Dublin-based web analytics firm StatCounter has announced that the end of November saw Google's Chrome 15 become the most popular browser version worldwide for the first time on a weekly basis. In the last full week of November, Chrome 15 managed to take 23.6% of the global browser market, inching in front of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 which had a 23.5% share. Better yet, for Google at least, in the first week of December Chrome 15 topped 24.55% while IE8 slipped to 22.16%.

These results don't change the big picture though, so Internet Explorer (with all its still working versions) continues to be the number one browser worldwide, while Chrome is on the second spot. Chrome 15's performance is certainly noteworthy but it should be short-lived since Google this week released the stable 16.0.912.63 build and people are likely upgrading to it as we speak. It remains to be seen if Chrome 16 will get the browser crown like its predecessor.