Mozilla Firefox 3 overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 for the first time in February in the Internet browser wars according to monthly data from StatCounter Global Stats.

The release of Internet Explorer 8 hasn't had any significant impact on Firefox or any other competing browser, data collected by StatsCounter shows. While the final release of IE8 increased its market share slightly on launch day to 1.39 percent, Firefox 3.0 grew more quickly and reached 25.38 percent.

Mozilla Firefox 3, the free and open source web browser, has finally overtaken Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and is getting closer and closer behind IE 7. According to data from StatCounter Global Stats, for the first time in February of this year, Firefox 3 with 24% market share overtook IE 6.

The latest figures from French based Internet traffic analyst XiTiMonitor shows that the Mozilla's Firefox web browser has continued to take market share off Microsoft's Internet Explorer across the globe over the past year, with a significant spike in Firefox usage in December 2007.

While statistics put Internet Explorer clearly ahead as the most widely used web browser, it’s clear to many people that it is not due to the excellent programming.

"According to a recent comprehensive Web browser report, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is losing market share to Mozilla Firefox. The overall report shows that IE has dropped below 70 percent. [...] Each month since October, IE has dropped a point while Firefox gained a point..."

I am safer browsing in Mozilla’s Firefox browser than I am in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I firmly believe this to be the case. Yes, that’s right, Firefox is safer than IE.

Firefox downloads boosted by new release and Internet Explorer security scare. Mozilla's open source browser experienced a healthy boost in popularity last week on the back of a new release and security concerns about Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Firefox 3.5 was released just a couple of hours ago and it comes with great new features and a new version of Gecko, the rendering engine. Firefox is currently the most popular browser on the Linux platform and the top choice on Windows after Internet Explorer (although there are statistics showing it beats IE in terms of popularity in some countries).