Google’s Chrome browser continued to make inroads into its rivals’ share of worldwide browser usage in May, new statistics show.

Chrome rose 0.3 percentage points to take seven per cent of the market, said Net Applications, which monitors browser usage on a network of Web sites.

The statistics reflect activity, not the number of people using a browser, as people load up about 160 million pages each month on sites Net Applications monitors. Because Web usage is increasing, the absolute number of people using a browser can increase even as its fractional share of usage drops.

Drops in market share were recorded by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dropped 0.3 per cent to 59.75 per cent, and Mozilla’s Firefox, which slipped 0.2 percentage points to 24.3 per cent. Fourth-place Safari from Apple rose 0.1 percentage points to 4.8 per cent, and Opera rose by the same margin to 2.4 per cent.
 
The browser market has become highly competitive as new features are built in to support new Web standards. Even Microsoft, long considered a technology laggard despite the dominant market position enjoyed by its browser, is fighting back, with extensive development work taking place on IE9.

Microsoft has been trying to rid the world of Internet Explorer 6, introduced in 2001 and now considered outmoded, slow, and insecure. Another analytics firm, StatCounter, reported IE6 use had dropped below 5 percent in the United States and Europe and to 9.8 percent worldwide.

“At these levels, Web developers now have valid justification not to support IE6 in the future,” StatCounter Chief Executive Aodhan Cullen said in a statement. The company collected its data from 15 billion page views of web pages in May.

Net Applications also released statistics for iPad use, showing the Apple tablet’ making gradual progress. With the iPad now for sale internationally, usage peaked May 29 with 0.17 per cent.
Net Applications’ data shows the iPad is relatively popular at weekends, when browsing using it roughly doubles.

The company also tracked mobile phone browsing usage. Java ME, a mobile phone version of the technology from Sun Microsystems and now owned by Oracle, took the top spot with 40 per cent of usage share.

Next in line was iPhone OS with 32.8 per cent, Symbian at 14 per cent, Android at 6.2 per cent, and BlackBerry at 3.6 per cent.

One commenter on the story, when it appeared on technology news website CNet, said the appeal of Chrome was simple: “I like Chrome for one reason: speed. It’s so much faster than Firefox when it comes to loading web pages,” he said.

The acquisition of technology start-up Invite Media by Google has begun to draw criticism from online display advertising firms.

The US search firm made the official announcement on Thursday, saying it had purchased the New York and Philadelphia-based company which has developed a platform that allows “advertisers and agencies to use ‘real time bidding’ to buy display ad space, and to optimize display ad campaigns, across multiple advertising exchanges”.

Advertisers have the choice of buying ad space from sellers including Google’s DoubleClick ad exchange, Yahoo’s Right Media and Microsoft’s AdECN Exchange.

Google said it is “investing significantly in the display advertising ecosystem” but this strategy and the acquisition of Invite has put the wind up competitors in the display ad market.

According to The Register, one rival to have expressed concerns over the deal, which is believed to have cost Google $70m, is The Media Innovation Group (MIG). The company, which is a major player in the online display advertising industry, believes the move might “stifle” the display ad market.

The Register says the main concern revolves around the fact that it could lead to a conflict of interest, with Google owning the exchange and competing against other rivals in a trading environment.

Writing on his blog, gartner analyst Andrew Frank said the move “Rekindles the issue of whether an entity such as Google, which happens to be the largest seller of online advertising, can continue to provide both media and the platforms for trading media in a neutral way.”

Invite Media was bought through DoubleClick, which Google purchased in March 2008 in a $3.1bn deal.

By Richard Morris

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Total display advertising impressions in America numbered 1.1 trillion in the first quarter of 2010 according to data released by comScore.

The research firm found a 15 per cent increase in the number of display ads shown to internet users in America when compared to Q1 2009. Total spending is estimated to have reached 2.7 billion.

Social networking site Facebook claimed the lion’s share of ad impressions, publishing 176 billion during the period, equivalent to a 16.2 per cent share of the market. Yahoo and Microsoft placed second and third, with 12.1 per cent and 5.5 per cent of the market respectively.

Jeff Hackett, comScore senior vice president, said: “Following a severe ad recession that began in late 2008 and continued through the first three quarters of 2009, we’ve been seeing a strong resurgence in the online display ad market.

“The first quarter of 2010 posted strong volume in online display ads, coinciding with increasing expenditure from advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers. This pickup in activity should bode well for the online advertising industry as we move forward in 2010.”

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Yahoo and Microsoft both managed to increase their share of the American search market last month, according to the latest available figures.

Data from comScore suggests websites belonging to Yahoo saw a 0.8 per cent month-on-month increase in search share during April, to finish with 17.7 per cent of the total market. Microsoft’s sites saw a 0.1 per cent increase to finish last month with an 11.8 per cent share.

In total, Americans completed 15.5 billion core searches during the month. Google continues to lead the pack with a 64.4 per cent share of the market, down 0.7 per cent on the previous month.

ComScore said: “Both Yahoo sites and Microsoft sites have experienced gains due in part to the introduction of new site navigation experiences that tie content and related search results together within several channels.

“These features provide search results to users as they navigate through topical content and meet comScore’s established criteria for counting search queries.”

Microsoft launched a multi-million pound advertising campaign in the UK in March, in an effort to promote its search engine Bing.

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Google’s Chrome internet browser has once again increased its market share, hitting 6.1 per cent by the end of March, up from 5.6 per cent at the start of the month.

The monthly research by Net Applications also showed that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer lost ground for the ninth month in a row. The world’s most popular internet browser saw its share of the browser market dip from 61.6 per cent to 60.7 per cent.

Firefox gained slightly, moving from 24.2 per cent to 24.5 per cent, while Safari also managed to increase its share and grew from 4.5 per cent to 4.7 per cent.

There was better news for Microsoft when it came to its share of the operating system market. The company’s Windows 7 system had a 10.23 per cent share of the market by the end of March, up from just over 2 per cent in October 2009.

However, Windows’ total share of the OS market slipped slightly from 92.1 per cent in February to 91.6 per cent in March.

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The number of Microsoft Internet Explorer browser users in Europe has dropped since the company made it easier for European consumers to use competing browsers.

Microsoft has promised to allow easier access to rival browsers in Windows by the middle of May, following a long-running competition dispute with the European Union.

The company has started to send a choice screen, which lets users instantly switch to rival browsers, to almost 200 million old and new computers.

According to web statistics firm Statcounter, Internet Explorer’s share of all web surfing dropped in France by 2.5 per cent between February and March, in Britain by 1 per cent and in Italy by 1.3 per cent.

Microsoft’s decision has brought dividends for other web browser companies, such as Norway’s Opera Software, the fourth largest browser firm. This saw downloads more than double in Europe as a whole due to the choice screen, with downloads in Italy, Spain and Poland more than tripling.

Microsoft’s closest competitor, Mozilla, also said it had seen strong growth. “We have seen significant growth in the number of new Firefox users as a result of the Ballot Choice screen. We expect these numbers to increase as the Ballot Choice screen fully rolls out across all countries,” said a spokeswoman for Mozilla.

Smaller Web browsers have urged the European Union to push Microsoft to provide them more visibility in its browser choice website.

At first sight, Microsoft’s browser Choice Screen (www.browserchoice.eu) shows its own Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Apple Inc’s Safari and Google Inc’s Chrome. It is not immediately obvious that more choices are available by scrolling to the right of the web page.

“To date, new downloads of Flock originating from the browser choice screen have only contributed marginally to growth in overall downloads. This is also the case for the other browsers not on the main screen,” Flock said in a statement.

Microsoft has said the screen complies with the EU’s decision. The five largest browsers show directly on the Choice Screen, but smaller vendors say there is nothing to show consumers that more options are available.

“We hope that the changes recommended in our urgent petition to the European Commission are implemented so that all the browsers that have been placed to the right of the main screen will have a reasonable chance of being found and considered by European consumers,” Flock told Reuters news agency.

The Norway-based company behind the internet browser Opera has announced a hike in downloads since Microsoft started offering Windows users a choice of internet browsers.

Microsoft made the move following a ruling by the European Commission, which decided its previous system of pre-installing its own browser, Internet Explorer, was anti-competitive.

The new system came into effect at the beginning of this month and since then, Opera says its download figures have doubled.

A report by the BBC said 77 per cent of Opera downloads in Poland had come from the new Microsoft browser option screen. There was a 328 per cent increase in downloads during a two day period between March 12 and 14.

Hakon Wium Lie of Opera Software, said: “This confirms that when users are given a real choice on how they choose the browser, they will try out alternatives.”

A ‘Platform Preview’ version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 has been made available for download from the company’s website.

Despite far from being a beta version or finished programme, IE9 is meant to provide a taste of what people can expect from the company’s next major update to its market leading browser.

An article by The Washington Post, said: “The IE9 Platform Preview serves as a sneak peek at some of the new web technologies and standards that Microsoft is working on building into its flagship browser.”

The technology firm is said to be working hard to deliver an upgraded JavaScript Engine and increase its browser support for web technologies such as HTML5 and CSS 3.

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Microsoft's search engine Bing managed to increase its share of the American search market by 4 per cent in February, according to new figures.

Data released by Experian Hitwise showed Bing climbing 4 per cent in the four weeks ending February 27, finishing the month with a 9.7 per cent share of the total US search market.

Google slipped slightly from 71.49 per cent to 70.95 per cent, but remains far and away the largest player in the search engine market.

There was no change for Yahoo, which remains in second place ahead of Bing with a 14.57 per cent share. Fourth placed Ask.com however managed to make the largest gain of all, increasing its percentage share from 2.64 to 2.84 – a jump of 8 per cent.

According to Experian, a further 73 search engines shared the remaining 1.94 per cent slice of the market between them.

The results will be welcome news for Bing, which launched a multi-million pound television advertising campaign in the UK on Wednesday. The firm is aggressively looking to build on its position and get its hands on Google’s lion’s share.

Mike Fischer, the chief marketing officer for Microsoft’s consumer and online division, has left the company according to a report by Marketing Magazine.

The news of his departure comes just hours before Microsoft launches a multi-million pound campaign to promote its Bing search engine. The television adverts will start to air on Wednesday and continue into mid-June.

The campaign has the strap line “Bing and decide” and is aimed at reducing Google’s dominance in the search market.

Fischer spent almost seven years at the company, joining Microsoft’s consumer and online department this time last year. His team, which looked after brands including Windows, Hotmail and Messenger, was responsible for the recent I’m a PC and Windows 7 Was My Idea campaign in the UK, aimed at promoting the Windows 7 operating system.

Marketing Magazine said Microsoft declined to comment on the news.

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