Everyone knows about the Internet. It’s our way to access everything from scholarly research for academic papers to funny videos that let us ignore work for several hours to communication options that let us stay in touch with the people we love most to substantially more… private content. And while every internet browser gives you “the same Internet,” they all do it in slightly different ways. Each one also favors a specific search platform, so the rise and fall of browsers is especially important when looking at the success of search engines.

The big four players right now are IE (Microsoft’s Internet Explorer), Mozilla Firefox (most commonly just “Firefox” or “FF”), and Google Chrome. 2010 saw a substantial change across the board for these platforms.

Starting from the top, we have IE. Microsoft’s browser came out with their 8th rendition, which their spokesperson said “did well.” While it may have gotten a comparatively good set of reviews, it didn’t prevent the browser from declining in popular usage. In January of 2009, IE had 67% of the market. By January of 2010, that had dropped to 62%, and the company saw an additional five percent drop by the end of 2010.

So where did all that traffic go? Not to the second place competitor, Firefox, which saw a small drop in usage (down to about 23% from about 25%). Firefox, which continues frequent updates and sees immense support from the open source community, seems to be losing traffic to the same competitor that IE is facing.

That competitor is Google Chrome, who only entered the scene at the end of 2008. At the end of 2009, they’d managed to garner a full 4.6% of all browser use. Now, one year later, that number has doubled to about 10%. Google has been pitching their browser at every possible juncture, and the marketing efforts are paying off.