Microsoft's browsers ends 2017 with 17% market share according to NetApplications

According to analytics vendor NetApplications, Microsoft ended 2017 a bit worse than it came into the year, with a combined IE + Edge market of 16.97%, down from 18% it came into the year with. Microsoft has been having trouble regaining its browser share ever since losing it to Google and its Chrome browser, and even recently released a new ad promoting the security and speed of the browser. However Redmond has been having a hard time getting users to switch from the all too familiar Chrome browser, which ended 2017 with 60.6% browser share.

NetApplications, which measures browser share based on browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, recently scrubbed fraudulent bots from its data, and as a result some browsers saw a lost in market share. Overall, Microsoft saw a 1.3 % decline, Google increased by about the same amount, Firefox, in third place, dropped 3.5% over the course of the year to 11.02%, and Safari rounds everything out with 4%.

By other statistics, Stats Counter, which counts usage share by specific page views, puts Microsoft’s combined browser share  at 11.9% right behind Firefox 12.2%. Of course Chrome still leads that pack as well by a long shot.

It should be noted that these numbers are for desktop browsers, and don’t reflect mobile browser share.