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After surviving US and European Antitrust lawsuits for bundling their Internet Explorer browser with Windows, Microsoft is finally feeling the hit from a group they never expected — the consumer.  It seems that less and less people are using the built in IE browser and are switching to better browsers, namely Firefox, Google’s Chrome, and the surprise of the group, Apple’s Safari.  The news comes just weeks before the release of IE 8, which is receiving good reviews from testers.

A recent report from Net Applications, a web metrics firm that monitors thousands of sites worldwide, has IE’s market share at 67.55 percent, far below the 90 plus percent days at the height of Windows 98.  Not surprisingly, Firefox is second at 21.53 percent.  Apple’s Safari, which has grown 1.5 percent over the past 90 days, a huge growth, weighs in with 8.29 percent of users, and Google’s Chrome claims a mere 1.2 percent market share. 

That leaves about 1.5 percent that encompasses device-specific browsers like Blackberries, Opera, and even the PlayStation version.  The news helps Microsoft in its latest legal battle with the EU, which is still trying to get IE split from Windows.  My guess is Steve Ballmer isn’t going to see that as the silver lining.  Still, it is nice to see that even in an environment that almost became a monopoly that products and services will outweigh corporate might, even if it takes a few years.

From [NZ NBR]