Firefox sees Chrome closing in as IE's share holds steady

Internet Explorer's desktop market share, which has been in a near-constant free-fall since 2003, held steady in November. Meanwhile, Chrome has moved to within striking distance of Firefox, with Mozilla's browser likely to lose its second place spot within the next few months.

Firefox's users are having a much harder time of things. Mozilla's failure to provide a robust automatic update process and refusal to force extensions to use a fixed, consistent programmatic interface means that upgrading requires manual intervention, and stands a good chance of breaking extensions. As a result, its rapid releases aren't showing the same clean cut overs and high adoption that Chrome achieves.