Even though Chrome, Google’s first browser, was presented as a success in the making with massive popularity potential, it is already beginning to fade away into anonymity.

In the first 24 hours since its release Chrome managed to attract quite a significant crowd, all interested and curious in testing the praised browser. Unfortunately, as we enter its fourth week of availability, the figures show a general trend to return to the classics, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

A few weeks ago, Chrome reached a market share of 1 percent but it is now struggling at 0.8 percent. The third place is occupied by Apple Inc.’s Safari and Google and Opera keep bumping heads for the fourth spot.

The ups and downs were observed by Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of marketing and strategic alliances at Internet measurement firm Net Applications. He explained that Chrome's initial rise was both shocking and impressive and from this point on it could go either way, depending on the company’s actions. He added that Google will have to change its strategy and focus on the marketing activities, which were mostly overlooked. One of the ways of putting the product on the market could be to close some deals for pre-loading PCs with the browser, which proved to be highly successful for Microsoft in the early 90s, but there are also other less intrusive ways.

Mr. Vizzaccaro also explained that Internet Explorer was the browser that recorded the biggest user loss once Chrome was released, and all the alternative browsers also had a lot to gain. Even so, IE seems to be untouchable when it comes to market shares, fluctuating in the 70 percent area and being the market’s distant number one. Last week, IE had 71.48 percent, Mozilla’s FireFox 19.42 percent and Apple’s Safari browser had 6.73 percent. Apple did not record any significant change with its user base, as there is no Chrome version available for Macs at this point. Google announced that such a platform is currently being developed and will soon be released.

Still, Google claims that the feedback was mostly positive and the encouragement received makes the company hold the same high expectations for its product: "We're pleased with the response we've gotten from users thus far." Soon, there will also be made available an update for the browser, which will aim at dealing with some of the flaws reported so far.

Considering the fact that it’s been less than a month since its launch, it is too soon to tell if the browser is a failure or an upcoming hit. The main problem is that Chrome is still in its early unpolished beta stage, which means that problems will be encountered by its users, problems that some might not have the time or mood to deal with. There is a very small percent of people who have fully embraced Chrome, most of them only giving it a go for a few days and waiting for the new versions before making their mind about a permanent browser change.