The open source browser that has made a dent in Internet Explorer’s market share recently reached the 100 million milestone. Almost a year after its release, the Firefox browser was downloaded for the 100 millionth time on Wednesday, the Mozilla Foundation said.
Editor’s Note: Firefox has just recently topped the 100 million download mark and is in the mood to celebrate. How much of Mozilla’s Firefox success is owed to Google? Discuss this and other topics at WebProWorld.
Mozilla recently made the second beta version of the 1.5 edition of Firefox available.
“This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users–not to mention the developers–have helped to put out a product that’s really kicking butt,” Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler said in ZDNet.
The Spread Firefox website announced a NASA weather balloon dubbed Firefox One will be launched on Saturday to mark the achievement. The balloon will carry a large Firefox banner, CD, and a camera to take pictures of Firefox at 100,000 feet altitude. Saturday’s launch will take place at noon at Oregon State’s Memorial Union Quad.
The Mozilla Foundation has earned around $30 million from Google for its placement as Firefox’s default browser. Funding has helped Mozilla hit the 100 million mark has happened despite some growing pains.
After steady month after month growth in market share, Firefox lost some ground in July and September to Internet Explorer and other browsers. The Mozilla community still rankles over a Symantec report that claimed Firefox had more serious vulnerabilities than IE over the first half of 2005. The report did note Firefox patches were available quicker than IE’s patches were, though.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
