Print - Mozilla Grabs 6 Percent Market Share as IE Falters

According to a new study by Web analytics firm WebSideStory, two Web browsers by the Mozilla Foundation captured a combined 6 percent of the market from market leader Internet Explorer, which saw its share drop during the same time period. The Web usage study, which is based on an analysis of traffic to major Web sites such as Walt Disney, Best Buy, Liz Claiborne, and Sony, shows that IE has lost share for five consecutive months. Meanwhile, Mozilla's products have grown during the same period.

The Mozilla Foundation makes two primary Web browser products, the Mozilla suite, which includes a Web browser, email client, and instant messaging (IM) solution, and the Firefox browser, a standalone Web browser that is nearing its crucial 1.0 release. According to WebSideStory, both the Mozilla suite and Firefox grabbed 3 percent market share in October, for a total of 6 percent, up from a combined 5.2 percent in September. During that same time period, IE's market share slid from 93.7 percent in September to 92.9 percent in October; in June, IE had 95.5 percent of the market.

Other Web browsers are also stealing market share from the stagnant IE. Opera and Apple Safari both edged above 0.5 percent of the market in October, WebSideStory says. While these numbers don't seem particularly impressive, they do come at the expense of IE, which has dominated the Web browser market since the late 1990's. However, since then, Microsoft has backed off from actively developing IE. Now, for the first time, we're seeing rivals finally starting to gain on IE.

The timing of this market share news couldn't be better for the Mozilla Foundation, which will launch Firefox 1.0 on November 9. The organization recently raised over $250,000 in contributions from users in just 10 days, and it will use that money to promote Firefox 1.0 in full pages ads in the New York Times. The hope is that Firefox will reach mainstream users and edge out of its niche status. They're off to a good start: Over 7 million users have downloaded preview and release candidate builds of Firefox 1.0 over the past few weeks.

firefox is a pretty lame product when not compared with IE. Their slogan should be "at least we are better than IE". when is somebody going to truly innovate web browsers...

well, yeah.. firefox is okay.. what do you want.. it's a web browser.. pretty standard stuff... just a less attractive version of safari.. except.. *wow.. without the incompatibilities

Firefox is simple, attractive and quick. It offers popup blocking, tabbed browsing and follows the damn standards. The Pope himself uses Firefox so thats a good anough recommendation for me!

I'm just another mindless troll without intersting argumentation. I prefer to shut up and never visit your mindless-visitor site again. Bey-Bey empty heads

ARRRGHH hit another link to the same site again. WON'T YOU COCKSUCKERS every go away?

Ah at the last moment befor closing my tab I see the light. Or should I say Shade... WindowsITPro. How contraditionary. Man... You're stupid. Suck My Balls

Hah, this is cool. I'm going to make some corporate content filters block you. porn, pron pr0n games, webmail chat chatroom leet warez

damn, this beer tastes good. I don't wanna leave here anymore. I like talking to myself. Gives me the feeling I have friends here. (Of course i don't since i'm a OSS zealot).

I wonder, how long it takes for me to become unable to post my Funny +5 comments.

you can't even sort the comments by their timestamp. Ah I get it. you sort them by their relevance.

If you look closly at the figures, the "gains" that Firefox and other are making are coming off IE v4 and 5. IE v6 has not changed it's market share in 2 months...

hahaha funny comments let's get this page blocked by Google's content filtering. This page will show up with popup porn pages. Too bad we can't do the same with his Internet-Nexus site.

In response to the comments on my site, this is first and foremost a technology site but yes I hope to make this a porn haven. Please keep entering sexual keywords.

Yeah yeah, stop pretending to be Paul Thurrot. You aren't, though. The "0" (zero) in the last name gives away your deceptive nature Mr. Pseudo Paul Thurr0t.

Some moron who thinks he's Karl Rove posted... "If you look closly at the figures, the "gains" that Firefox and other are making are coming off IE v4 and 5. IE v6 has not changed it's market share in 2 months..." BRILLIANT Spin, dude, you've got a career in politics! Translation into real english. 'Mozilla's "gain" is not a real gain because it doesn't meet my arbitrary definition which will change whenever I feel like it.'

Anonymous User: "Yeah yeah, stop pretending to be Paul Thurrot. You aren't, though. The "0" (zero) in the last name gives away your deceptive nature Mr. Pseudo Paul Thurr0t" I like you. You are smart!

Firefox is very helpful for common users who dont know a lot about the internet. I recommend Firefox to all the people who come into my store with virii, b/c of the pop-up blocker and the fact that it's simply better than IE.

Ooh the last two people posting as if this is a serious discussion. Look at the other posts. Fall asleep, morons, on the toilet! If you're a guy, then play with your little "internet explorer."