 percent of the desktop browser market share as of January 2022. The battle for second place, however, is heating up as the gap between Apple's Safari and Microsoft's Edge has been narrowing over the past year.
In January 2021, Safari had 10.38 percent of the market compared to Edge's 7.81 percent. As of this past January, Safari was sitting at 9.84 percent with Edge close behind at 9.54.
Should current trends continue, it won't be long before Edge overtakes Safari.
Mozilla's browser could also make a play for the podium as Firefox had a market share of 9.18 percent last month and has been trending upward since late 2021.
Opera, meanwhile, is near the bottom of the barrel as only three percent of desktop users were surfing the Internet with it as of January 2022. That's still better than the 1.06 percent share Internet Explorer is clinging to.
Chrome has only lost 1.25 of the market over the past year.
The race isn't as close in the US as the bottom four browsers all have about a six percent market share gap between each other. Chrome still rules the roost, however, with a market share of 60.06 percent.
What's your desktop browser of choice?