Microsoft Internet Explorer Gains Browser Market Share To 57.6 Percent

According to Netmarketshare’s numbers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser gained market share in August hitting a two-year high of 57.6 percent. Google Chrome lost the most among the major browsers which saw its usage drop from 17.76 percent to 16 percent. I was surprised by the numbers when I saw it first, then came to know that Netmarketshare changed the way they measure their numbers this month.

Ed Bott from ZDNet summarized it as follows,

Net Applications recently changed its formula for measuring usage. In an undated note labeled “Important methodology change,” the company explains:

This month we start deducting hidden pages from our usage share statistics. Hidden pages are pages that are rendered but never viewed by the user, therefore, they should not be included in usage share data. An example of a hidden page is a page that loads in a background tab upon the launch of the browser and is never made visible.

That note appears to have been added to the site in July, although it’s not clear from the note when the new methodology took effect. The change in methodology is intended to help measure actual behavior by PC users rather than background activities performed by browser code. Previously, the company’s stats had excluded prerendered pages, which Chrome uses to load pages in the background as a Google user types a search request. In February 2012, prerendered pages accounted for 4.8 percent of Chrome pages. In June 2013, that number was over 12 percent.

Read more about it from the link below. Another related news, Windows 8 Overtakes All Versions Of Mac OS X Combined In Terms Of Worldwide OS Market Share.

Source: Netmarketshare via: ZDNET