Firefox download count races past 25 million mark

By Stuart Finlayson

Feb 21, 2005: In a little under 100 days since its release, the Firefox open source browser has been downloaded more than 25 million times.

The Mozilla Foundation, developers of Firefox, said the rapid growth in popularity of the new browser was fuelled by consumers' demand for a faster, safer Internet experience.

While it will not challenge the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer any time soon, the traction gained by Firefox 1.0 in such a short space of time has prompted the software giant to take the unprecedented step of announcing that it will issue an update to its IE browser ahead of the next version of Windows, rather than bundling it together with the application.

Firefox's progress has been aided considerably by an organisation called Spread Firefox, a volunteer advocacy group which has been promoting the browser around the world, and whose membership has now swelled to more than 70,000.

"Twenty five million Firefox downloads is a significant achievement, and we see that number continuing to grow," said Mitchell Baker, president of the Mozilla Foundation. "Firefox is being rapidly adopted by the mainstream, with this audience embracing Firefox as a more user-friendly web browsing solution."

Mozilla Foundation volunteers have translated the software into 28 different languages, ensuring consumers around the world have equal access to the Firefox browser.

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