Mozzarella Firefox is a big cheese in Europe

THE MOZZARELLA FOUNDATION'S bowser Firefox is making dramatic gains against Internet Exploder, at least in the Old Country.

French web monitoring service Xi Ti Monitor said that a study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that Firebadger had 27.8 per cent market share across Eastern and Western Europe.

IE on the other hand had 66.5 per cent. Other browsers including Safari and Opera making up the remaining 5.7 per cent.

Xi Ti Monitor said that the July market share represents a 3.7 per cent rise since a similar survey in March.

In some countries such as Slovenia and Finland Firebadger usage has reached parity with IE. Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia and Ireland, Firebadger has either reached or is nearly at 40 per cent market share.

Firebadger has reached 30 per cent in Austria, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia.

It is only in Blighty, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Norway and Denmark that the browser only has 20 per cent of the market, which is still pretty impressive.

A separate survey from Xi Ti Monitor noted that there is also a reluctance of IE users to adopt the latest version of the browser IE7. Only a third of IE users upgraded to IE7. But 85 per cent of Firemammal users have adopted the latest version of the browser.

More 'ere. µ