Even with 10 million downloads, Firefox could gain another 80,000 downloads the next few weeks as Penn State has asked all students and staff to switch from IE to an alternative browser such as Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, or Safari for security reasons.

Who knows, if this type of negative publicity continues, Microsoft may be forced to do something about IE.

Disclaimer: Any viewpoints and opinions expressed in this article are those of Nicholas C. Zakas and do not, in any way, reflect those of my employer, my colleagues, Wrox Publishing, O'Reilly Publishing, or anyone else. I speak only for myself, not for them.