August 13, 2009

Explorer? Firefox? Chrome? Competition among Internet Browsers Heats Up

Amy Barzdukas, a general manager at Microsoft in charge of the company's Internet Explorer browser, said that the recent announcement that Firefox – the chief competitor to Microsoft’s browser – has reached a billion downloads was "interesting math".

"It's an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many Internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area."

Firefox claimed it had passed the 1 billion downloads mark at the end of July, a figure which includes every update and all downloads made since the program was first launched in 2004.

Since its inception, Firefox has chipped away at Microsoft's dominant position and is now the world's second most popular web browser with 22% of the market, in comparison to 67% for the family of Internet Explorer programs.

If you have only used Internet Explorer as your browser, and are interested in trying some others, you might want to start here for an overview of what’s out there, or read a review of Google’s Chrome, the latest entry into the competitive browser field.

And if you are happy with Internet Explorer, but not yet using Microsoft’s latest release – IE 8 – click here for a review.

[via guardian.co.uk]

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