Internet Explorer on the rise as Firefox and Chrome take the plunge

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 3 2010, 06:08

Microsoft’s hugely popular Internet Explorer (IE) browser has once again pushed forward in the race for online usage, snatching momentum from its two biggest rivals in the process.

According to usage information released by Web metrics specialist Net Applications, IE held 60.7 percent of the global market as of July 31, which equates to an increase of 0.4 percent and returns Microsoft to a dominant percentage share it hasn’t held since March of 2009.

By comparison, Mozilla’s second-place Firefox browser dropped 0.9 percent to 22.9 percent for the month, which is the browser’s second largest slide since plunging 1.1 percent in May of 2009. July is also the third month in a row that Mozilla has lost market traction, and the sixth month in the last eight.

Impressive momentum attributed to the Chrome browser also tailed off in July, with Google’s platform dropping 0.1 percent to 7.1 percent, which is the first time Chrome has gone backwards since October 2008.

As for the rest of the market’s major players, Apple’s Safari browser finished July up 0.2 percent to 5.1 percent, while Opera similarly leapt 0.2 percent to 2.5 percent.

In terms of platform-specific figures with regard to IE’s regained strength, Internet Explorer 8 pushed onwards to 26.9 percent in July, which is a gain of just over a full percentage point – that figure rises to 30.3 percent when factoring in pages running via the browser’s Compatibility Mode.

Not all variants of Internet Explorer faired so well, however, with IE7 dropping 0.4 percent over the month, bringing it to an all-time low of 11.4 percent, while IE6 lost 0.2 percent on its way to a percentage share of 17 percent. 

Internet Explorer, as a whole, enjoyed similarly positive growth in June and appears to be recovering patches of ground lost after the European Commission forced Microsoft to offer Window’s users access to a wealth of rival browsers earlier in the year.

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