According to data released by the AT Internet Institute, Microsoft's Internet Explorer has fallen to under 60% of visits in Europe. The firm suggests that with widely publicized news of a major security flaw and moves being made by competing browsers, IE's fall may not be reversed in the very near future.

"Out of the 23 countries that were studied, Internet Explorer experienced the largest decline in visit shares for websites in Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece and Czech Republic," the firm notes.

Additional findings from the AT Internet Institute include: 

- Google Chrome exceeded 4% of visit shares with a gain of 2 points in 6 months

- attained 29.4% of traffic to a website in a European country in December 2009

- gained almost 1 point and exceeded 5% of visit shares

- On average 2.3% of visits to a European website through Opera in December 2009 compared to 2.2% in June 2009.

"It is interesting to note that the growth of Safari coincided with the growth of Google Chrome," says the firm. "Based on the same engine Webkit, would Google Chrome indirectly encourage the use of Safari?"

Last week, Mozilla launched the latest version of Firefox, and Google has just released the latest version of Chrome for Windows, complete with extensions and Bookmark Sync.

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