In the grand scheme of things, October might go down as a month to remember. That's the month Mozilla's Firefox browser was finally able to catch up to, and surpass, Microsoft's still popular Internet Explorer 6.

Internet Explorer remains way out in front in market share, but it's becoming clear that Microsoft's lead isn't long for the world. From September to October, IE dropped 1.07 percentage points, settling in at 66.64 percent. At the same time, Firefox gained ground on its own accord by moving up 0.32 percentage points to end up at 24.07 percent. Those are significant numbers for such a short period of time. If the current pace were to keep up, it would take a little over 2 years for Firefox to completely catch up with IE, and could conceivably jump ahead by early 2012.

But it's not just about Firefox. Safari, Chrome, and Opera combined hold a little over 10 percent of the market. Throw Firefox into the fray and alternative browsers (non-IE) are being used by a third of all surfers. When looking at it from that angle, IE is on pace to give up its market share lead even before 2012, just not to a single browser.

Maybe then, Netscape can finally rest in peace.