According to the statistics revealed by StatCounter, Mozilla Firefox is ruling the roost in the browser arena in Europe; marking a notable change from the scenario some time back when Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) was Europe's most dominating browser.

As per the StatCounter data, in January last year, the Firefox version 3.5 had the maximum browser market share in Europe, with its 29 percent share comfortably beating any other single browser version.

The respective shares of the other browser versions were as follows: the IE 8 had a 23 percent share; IE 7 had 16 percent; Firefox 3.0 had 8 percent share; Chrome 3.0 had 5 percent; Safari 4 had 3 percent; and Opera 10 had a 3 percent share.

Overall, in January 2010, Microsoft had a nearly 45 percent share of the European browser market; while Firefox's share stood at almost 40 percent.

However, at the end of December 2010, the share of IE in the European browser market plunged to 37.52 percent; with Firefox emerging as the most popular browser in Europe even though its aggregate market share is lower than the last January figures.

Meanwhile, in terms of global browser market, another browser metrics-tracking firm, NetApplications, said that the break down of the share of different browsers in December 2010 was: IE 57 percent; Firefox 23 percent; Chrome 10 percent; Safari 6percent; Opera 2 percent; and others 2 percent.