Windows 8 takes 1 percent of Web usage as Internet Explorer gains

November saw Firefox climb back up above 20 percent, Internet Explorer grow further still, and Chrome apparently suffer a surprisingly sharp drop.

Internet Explorer was up 0.63 points at 54.76 percent, its highest level since October 2011. Firefox was up 0.45 points to 20.44 percent, all but erasing the last six month's losses. Chrome, surprisingly, was down a whopping 1.31 points to 17.24 percent, its lowest level since September 2011.

We've asked Net Applications, the source we use for browser market share data, if it has made any change in its data collection that might account for this large Chrome drop. The company attributed this in part to the exclusion of Chrome's pre-rendering data. It estimates that 11.1 percent of all Chrome pageviews are a result of pre-rendering (where Chrome renders pages that aren't currently visible just in case the user wants to see them) and accordingly excluded this from its figures.