Firefox continues to swallow IE's market share

O
ver the years, Mozilla Firefox has steadily chipped away at Internet Explorer's market share. Last month, Microsoft's browser lost its greatest slice of the pie since November 2008 -- and Firefox ate most of it. Internet Explorer's share dropped 1.1% to 66.6% during August, and slipped 8.6% in the last 12 months. All the while, Firefox's cut grew .8% to 23.8% in August.

Within the ranks of Internet Explorer, IE6 lost 2.4%, slipping to 24.8%, IE7 dropped 1.9% to 21.2%, and IE8 rose 2.7%, claiming 15.2% of the browser's total share. Apple's Safari gained slightly, up to 4.1%, Google's Chrome saw a .3% rise to 2.9%, and Opera grew .1% to 2.1%. These figures may change significantly in the months to come, though.

Following a suit in the EU, Microsoft has proposed to include a "ballot screen" with its upcoming operating system, Windows 7. Slated for an October 22 launch, European versions of Windows 7 will prompt users with a list of major web browsers. The ballot will contain the top five web browsers, and market share will determine their position on the list.

In addition, Google recently landed a deal with Sony which will have Chrome pre-installed on Vaio-branded laptops sold in the US. Where do you think the shares will stand a year from now?