December last year, Google Chrome dethroned Mozilla Firefox as the number two most-used internet browser with Chrome’s global market share at 25.69%, while Firefox was down to 25.23%.  But Microsoft Internet Explorer still held the number one spot.

Recent data released by StatCounter and Net Applications states that IE still rules the browser space with 39% and 52% market share respectively, though their market share declined in the past year while Chrome continues to rise experiencing 84% increase year-over-year at 27% according to StatCounter, or 22% according to Net Applications.

StatCounter showed that Firefox only had 25% share, well below Chrome’s 27% share, putting them in third but Net Applications showed that Firefox was just hovering over Chrome’s share at 22%.

Chrome grows in popularity

Chrome is increasing in popularity and people are looking into the ads plastered in hundreds of sites for their rapid growth.  But the thing is, paid posts containing hyperlinks to Google Chrome’s download page, which can influence search results, violates Google’s guidelines.  Google’s guidelines states that “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.” The links are fine if they’re labeled “nofollow,” which means search-engine indexing robots won’t pay attention to them.

Though the browser wars are quite important, it doesn’t mean that these companies don’t play nice with each other.  Right now, Firefox are Chrome are neck-in-neck in the browser race for the second place slot, but Google and Mozilla just renewed their search ad deal, which features Google as the default search engine for Firefox toolbar.  The deal costs Google $300 million a year for the next three years, leaving the total value of the deal at $900 million.  This refueled rumors that Google is only giving Mozilla money as charity and the deal isn’t really a partnership.  Aza Dotzler, product director for Mozilla’s Firefox desktop browser, was quick to refute the rumors.

“For years, many in the tech press have presumed that Google is ‘donating’ money to Mozilla,” Dotzler wrote. “They’re not. They’re no more donating to Mozilla than they are to Opera or Apple, both of which derive significant revenue by sending search traffic to Google. … They’re no more donating to Mozilla than they are to the handset makers and carriers they pay to distribute Android. It’s a simple business deal. They sell ads and they do what they can to put eyes in front of those ads.”