Firefox browser downloads surpass 500 million threshold
By Dave Parrack
Firefox, the open source web browser from Mozilla, is continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate, and has now passed the 500 million download mark since its launch in November 2004. Mozilla is bizarrely celebrating by urging us all to donate some free rice.
The Firefox browser made its debut in November 2004, and quickly established itself as a viable alternative to market leader, Internet Explorer from Microsoft. By February 2005, 25 million people had already downloaded the browser, and were talking up its speed and efficiency.
The browser passed the 400 million download mark last September, and has managed another 100 million in the five months since.
The Mozilla Blog were the first to break the news of the achievement (closely followed by CNET News), and then proceeded to talk statistics about what 500 million would mean if calculated in other ways.
“For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station.”
And then bizarrely, but laudably, they urged us all to try and feed the third world by inviting friends to play the word game on FreeRice.com and try to donate 500,000,000 grains of rice in one day, which would be enough to feed 25,000 people.
Even with this level of success, Firefox is still a long way behind Microsoft Internet Explorer as web browser of choice. While IE has a market share of about 75%, Firefox can only manage 17%. Safari is in third with a paltry 6%. Now that’s perspective for you.
I’m a big fan and user of Firefox, and wish more people would see the advantages of speed, security and usability it has over its big name rival.
Hopefully Firefox 3, currently being worked on and in beta testing will help Mozilla to cut the gap with Microsoft even more than they’ve already managed in a mere three years.
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February 22nd, 2008
Its a great browser and has some features that make IE7 useless to me.