I think the article refers to M$ IE killer. I don't think any browser, however good it may be, cannot kill IE as long as Windows is main Desktop platform. The reason is, IE is bundled together with windows and for any body to use another software then they have to know the other software, download and install it. Likelihood to try out a different software(browser) requires more technical awareness, extra bandwidth to download and curosity to try out something new. These factors are higher in more developed regions with higher alternate browser market share like Germany (40%), finland (40%) , average europe & austrailia (20% plus) , US (15%) , asia (5%) and africa (3%).
I , due to my long exposure in technical area, have tried out various alternate technologies and I found that market share of a product is more driven by the way things are marketed. Firefox, the alternate browser while is a great browser , runs seamlessly on Windows & Linux, is getting popular because of the anti MS and pro open source sentiments. That doesn't mean that Firefox is pioneer of new things. It was opera which started most of the new features but left unnoticed because there was no major backing from any techi biggies and Firefox took all the credit.
Microsoft since they killed Netscape five years back with IE 5 bundling with windows, never improved IE for 5 long year, and taken everybody for granted, till firefox stole away significant market share. So competition is good.
The end result is that Mozilla Firefox pushed the lazy giant to improve on quality of the software and provide much better browsing experience to the end users. IE has improved by leaps and bounds since then for general users but for advanced and more demanding users like me, Firefox is the right choice baby.
If u are looking for some stats on browser share refer to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Thanks rediff for bring some useful techi articles on yr site.
