Fifteen months ago, Google introduced its Chrome browser promising speed, stability and safety measure. Google plus amped up the browser wars with established players like Microsoft’s Net Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, and Apple’s Safari. The latest monthly numbers show Google is making progress in its quest to become the browser of choice.

In December, Google’s Chrome browser hit a milestone, outpacing Safari in worldwide usage metrics. According to research by Net Applications involving 160 million monthly visitors, Chrome usage climbed from 3.9 percent to 4.6 percent last month. Although Safari use additionally grew — from 4.4 percent to 4.5 percent — it wasn’t abundant to stem the rising Chrome tide.

Microsoft’s Web Explorer still dominates the browser market with a nearly 63 percent share in December. But IE continues to bleed, dropping from 63.6 percent in November to 62.7 percent in December. Firefox seems to be the key beneficiary of Microsoft’s loss as the open-source browser’s market share

grew slightly from 24.6 percent to 24.7 percent.

Why the Chrome Growth?

Chrome’s growth at Apple’s expense comes, in part, from Apple users. Google finally released a beta version of Chrome for Mac in early December. Google said the Mac version took longer than the company expected.

Google based its Mac version on the Windows version while accommodating Apple’s Mac OS X. For example, Google Chrome for Mac beta has integrated a key chain and uses Mac-style animations when users open the Bookmarks bar. The Mac version doesn’t yet incorporate extensions, bookmark synchronization, a bookmark manager, or the cookie manager that the Windows version offers, but the safety features are intact.

Chrome likely additionally got a bump from Linux users who were curious about how the new browser compares to Firefox. Google launched the Linux version of Chrome alongside the Mac version. With the Linux version, Google said it…

Original post by dhiram