The percentage of Americans using Mozilla and Firefox, two open-source browsers funded by the Mozilla Foundation, grew to 6 percent in October from 5.2 percent in September and 3.5 percent in June. That 6 percent was split evenly between the two browsers.

While Microsoft's IE continued as the overwhelming market leader, it witnessed another marginal decline, this time a dip of 0.8 percent. IE claimed 95.5 percent of users in June, 93.7 percent in September, and 92.9 percent last month. The Opera browser and Apple Computer's Safari combined reached just more than 1 percent of users.

Changing tides

Open-source browsers such as Firefox, as well as Apple Computer's Safari, seem to be stealing market share from Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer.
WebSideStory measures market share by embedding sensors on major Web sites for the Walt Disney Internet Group, Best Buy, Sony, DaimlerChrysler and Liz Claiborne. These sensors can tell which browsers visitors are using to view the sites.

Usage (percent)
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Browser                  June 4          Oct. 29    Change
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Internet Explorer    95.48           92.86          - 2.62
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Netscape / Mozilla     3.54            6.02*           + 2.48
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Others**               0.97        1.11        + 0.14
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* Includes Firefox
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** Includes Safari and Opera
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Source: WebSideStory