Google's Chrome drops share for second straight month

From InfoWorld: The browser battle returned to a kind of normalcy last month as Microsoft's IE (Internet Explorer), which had posted its largest-ever share increase in January, declined slightly in February.

And Google's Chrome fell for the second straight month in Web metrics firm Net Application's statistics as the company acknowledged it has been over-counting that browser's share for months.

Chrome's pre-rendering feature -- where the browser loads pages in the background that the user may view -- kicked off last August with version 13, and was enhanced in Chrome 17 that launched about a month ago.

As users type in search strings, whether at Google.com or in the browser's combined address bar/search field, dubbed the "omnibox," Google loads one or more hidden pages that it thinks the user will select from the ensuing search links.

Net Applications admitted that it had given Chrome a larger share than the browser deserved. "[Pre-rendering] creates unviewed visits that should not be counted in Chrome's usage share," said Net Applications on its website yesterday.

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