In January 2009, Internet Explorer had almost 70% of the browser market; well down on its 2008 average, partly because of the poor take-up of IE7 in the unpopular Windows Vista operating system. The introduction of IE8 along with the Windows 7 Retail Version, in October, and also the previous beta and RC releases of Windows 7, was promising; but Microsoft didn’t really provide anything earth-shatteringly amazing with IE8, which, after all the what seemed like aeons of development and promises, turned out to be a bit of a damp squib after all the hype: There was not-a-lot in it that didn’t appear in any other browsers. The main thing about IE8 was that it was a part of Windows 7, and would therefore make at least some impression.

Meanwhile, Firefox was still slowly gaining in popularity during 2008, and things were looking promising for Mozilla in the coming year, thanks, in part, to Vista’s failure.

Google hit the headlines with Chrome, and the Google browser instantly soared in popularity, and then made more gains on top of that.

Let’s look at some figures: The chart on the left is from March 2009, and the chart on the right is from November 2009.

Chrome, Firefox, and Opera appear to have done rather well during 2009, while Apple continued to fail to supply a browser that works as well with Windows as it does on Mac OS. Internet Explorer and Safari had combined losses of 7.48% while Chrome, Firefox and Opera had combined gains of 7.35%.

In the coming year, development and implementation of HTML 5 and IE9 promises to make browser-development even more exciting.  Microsoft, particularly, need to up their game, or they’re going to find that they are in danger of getting relegated to the “Third World” of browser-popularity unless they can stop the rot. What surprises will they bring us in IE9, and will they have it ready in time to lead the way, rather than copy the pack? Time will tell.