For years now, the little blue "E" has been gracing the desktops of Windows users around the world (though many might say it's doing just the opposite!). Internet Explorer, notorious for its many security holes and being slow to patch them, continues to be one of the top choices for web browsing.

Recently published Market Share statistics show the browser down almost 7% from the beginning of last year, continuing to slide down as time goes on. On the other hand, open source browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome are constantly increasing. Firefox's market share increased by about 4% in 2008, and Chrome reached over 1% in the first few months of its availability. Opera's share remained steady around 0.71 percent.

Though web surfers' usage of Windows decreased to about 89% in November, desktop Linux users remained steady at around 0.85%, up 0.02% from the previous month. The survey also showed that Mac users were least likely to make the switch, being more loyal to their preinstalled browser, Safari, than those using Windows were to Internet Explorer.

Net Applications, the parent company of Market Share, tracks users visiting sites that use their traffic monitoring service, compiling data on approximately 160 million visitors per month, they say.

The statistics look good, and this appears to be a great time for open source software. I'm expecting this trend to continue if not grow even stronger as we close off the decade.