Is there such a word as 'besting'?

I was reading an article on IE8 from InformationWeek and came across this usage that makes me feel uncomfortable:

NSS Labs released an independent study early Thursday showing IE8 significantly besting Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera in catching and blocking malware. With its SmartScreen filtering, IE8 Release Candidate 1 caught 69% of malware, while Firefox 3.07 caught only 30%.

Emphasis is mine.

Is there such a word called 'besting'. I know Good, Better and Best but Besting? Come on! Surely geek writing does not mean bastardization of English.