Here’s some interesting news from the periphery. In Europe, where Microsoft was forced to institute a ‘browser ballot ‘upon the installation of Windows (giving Opera, Safari, Chrome, Firefox and IE equal billing), Firefox has just passed IE as the most popular browser on the continent. That’s according to Statcounter who told Reuters “This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share. We are probably seeing the impact of the agreement between European Commission competition authorities and Microsoft, to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March last year.” Given equal footing with other browsers, users just don’t pick IE (remember this ballot is only a year old and it will likely get much worse for Microsoft. Full graph below:
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share
Firefox overtakes IE in Europe (gs.statcounter.com)
