The release of Internet Explorer 8 on March 19, 2009, did nothing to turn IE's downward trajectory around, despite shooting past old-time rivals such as Opera and newer competitors like Google Chrome without any problems. In just a few days short of the first couple of weeks on the market, IE has left Chrome and Opera in the dust when it comes down to market share. Launched half a month ago, Internet Explorer 8 accounted, at the end of March 2009, for a usage share of 1.78%, besting Google Chrome, which, since the launch in 2008, only managed to climb to 1.16% and Opera, which is credited with just 0.62%, according to statistics provided by Net Applications. This despite the fact that Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 as silently as possible, only announcing the availability of the RTW release at MIX09, in comparison with the world record-setting fanfare enjoyed by Firefox 3 in mid-2009.

But while Microsoft has put its hopes in Internet Explorer 8 to regain the terrain lost to rivals, mainly to Firefox, Mozilla's open-source browser continues the IE slaughter undeterred. At the start of this month, Firefox managed to climb to a usage share of 22.07%, with Internet Explorer down to 66.79% from 67.44% in February 2009. Firefox only accounted for a small growth in March 2009, undoubtedly affected by the launch of IE8 RTW, as in February 2009 it was credited with 21.77%.

Still, Firefox 3.0 is now the second most popular browser worldwide, with a market share of 19.67% compared to Internet Explorer 6, which is down to 18.32%. IE7 owns the lion's share of the global browser market with 46.59% at the start of April 2009. At the end of March 2009, Safari had an 8.25% usage share, while Google Chrome was up to 1.23% with Opera at 0.70%.

While a global perspective over the browser market indicates the continuation of year-old trends, fact is that Firefox has managed a crucial victory against Microsoft. StatCounter Global Stats indicate that for the first time Firefox 3.0 grabbed the position of the most popular browser in Europe, sliding past Internet Explorer 7. Firefox 3.0 accounts for 35.05% of the European web browser market with Internet Explorer 7 down to just 34.54%.

“The move is partly explained by a small switch from IE 7.0 usage to IE 8.0 but also by growing market share overall by Firefox 3.0,” explained Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter. “The data shows that Firefox is closing the gap and is now just 10% behind all IE versions in Europe.”


Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Windows is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 for Mac OS X is available here.

The latest development milestone of Google Chrome is available for download here.

Opera 9.64 and 10.0 Build 1345 Alpha are available for download here.