For the first time in nearly 18 years, Internet Explorer is no longer the most used web browser on the market as Chrome takes control.
As we predicted last month, Internet Explorer has relinquished its position as the number one web browser on the market.
The position has instead been occupied by Google's Chrome, which has taken the long road to reach the top, but finally makes it.
News enough on its own, but the amazing tale is in Internet Explorer's ending dominance. To put this new web browser market into perspective, the last time IE was not number one was in 1998/1999 when Google was only just starting as a company.
A lot has happened in the world since 1998, there have been three US presidents, four Olympic Games, and a lot of pretenders to Internet Explorer's crown.
Google Chrome was released in 2008 and has needed 8 years to catch Microsoft's juggernaut browser, but while Internet Explorer can be celebrated, the browser has simply failed to match rivals in recent years. A declining market share has been heading in one direction and the result is Google enjoying the view from the top.
Of course, Microsoft has already predicted this situation and rolled out the Edge browser alongside Windows 10 last year. The new browser is more secure and feature packed than Internet Explorer and Microsoft is working to make it the equal of Chrome in terms of functionality, speed, security, and all other important browser aspects.
It will take a while to get there, while it will also take its time to grab significant market share, but Edge is already eating up the market and is still not available on older PCs running aging Windows builds (8.1 and lower).
NetMarketShare counts Microsoft's browsers together, with Edge and IE amounting to 41.4% of the market through April, while Google Chrome rose 2.6% to 41.7%. Its close and next month Internet Explorer could even wrestle control of the market back, but for now it is very much the end of an era.
