Overtaking IE, Firefox Is Now the Most Popular Browser in Europe

Firefox has something to celebrate in the new year, according to data from StatCounter, it is now the most popular browser across all of Europe, surpassing Internet Explorer in aggregate market share.

Firefox has long been one of the most popular browsers in many European countries, it has long passed IE in Germany for example, but it is now the biggest on the whole continent.

Firefox was preferred by 38.11 percent of internet users in December 2010, according to the data, while Internet Explorer was used by only 37.52 percent. But, Firefox's market share is actually smaller than it was a year ago, it had 40.8 percent in December 2009, so it's a bit strange that it managed to overtake IE.

Mozilla has Google Chrome to thank for this, while Google's browser has been taking away some market share from Firefox, it's done a lot more damage to IE's. In the past year, Chrome has tripled its market share in Europe, going from 5.06 percent to 14.58 percent, mostly by getting people to switch from Internet Explorer.