Microsoft's Internet Explorer dips below 50% of the browser market for the first time since the late 90s.

Google's (GOOG) Chrome browser continues to increase its market share at an impressive rate, more than tripling from 3.69%  September 2009 to 11.54%  September  2010,  according to browser analytics firm Statcounter.

A year ago it was a three-horse race between Apple's (AAPL) Safari, Opera and Google's Chrome for third place behind Firefox and IE.  While Firefox and Safari have held mostly flat, IE and Chrome have exchanged almost 10% of the global browser market share over the past year.

"This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars," said StatCounter Chief Executive Aodhan Cullen. "Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%."

Cullen cited the EU's browser ballet as just one of the reasons for the decline in IE marketshare.  In Europe, IE represents just over 40% of the browser market, which is down six points on the year.

In North America, IE is still over half the browser market share at 52.3%

However, there is a wide variance in these  reports.  NetApplications this month showed almost a 60% share for IE.  That is still down significantly.

NetApplications Browser data

StatCounter counts their  Global Stats on the basis of more than 15 billion hits per month on 3 million+ member sites.

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