Remember when Internet Explorer ruled the Web, to the tune of about 98% of the browser market share? Those were happy days for Internet Explorer. Until Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape. Internet Explorer’s market share has been sliding ever since ...

A new report shows that that slide has put Internet Explorer’s market share at just under 60%.

It has been six weeks since Firefox 3 has been released and if we believe market share numbers provided by an ongoing survey of NetApplications, then it appears that Mozilla has had a successful launch with market share gains, especially at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

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.

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.

"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..."

On the back of the release last week of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla's open-source browser gained market share at the expense of rivals Internet Explorer (IE) and Safari, Net Applications said Monday.

Mozilla achieved an important milestone in November, sailing past 20% market share over an entire month for the first time since its release in November 2004. While Safari and Chrome were able to take over share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as well, Mozilla’s Firefox leaped by almost a full percentage point over October, according to data provided by Net Applications.

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.