Firefox 3 Gains Ground on Microsoft Internet Explorer in Internet Browser Wars

New York, Wednesday, 4th March 2009: Mozilla Firefox 3 overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 for the first time in February in the Internet browser wars according to monthly data from StatCounter Global Stats (http://gs.statcounter.com) - the new free analysis tool. Internet Explorer 7 continues to lead globally with 41% market share. However, Firefox 3 is now in second place with 24% replacing IE 6.

"Since its launch less than a year ago, Firefox 3 has attained nearly one quarter of the global market," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder, StatCounter. "IE 7 is consistently holding about 40% of the global market but IE 6 has fallen from 28% in July last to 22% in February this year."* The growth in usage of Firefox 3 can be partly attributed to users upgrading to the new version - Firefox 2 market share has fallen from 16% to 3% in the period.

Microsoft's combined IE 7 and IE 6 market share has fallen from 68% in July last year to 63% now. IE 8 has gained a toehold in the market of just over 1%. Firefox 3 and 2 has grown from 25% in July last to 27% in February '09. "The overall trend is what is interesting here," added Aodhan Cullen.

The StatCounter analysis is based on four billion pageloads per month. StatCounter is one of the largest website traffic monitoring companies in the world with over two million members globally. Over 40% are located in the US with 25% in Europe.

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* Source: Figures based on monthly StatCounter Global Stats analysis and available at: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200807-200903

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About StatCounter

StatCounter, a free online visitor stats tool, was founded in 1999. It offers its members the chance to grow and improve their online businesses by allowing them to monitor the number of hits to their website; the geographical location of visitors; the various pages a visitor views; keywords used to find the site plus other features.

StatCounter currently has over two million members and tracks in excess of ten billion pageloads per month over its network of three million websites. For information on this real-time, user-friendly, and free visitor stats tool, please visit www.statcounter.com