The worldwide usage rate of Internet Explorer has reached a new low of 67.55%, according to Net Applications, dropping a total of 7 percent over the course of last year and falling below 70 percent market share for the first time in nearly 10 years. Those losses have come primarily from the gain of Firefox and Safari, which now stand at 21.53% and 8.29% respectively. IE7 has helped Microsoft's browser situation, making significant gains, but IE6 is quickly falling out of favor all around. With IE8 due to arrive soon, it's not fair to say that Microsoft is “losing” anything, we all know what a browser refresh can do to bolster your user base, such as what we saw with the release of Firefox 2.

Let's also hope that the winner in any browser war will be the billions of people that use them. The developers and companies behind them can start off with the best of intentions, but a cutthroat environment is not one that fosters a better web experience. To that end, it does seem that all modern browsers have been in a feature race – now if only we could get them to also get in a compatibility race we'd be set.