Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser posted its largest market share loss last month since 2008, Web metrics company Net Applications said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Google’s Chrome continues to gain on Apple’s Safari, closing within 1.25 percentage points. At its current pace, Chrome will replace Safari as the No. 3 browser in less than a year.

Internet Explorer dropped 1.1 percentage points last month, to 66.6 percent. The slide was the browser’s steepest since last November, when it dropped by 2 percentage points, according to Net Applications.

In the last 12 months, IE has lost 8.6 points of browser share.

Of that lost market share, Mozilla’s Firefox stood to benefit the most, taking about half that lost share to claim 23.3 percent of the market, nearly matching its record 23.8 percent set in April.

Here’s the breakdown of last month:

• Internet Explorer: 66.6%
• Mozilla Firefox: 23.3%
• Apple Safari: 4.1%
• Google Chrome: 2.9%
• Opera: 2.1%

The takeaway here? IE continues to lose dominance without much to support it. Since these statistics were taken last month, there’s no Windows 7 to consider, no Snow Leopard, and a lot of netbooks — mostly running Windows XP — flooding the market.

It's probably the most important and debated piece of software on the modern computer. See how your fellow readers get around the net, and vote for your favorite web browser, in this week's Hive Five.

The only proper way to follow up on the passionate flurry of voting that last week's Hive Five Best Linux Distributions created was to ask you about your favorite web browser. You didn't disappoint—Lifehacker readers came out in force, logging nearly a thousand votes to support their favorite browsers. We've tallied up the votes and we're here to share the top five browsers.

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