• by Shankar Gupta , March 21, 2005

The Firefox browser continued to cut into Internet Explorer's market share, according to statistics released Friday by NetApplications, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based company that offers Web-monitoring products. By the end of February, the open source Firefox browser accounted for 6.17 percent of browsers--up from 5.59 percent in January, according to NetApplications. During the same period, Microsoft's browser fell from 90.31 percent to 89.04 percent.

Some say that the downward trend for Microsoft's Explorer could be significant for the company--which just entered the search space last month--because browsers can play a key role in search. "The browser has become central in terms of driving revenue opportunities," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

Unlike Internet Explorer browsers, the home page for Firefox defaults to Google--Microsoft's rival in search.

Firefox's steady growth, coupled with rumors that Google may release a browser--the company snagged two Firefox developers last month, and registered the domain name "gbrowser"--suggest that another browser war could be in the works. In the mid-1990s, Microsoft's Internet Explorer finished off a bout of browser warring by putting competitor Netscape's browser down for the count. Netscape's current market share, according to NetApplications, is 1.89 percent.