Pledge over browsers sees Microsoft lose market share

Microsoft's pledge to allow easier access to rival browsers in Windows by the middle of May, ended a long antitrust dispute with the European Union. The company has started to send a choice screen, where consumers can easily click on rival browsers, to almost 200 million old and new computers.

According to web statistics firm Statcounter, Internet Explorer's share of all Web surfing has in March dropped in France by 2.5 percentage points from February, in Britain by 1 percentage point and in Italy by 1.3 points. Norway's Opera Software, the fourth largest browser firm, has seen downloads more than double in Europe from normal levels due to the choice screen, with downloads in Italy, Spain and Poland more than tripling.

Also number two browser firm, Mozilla, says it has seen strong growth. "We have seen significant growth in the number of new Firefox users as a result of the Ballot Choice screen. We expect these numbers to increase as the Ballot Choice screen fully rolls out across all countries," said a spokeswoman for Mozilla.

Smaller Web browsers have urged the European Union to push Microsoft to provide them more visibility in its browser choice website.

At first sight, Microsoft's browser Choice Screen shows its own Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.

It is not immediately obvious remaining choices are available by scrolling to the right of the Web page.

Microsoft has said the screen complies with the EU's decision.