2016 was the year Chrome became most popular browser
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is no longer the world’s most popular web browser
By Tim Biggs
Though its decline has been a long time coming, 2016 was the year that the iconic Internet Explorer ceased to be the most popular way to browse the web.
Though IE was the most popular browser in the world at this time last year, reports Ars Technica, citing numbers from Net Market Share, 2017 has heralded a new king in the form of Google Chrome.
The IE brand was more or less abandoned in 2015 when Microsoft announced it was working on new software, eventually revealed as Microsoft Edge. At the end of 2015, 46 per cent of web users were using IE — then built on 20 years of history — as their favoured browser. But now, even though the software is still working and receives security updates, that number has fallen to 21 per cent.
Yet those fleeing IE have not turned to Edge, which is only available on Windows 10. Microsoft’s new browser started 2016 with 2.8 per cent of web users, finishing at just 5.3 per cent, giving Microsoft around a quarter of the market between its two offerings.
On the other hand, the platform-agnostic Chrome browser increased its share from 32 per cent at this time last year to 56 per cent by the end of 2016, meaning it’s used by a majority of web users overall.