That's the title of a recent blog post by my colleague Nicole, about a recent panel over at the Churchill Club, who has received some coverage by TechCrunch, Infoworld and Cnet.

Like Nicole wrote:

The overall theme through the coverage was the feeling of increased competition

Indeed. What strikes me is that 5 years ago, it was just the opposite, as Internet Explorer was enjoying a monopolistic 90% market share. Things have changed with Firefox, just over 4 years ago. At the time, anyone who thought that a tiny not-for-profit organization with a handful of employees would challenge the Redmond monopoly would be at best considered as a fool. I know, I vividly remember people kindly smiling at me back then!

Browser market share in Germany (Oct/Nov. 2008)

Browser market share in Germany (Oct/Nov. 2008)

I was thinking of this when I saw recent data from Germany[1], where Firefox has reached 38.4% market share (version 2 and 3 combined). IE 7 is at 37% and IE 6 at 17%. The data, courtesy of Fittkau & Maass[2] dates back from October and November 2008. The firm thinks that 2009 could be the year where Firefox reaches market leadership. Considering the recent Nielsen report stating that Mozilla is the fastest growing brand in Germany followed by Youtube, not mentioning the upcoming and promising Firefox 3.1 version, I think it's definitely doable!

Notes

[1] Thanks for the link, Barbara!

[2] Rough automated translation available