IE7 Passes 100 Million Downloads, Firefox Usage Improves

Quote

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounted for 79.6% of all browsers used in December 2006, a drop from the 80.6% during the previous month. Firefox's use, meanwhile, measured 14% in December, up from 13.5% in November. Also gaining ground in the last month of 2006 was Apple's Safari, which climbed to 4.2% from 4%, and Opera, which saw its share increase from 0.7% to 0.9%. Net Applications' data put IE 7's market share during December at 18.3%, up dramatically from November's 8.8%. But IE 6 lost more than IE 7 gained, dropping from 70.9% in November to 60.7% the next month. The gain in IE 7 is largely due to Microsoft pushing the new browser to end users via Windows' Automatic Updates setting, which is usually reserved for downloading and installing security fixes on PCs. Microsoft began issuing IE 7 to Windows XP users through Automatic Updates in early November as part of a controversial scheme to get the new browser in as many hands as possible as quickly as possible.