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Browser shares shift in Europe
Wednesday 5th January 2011
Browser wars. Courtesy:http://presentability.com/tag/idea/ Source: http://www.pixellabs.com/images/browserwars.png
The impact of the agreement between Microsoft and the European Commission competition authorities to offer EU users of choice and a menu of browsers may be behind the Mozilla Firefox browser overtaking Microsoft Internet Explorer as leader in Europe according to web analystic company Dublin based StatCounter.
In December, the open-source Firefox took 38.1% of European market share, while Internet Explorer's share slipped to 37.5%. Google Chrome saw its share rising to 14.6% from just 5.1% a year earlier.
"This appears to be happening because Google's Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share," said (right)Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter CEO.
In December 2009, European Union regulators accepted Microsoft's pledge to give consumers better access to rival browsers, ending a long antitrust dispute.
Since March, Microsoft offered Europeans the option to choose from among 12 browsers on the more than 100m old and new PCs that use its Windows software.
Globally, Internet Explorer's share slipped to 46.9% in December, while Firefox was at 30.8% and Google was at 14.9% says StatCounter
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