Firefox Celebrates 500 Million Downloads

By Greg McNevin

February 26, 2008: As version 3 edges closer to release, Firefox, Mozilla’s wildly popular open source web browser, has passed the 500 million download mark.

The milestone is a significant one for the browser, which only passed the 400 million mark last September. This means Firefox has on average been download around 20 million times a month, a hefty sum, and while it is gaining ground on Microsoft’s dominating Internet Explorer, it still has a long way to go.

As of Q4, 2007, W3 Counter puts Firefox’s share of the market at a hefty 28.4 compared to IE’s 61.8 percent. This shows just how much the open source underdog has chipped away from Microsoft’s formidable lead, and with the release of version 3 imminent, IT may continue to face defections for a while yet.

Mozilla is hoping to achieve the same success with its Thunderbird email client, which it has just spun off into another subsidiary company called Mozilla Messaging.

Comment on this story