PCWorld's recent Web browser showdown may have crowned Chrome the ultimate winner, but new data suggests that Google's popular contender shouldn't rest on its laurels just yet.
In fact, after a similar market-share shift in August, Chrome fell further into third place in September, buoying Mozilla's Firefox firmly back into the second-place spot it occupied until relatively recently.
In August, Chrome claimed 19.13 percent of the desktop browser market, according to market researcher Net Applications, while Firefox accounted for 20.05 percent. Still in first place was Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with 53.60 percent.
Firefox's four-year low of 19.7 percent occurred in May 2012.
Now, for September, Firefox has increased to 20.08 percent, while Chrome has dipped to 18.86 percent. Explorer, meanwhile, gained a bit, reaching 53.63 percent.
'Critical Vulnerabilities for Months'
Of course, there's no denying that browser market share data varies tremendously with the firm that collects it--among many other factors.
Coincidentally, however, a recent report from security researcher Brian Krebs suggests that users should be wary of Internet Explorer, in particular.
“In a Zero-Day World, It's Active Attacks that Matter” is the title of Krebs' recent blog post, and he concludes that, “unlike Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox users, IE users were exposed to active attacks against unpatched, critical vulnerabilities for months at a time over the past year and a half.”
