Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has defied its critics and rivals, gaining global market share for the third month running, according to new figures.

Net Applications’ latest statistics show that the world’s most popular browser accounted for a 60.7 per cent share of the global browser market during July, up on the previous month by 0.4 per cent.

The increase was largely at the expense of Mozilla Firefox, which saw its market share drop by 0.9 per cent on the month to 22.9 per cent.

Google’s Chrome browser also lost 0.08 per cent of its previous month’s share, leaving it with 7.2 per cent. While Apple’s Safari browser gained 0.2 per cent – putting it up to 5.1 per cent and Opera also grew by 0.2 per cent putting it at 2.45 per cent.

In February 2010, Internet Explorer 8 finally overtook Internet Explorer 6 as the most popular browser in the world, after security flaws were publicly exposed in the older version.

BDST: 2025 HRS, 4 August 2010