I never said Poland had low Internet penetration, just that I think the mom-and-pop user category is significantly smaller. You know, the kind of people who get their computer and never ever install a thing on it, modify it or update it in any way. Obviously my view can be skewed, since I'm just talking about what I see and know myself. Still, I talked to a Dutch friend today (who used to work at an ISP help desk) and he said "everyone is online here, even grandpas and grannies". Now, I would never say that about where I live. And I think it makes at least a bit of a difference.

And of course I'm not claiming I've found the one answer to a great mystery either. I making this up as I go, for Pete's sake :) Just saying it's definitely _one_ of the factors to keep in mind.

Yeah, but there's something worth considering. I'm from Poland, which boasts FF leadership over IE (I am an Opera user myself but still) and there's something I realized, thinking about Poland's (and other Central European countries') results and also the massive Opera market share in Russia. Thing is, these are the countries with lower Internet penetration than North America. You have considerably moms and dads online, not to mention grannies and grandpas than, say, in the States. It's only natural that a younger, more tech-savvy Internet population will boost FF (or, more rarely, Opera) usage. Consequently, this is reflected in combined stats for Europe, because it's the less-developed countries that "help" Firefox ratings. If you look at many Western European countries, you will see results similar to the American ones. Granted, that theory totally doesn't explain 60% Firefox market share in Germany :)

Considering the plumbing metaphor used, I'm afraid the ending of the quoted sentence is a tad bit more graphic than I bargained for.