Firefox blazes past IE as most popular browser

You quite possibly use it, and plenty of others it would seem, as Mozilla Firefox 3.5 has just been declared the world’s most popular browser.

This is according to stats analysis website StatCounter, but there is a catch. The latest version of Firefox is most popular because Internet Explorer users are divided between IE 7 and 8.

In other words, the transition period from IE 7 to 8 has allowed Firefox to grab the most popular spot.

Come the new year, it won’t be long before Internet Explorer 8 wrests that crown back, as more and more users convert from version 7.

Even so, Firefox’s StatCounter graph curve is clearly on a slowly increasing up-tick, with IE on a very gradual decline in overall terms.

With Microsoft pledging to the EU to allow a choice between IE and other browsers for Windows users and PC manufacturers next year, certainly in Europe Firefox could be making even greater strides in 2010.