During the course of second day proceedings at Google's I/O annual developer conference, the company interceded in the `browser usage share' scuffle for the first time, claiming that its Chrome Web browser was the most popular browser in the world.

In his remarks at the conference, Sundar Pichai - Google's VP of Chrome - said that, going by the Google metrics and the indications therein, Chrome was undoubtedly the world's "most popular browser."

Pichai further substantiated his remarks by pointing to the May statistics shared by StatCounter, an Ireland-based supplier of website analytics tools, which showed that Google Chrome's 32.4 percent share of all page views during the month surpassed Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)'s 32.1 percent cumulative share.

Highlighting Chrome's leap to the top of the `browser usage share' table, Pichai said - in an interview with Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg - that Google's "internal data corresponds pretty well to what StatCounter reported."

In fact, within a month's period, StatCounter has released its most recent data, for the month of June, showing that Chrome's share has witnessed three-tenths of a percentage point increase - to 32.7 percent - month-over-month; while the IE's share increased two-tenths of a point, to touch 32.3 percent.

As such, going by StatCounter's preliminary figures, the gap between Chrome and IE has grown from three-tenths of a percentage point in May to four-tenths of a point in June!