After a long, quiet period of Microsoft dominance, the PC browser market has been broken wide-open again in recent years, with Firefox and Chrome challenging Internet Explorer, and Opera sniffing at the margins.

The battle for dominance between the major browsers continues on desktop, pad, and mobile platforms and, according to [Net Applications' Net Market Share, as of October all versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer combined had just over 54 per cent of the desktop market having gained about 2.2 per cent since December, 2011. Firefox, over the same period, lost 1.84 per cent (currently at just under 20%) while the other big contender, Google's Chrome, currently stands at just less than 19 per cent having lost 0.56 per cent in the same 10-month period.