One of the more consistent trends in technology halted at least temporarily in January as Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser actually gained back a bit of lost usage share. But the big news, as always, is that the latest IE version, IE 9, continues to surge on the latest Windows version, Windows 7.
"Last month, IE 9 surpassed IE 8 as the number one browser on Windows 7 worldwide," Microsoft director Roger Capriotti writes in the Exploring IE Blog. "This month that trend continues with IE 9 growing worldwide on Windows 7. In the US, IE 9 picked up almost two points of share, hitting 36.2 percent usage share in January."
Looked at more generally, NetApplications shows that overall IE usage in January was 53 percent, an increase of approximately 1.10 percentage points over the previous month. Meanwhile, usage in the number two browser, Firefox, fell by almost 1 percentage point to about 21 percent, while usage in the number three browser, Chrome, fell a slightly, to a bit over 19 percent.
I can't wait to read all those stories about IE eating into Firefox and Chrome usage share. (And Safari, too: Overall usage in Apple's web browser fell a bit in the month as well.) Cough.