Last week, Google added some heat to the web browser market when it introduced its newest offering, Google Chrome, a web browser designed to better support rich Internet applications (RIAs). In just one week, this browser jumped in popularity to claim over 4 percent of the market share. What’s interesting when you look at these numbers is where the market share is coming from. Firefox dropped in popularity from 72.9 percent down to 67.5 percent and Opera too dropped slightly from 3.51 percent to 3.47 percent. At the same time, Internet Explorer gained ground, moving from 18.18 percent to 20.08 percent.

What does this all mean? If Chrome continues to pick up market share, then this means another new browser for web developers to add to their test platforms. So far, Chrome is a Windows-only offering and it still lacks a number of the key features that advanced users crave, such as add-ons and extensions. However, Google has indicated that both of these items will be resolved quite quickly.