Reports detailing the usage of the different Web browsers throughout October were recently presented by Net Applications and according to the estimates, Firefox managed to gather more than 20 percent of the market share during two different weeks.

With Firefox going up, it is clear that someone must be going down. In this case, it’s Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which is now holding on with 71 percent of the market. The company is expecting a boost in January 2009 when it scheduled the release of its IE8. Google’s new Chrome version is also in development and Opera already released an updated version of its browser.

Mozilla’s new Firefox 3.1 beta also offers a tool called "Private Browsing" used for wiping out any details about the visited Web pages. The so-called porn mode was presented by one of the company’s programmers, Ehsan Akhgar. "Private browsing aims to help you make sure that your web browsing activities don't leave any trace on your own computer," he explained.

The measure of including a privacy tool was considered necessary because its competitors already provided such a feature: Google’s Chrome browser offers an Incognito mode and Microsoft is preparing its Internet Explorer 8 with a similar private browsing option called InPrivate.

Mr. Ken Kovash, Mozilla’s metrics chief, appeared extremely happy with the browser and its recent success, saluting everyone involved with the company. "Congratulations to the Mozilla community for reaching this historic milestone!" he wrote.

From this point on the battle for popularity will only get tougher with each company looking to win its competitors’ clients over.