Chrome Prepares to Pass Firefox as Second Most Popular Browser

via Chrome Set to Eclipse Firefox as World’s No. 2 Browser.

Last week, Google claimed Chrome was the most popular web browser in the world. By some measures that’s true, but one leading research site still places it in the No. 3 spot, behind Internet Explorer and Firefox.

That’s about to change.

Net Applications pegs Chrome‘s market share at 19.08%, less than a percentage point behind Mozilla Firefox, which has 20.06%. However, Chrome’s chunk of the market has increased almost 5% over the past year, while Firefox’s has decreased almost 3%. Both, however, are far behind IE, which has a commanding 54.02% of the market.

If trends continue, Google’s browser will soon claim the second spot in the browser wars. So why did Google say it was the world’s top browser?