Firefox Nabs 20 Percent of Browser Market

By Greg McNevin

November 6, 2008: According to a report from Net Applications, Mozilla’s open source browser Firefox consistently eclipsed a 20 percent share of the browser market during October.

Firefox crossed the 20 percent mark on October 4, and has hovered around that point ever since, indicating that users are making the switch and not looking back.

The results show that Firefox is far and away the second most popular browser in the world, and that it is still gaining ground on Microsoft’s dominant Internet Explorer despite Google making a big splash recently with its own entry in the browser wars, Chrome.

Firefox’s popularity is likely to go nowhere but up as well, particularly considering the addition of new privacy features in its latest milestone build, version 3.1.

The new feature obviously comes due to pressure owing to its inclusion in other browsers, however, “porn mode” as it is jokingly dubbed is a welcome addition as when enabled the browser does not store search, download or form history, or save cookies or temporary files.

The new version is currently in Beta 2 and is available for download.

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