The 400,000-strong IBM is officially making Firefox its default browser, according to a blog by the company's open source and Linux VP Bob Sutor.

One can't help but wonder if IBM is motivated by an upsurge in the recent Internet Explorer, thanks to IE8 and the growing use of Windows 7 for all the European ballot screens. According to Net Applications Microsoft is back up to 60.3% these days whereas Firefox dropped from 24.3% to 23.8%.

Google's Chrome browser has passed Safari in popularity according to StatCounter, which gives Microsoft 52%, Firefox 28.5%, Chrome 8.97% and Safari 8.88% in the US. Globally its picture looks like Microsoft 53%, Firefox 31%, Chrome 9.4% and Safari 4%. Of course Chrome supports more languages than Safari.

Net Applications puts Chrome up from 7% to 7.2%, Safari up from 4.8% to 4.9% and Opera down from 2.4% to 2.3%.

Anyway, Sutor calls Firefox "the gold standard for what an open, secure and standards-compliant browser should be."

Besides it ain't Microsoft, or Google for that matter. In a dismissive shot at Chrome Sutor says, "We'll continue to see this or that browser be faster or introduce new features, but then another will come along and be better still, including Firefox." Like adding more support for HTML5 apparently.

He credits Firefox with reinvigorating the browser market and forcing competitors to respond.

It's unclear how many users corporate pressure and re-education will add to Firefox' rolls. A lot of IBMers already use the thing. The company's new computers will be provisioned with it.

But "there's another reason we want to get as many of our employees using Firefox as soon as possible," he says, "and that is Cloud Computing. For the shift to the cloud to be successful, open standards must be used in the infrastructure, in the applications and in the way people exchange data."

IBM will evidently turn evangelist.

See http://www.sutor.com/c/2010/07/ibm-moving-to-firefox-as-default-browser/.