Browser Security News

Safari is either making huge gains or holding steady in the browser wars; it all depends on whose stats you use. The same can be said of Firefox, while Internet Explorer is losing ground in the US but holding steady worldwide. The conflicting numbers come courtesy of two web metrics tracking firms, Net Applications and OneStat. Net Applications’ figures come from its live stats customers and sample over 40,000 URLs. OneStat uses a daily sample of 2 million visitors spread across 100 countries to come up with its numbers.

Net Applications’ numbers cover the US only and paint rosy pictures for both Firefox and Safari. Firefox has seen its market share bounce from 9.5 percent in January 2006 to 13.67 percent a year later, although the latter figure is down a bit from December 2006’s 14.0 percent. Safari has seen even stronger growth, according to Net Applications. In January 2006, 3.0 percent of all web surfers were using Safari. A year later, that figure had grown by over 56 percent, to 4.70 percent. Internet Explorer loses ground to Firefox, Safari in US; holds its ground worldwide