All the rival web browsers of Microsoft's widely used and much popular browser Internet Explorer have managed to attract much market attention and interest ever since the technology giant has, in order to fulfill a regulatory requirement, started to make it easier for European users of the Windows operating system to switch to other browsers of their choice.

As has been revealed by Mozilla, whose Firefox web browser is the strongest and biggest rival of Microsoft's IE, nearly 50,000 users have downloaded Firefox through a "choice screen" that has been popping up on all computers running on the Windows platform since the end of February.

The choice screen displays links to various other browsers, including Firefox, Chrome web browser by Google, Apple's Safari and Opera.

Oslo's Opera Software has shared that downloads of its browser across Belgium, France, Britain, Poland and Spain has almost tripled since the screen began to appear. The initial complaint made against Microsoft not letting users work on their choice of a browser was first filed by Opera.