Firefox fights back against Chrome

Firefox broke its own records by surpassing a 20 per cent share of the browser market last month.

The figures, reported by web metrics firm Net Applications, reveal that for two weeks in October the company accounted for 20.6 per cent of all monitored browser traffic.

Despite this, Firefox closed the month with an average traffic share of 19.97 per cent, falling just short of the magic number.

The report will come as good news to Mozilla, which has seen its share bounce back following a half percentage point fall in September, due to the introduction of Google's Chrome browser.

At the contrasting ending of the scale, dominant browser Internet Explorer has seen its share fall 71.52 per cent to 71.27 per cent. The fall marks it out as the browser with the fastest declining market share.

Chrome was also hit by Firefox's gain, with the buzz surrounding its September launch fading, resulting in its share falling to 0.74 per cent from 0.78 per cent.

Indeed the only other browser to to gain during October was Opera, which jumped from 0.69 per cent to 0.75 per cent.