14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla's Web browser, Firefox, gained another piece of the browser market in its competition against Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari. Ever since its launch, Firefox has been steadily gaining market shares from its massive and market-dominant competitor built by Microsoft. In the past four months, the market gain rhythm increased, Mozilla's browser gaining an average 3.1 percent of the market every month in more than 32 European countries, according to the French Web-monitoring company XiTi Monitor cited by News.com.
"It's a nice way to get started on a Monday morning," said Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe. "I hope we continue to gain market share, as our goal is to promote choice. Monopoly leads to lack of innovation." Even if Microsoft's Internet Explorer still own about 66 percent of the browser market across Europe, in several countries, especially in Eastern Europe, Firefox is the browser of choice for many PC users. Nitot said that Firefox's success in Eastern European countries is linked to the support network that exists in them. "There's a very active community there--there's active forum support online. Also, if you have a problem, people from the community will come to your business and fix any potential issues," Nitot said. Microsoft should not ignore Firefox's market gains, Nitot said. "I think it should be a cause for concern for them--our intention is to encourage Microsoft to get back to work and improve IE," he said. "We want a better Web experience for everybody."
Microsoft recently announced that it will start developing Web-based applications and at the same time it denied any concern about losing market shares to another browser in Europe or about difficulties in redefining part of itself as a Web services company. "We're proud to see Windows remains the platform of choice, in part because it provides our customers with the widest range of both hardware and software options in the industry," a Microsoft representative wrote in an e-mailed statement.
While Microsoft continues to claim that its products are the best ones, its Web browser - now at the seventh version - is still plagued by security problems and bugs found by various customers. The security company Secunia mentions that there were ten issues related to Internet Explorer since its launch and up to May 2007 and that one of them was marked as "critical".