God Save Internet Explorer

No. At least not by the looks of the statistics released by Nielsen//NetRatings. The Queen is saved, but Internet Explorer is far from a safe position. Not with Firefox lurking around. The data published by Nielsen//NetRatings comes to confirm the slow erosion of Microsoft's position on the browser market, but this time only in the United Kingdom.

IE has had the dominant position on the browser market since 1999. In November 2004 - when Mozilla released Firefox - Internet Explorer accounted for a total of 97% of the UK browser market. In its debut year, Mozilla only managed to get a hold of 1% of the market.

Two years later, the situation is a tad different. Internet Explorer is still the browser of preference among Britons accounting for a total share of 88%, but Firefox has grown to a share of 11.5%. This means that while IE has lost 9% of its UK browser market share, Firefox has grown by 768%! Not too shabby!

"Whilst IE still dominates the web browser space, and is likely to do so for some time to come, the growth in take-up of Firefox shouldn’t be ignored. Aside from its supporters’ claims of its superior security and functionality, the open source nature of Firefox and its competition with Microsoft has a huge appeal to those who believe in the egalitarian and participatory ethos of the Internet. In other words, Firefox represents, for many, Web 2.0 and IE Web 1.0," explained Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings.

The release of Internet Explorer 7 did little to change the descendant trajectory of the Redmond Company in the UK. Moreover, it seems that Firefox 2.0 has consistently contributed to the dent in Microsoft's dominance over the browser market.

"Britons who use Firefox as their main browser average 28% more time online and view 41% more web pages than the average Internet Explorer user/ Firefox users spent an average of 24.4 hours online in September – browsing 2,070 pages – compared to 19.1 hours and 1,473 pages for the average Internet Explorer user," stated Nielsen//NetRatings.

Nielsen//NetRatings indicates that 62% of Firefox's UK users are males compared to just 52% for IE and that the open source browser has a greater affinity with people younger than 35.

"Firefox has a more male-centric and slightly younger user-base and its users are more heavy consumers of the Internet than their IE counterparts. This presents an interesting paradox - whilst its software more closely represents the new phase of user-generated content, or web 2.0, the composition of its audience more closely mirrors that of the early days of the Internet."

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