A company called Net Application just released a report on browsers that showed that Firefox has finally gained a double-digit share of the browser market. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 still has about 85% of the market share, and Apple’s Safari creeps in at 3%.

The simple fact is that Internet Explorer is the equivalent of listening to music tapes: there’s not a single advantage of tapes over CDs, but it took people quite a while to make the change. Why is IE so bad? What is it missing?

Anyone who uses Firefox or Safari can tell you: tabbed browsing. Yeah, security, too. But tabbed browsing changes the way you browse. Is there anyone out there who has tried Firefox and gone back to IE? Maybe a handful of people in Redmond, Washington.

And Google Analytics tell us that the numbers for people visiting our website are only slightly better: 76% on IE, 19% on Firefox, and 3% on Safari.

So why are so many people still using IE? Sure, ignorance is a big factor. So if you’re reading this on IE, go now to http://www.mozilla.com/, and start using Firefox. But is ignorance the only reason?

IE 7 is due out soon enough, and it will certainly be a huge improvement, and use tabbed browsing, and lots of other nice features. As usual, Microsoft will essentially just copy the innovation of others.

But I think this is a big test. If Microsoft can retain their ridiculously high market share of browsers, then, well democracy and capitalism are disappointingly dumb.