Google unseats Microsoft as the US browser powerhouse

According to the Adobe Digital Index (ADI), a measurement of browser usage based on tracking visits to the average US website, Google's desktop and mobile browsers -- Chrome on both platforms, the aging Android browser on the latter only -- slipped past Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), which retained its premier position on the desktop but had little to show for its effort on smartphones.

For April, Google accounted for 31.8 percent of all browser usage in the United States. Meanwhile, Microsoft owned a 30.9 percent share. Apple's Safari was in third place with a combined desktop and mobile share of 25 percent, while Mozilla's Firefox, which lacks a meaningful presence in mobile, was a distant fourth with just 8.7 percent. The rise of Google's browsers, and to a lesser extent Apple's Safari, and the corresponding declines of both IE and Firefox, can be attributed to mobile browsing, primarily that conducted on smartphones.