According to data pulled from StatCounter last week, Firefox 3 has now become the most popular web browser in Europe, overtaking Internet Explorer 7 for the first time on a weekly basis.

Incredibly, Firefox 3 took 35.05% of the European web browser market last week followed by Internet Explorer 7 at 34.54%, or just a little over half a percent lead. Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder StatCounter, commented that “the move is partly explained by a small switch from IE 7 usage to IE 8 but also by growing market share overall by Firefox 3. The data shows that Firefox is closing the gap and is now just 10% behind all IE versions in Europe.”

StatCounter’s European web browser graph currently lists Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 both miles ahead of the competition, with Internet Explorer 6 being the closest follower at just 11.92% and all other browsers under 5 percent.