Google Chrome is losing its share in the browser market to Microsoft Edge for the first time, according to new stats from NetMarketShare.

In its latest report for October 2020, Chrome usage decreased from 69.94% in September 2020 to 69.25% a month later.

At the same time, Edge increased from 8.84% to 10.22%. It is thought the increase may be because of Microsoft promoting Edge as part of its latest Windows 10 20H2 update with a taskbar ad that urges people to use the browser.

The report also found that Firefox gained a little ground on Chrome, edging up from 7.19% in September to 7.22% a month later.

In its operating systems report NetMarketShare found that Windows 10’s market share increased from 61.26% in September 2020 to 64.04% in October. Unsurprisingly, Windows 7 share also decreased from 22.77% to 20.41% over the same period. Apple’s macOS 10.15 also declined from 5.11% to 4.88%.

Seperately, NetMarketShare signalled that it would be “retiring” its browser market report in its current form as an upcoming change in browsers will “break our device detection technology and will cause inaccuracies for a long period of time”.

It added that as it has focused on bot detection and removal as a key part of the quality control process, but noted that “as time has gone on, it has become increasingly difficult to manage this process. So, instead of accepting increasing levels of inaccuracy, we thought it would be a good time to call it a day.”

It added that Netmarketshare will “re-emerge at some point with a focus on ecommerce trends and verifiable user data”.