The market share for Internet Explorer (IE) has dipped below 60 percent for the first time, to 59.95 percent, according to web analytics company Net Applications. The latest drop in usage took place in April, and was nearly mirrored by an increase in the usage of Google Chrome (NASDAQ: GOOG), which enjoyed a month-to-month increase of 0.6 percent from March. At the moment, Mozilla Firefox has 24.59 percent of the market share while Google Chrome and Safari command 6.73 percent and 4.72 percent, respectively.

Gone is the time when IE had an unassailable 90 percent of the market share, and was the de facto standard to cater to--bugs and non-standard behaviors included. In fact, users firing up the Chrome browser have steadily grown ever since its release in December 2008 as Google worked to improve its browser.

Of course, Microsoft is not resting on its laurels either, and has recently offered a glimpse at the impressive improvements that can be found in the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview.

While no release date has been set, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer at Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), was heard referring to IE9 as "the first browser to take standard web patterns that developers use and run them better on modern PCs through Windows."

One can only hope that IE9 will be adequate to address IE's declining fortunes.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at Ars Technica 

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