Warming the hearts of anti-Microsoft partisans across the Web, the open-source Mozilla group's Firefox Web browser saw its market share in June jump at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. According to the latest monthly poll by Web research firm OneStat, Firefox now claims nearly a 16 percent share of the U.S. market, against Internet Explorer's 80 percent. And abroad, Firefox has even higher market share: In Germany the browser has 39 percent of the market, and in Australia 24 percent. Worldwide, Firefox gained a full point of market share in June, while IE lost more than two points. The competition is only likely to heat up, says BetaNews, as "both Mozilla and Microsoft hope to have new versions of their browsers -- Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 -- released to the public by the end of 2006."

Thank goodness for the competition, writes one Digg reader: "Personally I hope that we never get a 95% hold from ANY browser again. Choice is always good." And how is the once-dominant Netscape browser faring these days? A dwindling 0.16 percent. That's certainly a motivating statistic for the Mozilla crew.