CYBERSPACE — While Microsoft patents everything from adware systems to ways to resell pirated content and send some of the money to the copyright holder Europe is falling out of love with its Web browser. Although Internet Explorer still holds a healthy lead in the browser race, alternative browsers are getting more and more attention from surfers willing to break away from the world of big software.

Chief benefactor of the public’s increasing interest in IE alternatives during the past year is Mozilla’s Firefox, which was found to occupy 27.8-perent of the Eastern and Western European market by XiTiMonitor, a French Web monitoring service that studied 96,000 websites during the week of July 2nd to 8th. IE maintained its dominance at 66.5-percent of the market, with cult favorites Opera and Safari occupying the remaining 5.7-percent. An impressive 3.7-percent for the 7-percent rise in Firefox use during the past year occurred between March and July of 2007.

Interestingly enough, IE has lost its top status in some important European markets and has found itself in the awkward position of sharing near parity with Firefox. For instance, Firefox holds 47.9-percent of the online market in Slovenia, 45.4-percent in Finland, and nearly 40-percent in Slovakia, Croatia, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, according to itwire.com.

Slowest to show growing interest in the alternative browser scene is France with 23.9-percent use, but little sign that the numbers will increase significantly. Spain, on the other hand, has a mere 19.1-percent of its online citizens using Firefox, yet that number is up significantly from previous study periods. Denmark and the Netherlands are among the most Firefox indifferent, with 15-2-percent and 14.6-percent of their markets employing the Mozilla technology.

Adding to Microsoft’s possible European woes is XiTiMonitor’s finding during the same period that IE users are hesitant to update to newer versions of the browser even when they are actively using its predecessor.