For more than a decade, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been the predominant tool the world uses to connect to the Web, but that’s no longer true, according to a Web analytics firm.

StatCounter, which tracks Internet data, said that IE’s share of the browser market fell to 49.9% in September. More people still use IE than any other single browser, but the combined market share of non-Microsoft browsers now outpaces IE.

Microsoft once commanded more than 90% of the browser market, rising to dominance by preloading IE on Windows computers. That sent Netscape, the browser king of the 1990s, tumbling into irrelevancy. It also prompted antitrust suits against Microsoft in both the United States and the European Union, the latter of which forced the company to offer Windows users a list of browsers to choose from when they set up the operating system.

That, along with the fact that other browsers have outpaced IE’s innovations, has led Mozilla’s Firefox, Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari browser to eat away at Microsoft’s market share. Internet Explorer’s use has been falling steadily over the past several years.

Still, online data tracking is a tricky science, with various methods returning different results. Some trackers record browser information based on clicks to a network of client Web sites, which is the main method StatCounter uses. Others use toolbars, ISP data or even surveys to collect the information.

(Read More: CNN Money)