New research from WebSideStory hints that Microsoft's once unmovable hold on the website browser market may be weakening. Over the past four weeks an estimated 1% have begun using rival software. It may not seem like much, but that equates to millions:

The warnings appear to have been heeded, with statistics from WebSideStory suggesting that millions of people are switching to alternative browsers.

It said that IE market share fell by one percentage point to just over 94% between June and July. By contrast, the share of alternatives, like the open source Mozilla browser Firefox, rose substantially.

WebSideStory said the combined Mozilla and Netscape market share rose from 3.21% in June to 4.05% in July. According to the Mozilla Foundation, downloads of its Firefox browser have hit 200,000 per day.

Mozilla's Firefox browser isn't immune to security problems; it too had to release a security update for a vulnerability in its software last week.

Still, with many rivals advancing their code far beyond Microsoft's, the only reason for staying with MS would appear to be convenience - it's there from the word go and does the job 'just' well enough. More @ BBC News Online.