IE reverses downward trend - at Firefox's expense

Internet Explorer has reversed a years-long slide in browser usage, at least for the month of June, reclaiming share at the expense of Firefox.

Internet Explorer (IE) increased usage from 59.8 percent to 60.3 percent, according to new statistics from Net Applications, an analytics company that monitors browser usage across a large network websites. It was buoyed by increasing usage of IE8 that offset the decline in IE7 — and by what web developers no doubt hope will be only a temporary pause in the decline of the despised IE6.

The change in fortunes was significant enough that Microsoft couldn't resist crowing about IE's progress in a blog post on Thursday. "We certainly don't judge our business on just two months of data, but the direction here is encouraging," said Ryan Gavin, senior director of business and marketing for Internet Explorer.

For more on this story, read IE reverses usage share slide; Microsoft cheers on CNET News.

This chart shows the changing usage of the five top browsers; the darker colors are from earlier and the lightest color shows percentages for June 2010. Chart data from Net Applications, chart by Stephen Shankland