Google's Chrome passed Mozilla's Firefox in May to become the world's second-most-popular browser, according to data released today by Web analytics company Net Applications.
Net Applications' spot swapping came as a surprise: Earlier projections by Computerworld had pointed to a delay in Chrome's capture of second place, perhaps to as late as August.
The California-based firm was the second major metric company to track Chrome's run to second. In November 2011, Irish measurement vendor StatCounter said Chrome had passed Firefox in its estimates.
But in May, Chrome gained 1.3 percentage points, more than double its average increase over the last 12 months, to climb to 20.2 percent, while Firefox lost six-tenths of a point to fall to 19.6 percent.
Last month was the first time that Chrome cracked the 20 percent mark -- the browser debuted in September 2008 -- and the first time that Firefox fell under that number in Net Applications' data since October of the same year.
Firefox, backed by open-source developer Mozilla, peaked at just over 25 percent in April 2010, and has been on a slow-but-steady decline in usage share since then.
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