IE keeps dropping, Firefox keeps growing

[Andreas G]

It's the eternal trend. Internet Explorer keeps losing ground, Firefox keeps gaining. Not even after Internet Explorer 7 Microsoft managed to affect the big trend. Firefox has remained steady in growth and by the end of 2008 it was up to a record high 20.78% while Internet Explorer hit a record low of 69.77%, according to NetApplications' measurements. NetApplications lists various reasons for this, all pointing to that people have been browsing more from home, rather than from work, which of course implies that many companies are using IE rather than FF, despite the security history of the two.

"Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla.  It's a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible. The open web is more vibrant than ever, and the thousands of Mozilla contributors around the world have played a major role in making it that way." - John Lilly, CEO Mozilla

In three weeks, on January 26th, Mozilla is scheduled to released Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, with Microsoft working on Intel Explorer 8 which is scheduled to release with Windows 7 in the mid of the year. By then we might see more of Firefox 3.2 which will offer a new tab switching behavior among other things.