(CNN) -- A month ago, Google's three-year effort to push its Web browser, Chrome, took a major step when analysts said it had passed Mozilla's Firefox to become the second-most popular tool of its kind on the Internet. Today, that climb continues and has some tech observers wondering whether Chrome could do the unthinkable and topple perennial leader Internet Explorer from atop the browser rankings. According to Web analytics firm StatCounter, the most popular version of Google's browser, Chrome 15, edged out Internet Explorer 8 in early December to become the world's most used edition of a browser. (For those keeping score, the totals were 23.6% of worldwide browser usage compared to IE8's 23.5%.)

That's compared to about 37% for
Internet Explorer, which dropped 2% from November, according to StatCounter.