Week in review: Firefox on the hunt!

[Dashken]

Microsoft may be losing ground in the Internet browser battle.

Web metrics suggest that the software giant's Internet Explorer has been losing a significant number of users in the past nine months to open-source browser Mozilla and its offspring, Firefox. The gains for the two browsers, which are both produced by the Mozilla Foundation, are most noticeable at Web sites popular among geek-chic early adopters.

W3Schools.com, a Web development tutorial site, found that 18 percent of its visitors in September used Mozilla-based browsers, compared with 8 percent in January. Internet Explorer use dropped to 75 percent from 84 percent in the same period.

Among CNET News.com readers, site visitors using Mozilla and Firefox jumped to 18 percent for the first two weeks of September, from 8 percent in January.

In the hours since Tuesday's preview release of version 1.0 of Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation was already well on its way to reaching a stated goal of 1 million downloads in 10 days. In the first five hours that the new Firefox was available, it was downloaded more than 100,000 times.

Source: http://news.com.com/Week+in+review+F...?tag=nefd.lede