It’s been a while since I paid attention to web traffic, specifically browser numbers.  So, what I saw today was a bit of a shock.

It seems things have been changing recently, on just about every front.

For a start, I thought Firefox was gaining share.  I seem to think I heard that in several places.  I also thought Explorer was losing, Chrome was on the rise, and Safari and Opera didn’t much play in this game.

But today, August 1, 2010, NetMarketShare released their July numbers for the browser battle.  And it seems that, not since Explorer vs Netscape, has there been this much of a battle.

For starters, IE has gained share for the second straight month – 59.75% > 60.32% > 60.74%.  Needless to say, Microsoft is touting this all they can.

The next shocker was that Firefox has LOST share – for the third straight month.  They have dropped from 24.59% to 22.91% since April, 2010.  Since I have a techie website, and see mostly Firefox and Chrome in my stats, I may be a little jaded here, but I honestly thought Firefox and Chrome were the big winners recently.

Chrome, it turns out, has also dropped some, though.  Not much, but 7.24% to 7.16% is a drop, none-the-less.  Especially since they have been on a steady upward trajectory since launch.  In fact, this their first drop ever.

Safari has been on a steady rise for the past few months, going from 4.24% in September 2009 to 5.09% in July 2010.  This was another shocker, since I had no idea anyone running Windows was using Safari.  But, Safari’s market share outpaces Apple’s OS which hangs in at 5.06% versus Windows’ 91.32%.  Is this making sense to anyone?

Finally, Opera, also has risen.  They remain far behind, but they rise little by little.  Again, it seems to be at the expense of Firefox and Chrome.  For July they topped out at 2.45% over June’s 2.27%.

As I mentioned, I run a techie site, much like this one, so my view is skewed.  But, most of my users are on Firefox and Chrome and I have seen no real drop in the numbers.  But, it looks like the masses are going with the defaults – IE and Safari.  With more people coming online all of the time this is a trend that could, against all odds, continue.  The third-world may rule our future after all.