For the first time ever, Firefox is passing Microsoft’s web browser(s) measured globally. This is according to Statcounter’s data for April this year. Their data should be quite credible, despite the sometimes strange local variations in the choice of browsers, since they collect data from three million websites and has had fifteen billion page views.
All in all, Firefox accounted for 15.6% and Microsoft’s browsers had 15.5%. As you might figure out, there is a giant hiding in plain sight, namely Google Chrome, which has over 60%. The really small browsers like Apple’s Safari, Opera, and others, together account for 8.4 %.
Why are Firefox successful all of a sudden?
Now I’m speculating wildly, but I think there are Windows users, mostly on Windows 10, that have noticed that Microsoft is phasing out Internet Explorer in favor of Microsoft Edge. Perhaps they are making an active change. Suddenly they notice that the Internet may not be synonymous with Explorer.
To call it success is not entirely fair. It is, after all, so that Firefox has lost a smaller market share compared with Explorer & Edge, while Google Chrome continues to increase their.
How does this matter to my website?
Presumably, this is not something that determines how you work with your website. But it is absolutely worth trying to keep track of the market shares so to make representative measurements on one’s own website.
To some extent, a change in the distribution also may affect how web users behave. Let’s say that many of those who come to Firefox for the first time, is noticing ad blocking – well, then it can start to affect some websites.
Source: Statcounter