At long last it looks like Microsoft’s outdated browser, Internet Explorer 6 is finally being relegated down the global list of most commonly used browsers.

Net Marketshare.com recently released new statistics for November 2010 showing that it now only occupies 13% market share of commonly used browsers, compared to 22% in November 2009 when it was still the most commonly used browser:

What’s also very interesting is that over the past 2 years, Google Chrome has rapidly increased its market share whilst Microsoft has massively lost out (treating all versions of Internet Explorer as their total share):

In summary, the above chart shows the following:

• Chrome is up by just under 10%
• Microsoft are down by just over 10%
• Firefox and Opera have remained fairly static
• Safari has increased by a couple of percent

So all in all, this is great news – new advanced browsers are penetrating the market, whilst IE6, which has too many limitations to list is finally dropping out of usage.

And practically what does this all mean? Well, to list a few:

• More exciting and daring websites being created
• More budget being spent on creating the ‘nice to haves’ – budget that in the past would have gone on IE6 ‘fixes’
• Improved usablility that IE6 compatibility would have once hampered
• Improved accessibility, as new HTML/CSS elements can be deployed effectively
• Greater security and faster browsing
• Ultimately, lower cost development and shorter development cycles