Although Microsoft has yet to release the gold version of Internet Explorer 8, the browser has already grabbed a consistent portion of the browser market, more than long time competitors and almost as much as fresher rivals. The Redmond company launched Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC) on January 26, 2009, signaling that it was very close to the RTW (release to web) Build. The IE8 RC comes after two Beta builds of the browser, which were dropped in the first and second half of 2008, respectively. On the heels of IE8 RC's availability, the usage share of the browser jumped over 1% of the market, according to statistics from Net Applications.

At the end of January, IE8 stabilized at 0.92% of the market, just a tad short of Google Chrome, which managed to grow to 1.12%, from 1.04% in December 2008. But at the same time, IE8 skyrocketed past Opera, which, at the end of the past month, only accounted for 0.70% of the browser market. A small victory for Microsoft, considering that the European Union Antitrust Commission shared a Statement of Objections with the company the past month, informing it that it was considering a bundle between Internet Explorer and Windows to be breaking EU antitrust laws. The European antitrust regulators debuted an investigation into the bundling of IE with the Windows operating system as a consequence of an anti-monopoly filing from Opera.

However, despite the success of the pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 8, the evolution of the browser market looks by no means encouraging to Microsoft. The Redmond company's browser is on a continuous downward trend, which has seen it drop from 68.15% in December 2008 to 67.55% in January 2009. The adoption of Internet Explorer 7 continues to grow, with the version jumping from 46.77% to 47.32% in the past two months, while IE6's share continues to erode. Between 2008 and 2009, IE6 dropped under the 20% milestone of the browser market, more specifically from 20.46% to 19.21%. At the same time, Firefox is continuing to convert audience away from IE, having increased its installed base from 21.34% in December 2008 to 21.53% in January 2009.

Opera 10.0 Build 1229 Alpha / 9.63 is available for download here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 / 3.0.5 / 2.0.0.20 is available for download here.

Google Chrome 2.0 is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 7 is available for download here.