I saw this little stat on Lifehacker this morning to add to yesterday's post about the browser market.  Microsoft released a beta version of IE8 a few weeks ago, and it already has the market share that Google Chrome does.  So folks must really be wanting to check out IE8 or as the Lifehacker post notes developers are trying to make sure their sites work on IE8 before it's released to the masses.

With the growing number of web browsers out today it proves a tough challenge to develop across all browsers.  I try to keep tabs on the current browser share in the market, to make sure you can at least cater to the masses.  A look at the latest numbers shows that Internet Explorer is still the beast in the market, at 67.5%.  That number is falling sharply though.  Just last March they had a 74.8% share of the market.  So the gap is closing.  Firefox is slowing catching them, coming home second at 21.5%.  That number is up from their 17.8% share in March.

Browser share as of January 2009:
Internet Explorer (67.5%)
Firefox (21.5%)
Safari (8.2%)
Chrome (1.1%)
Opera (.7%)
Netscape (.5%)
Other (.2%)

Data courtesy of MarketShare