One month after their preview release was downloaded by over eight million people in October 2004, the Mozilla Foundation announced the release of Firefox 1.0 on November 9, making today Firefox's 4th birthday.
As the worlds second most popular browser, and with their recent milestone of reaching 20 percent worldwide market share, the folks over at Mozilla certainly have some celebrating to do.
According to the Mozilla blog today, the main features in 2004 included pop-up blocking, fraud protection, integrated search and tabbed browsing. Much has changed and today the top features include a password manager, one-click bookmarking, smart location bar, instant Web site ID, platform native look and feel, and full zoom.
Well done Firefox, you've come a long way; a 329 percent market share increase over four years. So, theoretically, if Firefox continues at the same growth rate, in another four years it will hit 85.67 percent market share.
Interesting.
Isn't this pretty much where IE was when Firefox came onto the scene?
Browser market share December 2004
Browser market share December 2005
Browser market share December 2006
Browser market share December 2007
Browser market share October 2008
Comments
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Firefox has gone from strength to strength and is the best browser today
Posted by: Michael McGimpsey | November 9, 2008 11:20 PM
Firefox's rise has been nothing short of incredible. It's testament not only to the quality of the browser, but to the marketing of the team behind it. It changed the way most of us browse, with tabbed browsing, and I suspect that if the playing field was level - ie that IE and Safari weren't the pre-installe ddefaults on their respective platforms, that Firefox's share would be significantly higher.
Posted by: Kenny Hemphill | November 10, 2008 3:04 AM
Firefox is the Best ever browser I used ,its best in security wise as compared Microsoft's IE and add-ons for Firefox makes it even more famous.
Posted by: venkat | November 10, 2008 3:13 AM
Happy Birthday Firefox, I see you're a scorpio!
Posted by: Jackie | November 10, 2008 4:20 AM
Firefox's universe of add-on (AKA plug-ins or extensions) is the most interesting part of its browser technology today. No other browser supports such a wide, diverse community in this arena.
However, as a developer of Firefox plugins, my top wish was that Firefox has a decent xUnit technology to develop these add-ons. My second wish is that Firefox spent a little more time enhancing XUL widgets. They seem to be languishing in comparison to its html support. My third wish is that Firefox were as fast as WebKit-based browsers like Safari and the new Google Chrome.
Posted by: Colonel Nikolai
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November 10, 2008 6:27 AM
Passpack sure loves Firefox. And so do our users!
Happy Birthday fellow Scorpio!
Louise (http://www.passpack.com)
Posted by: Louise | November 10, 2008 6:34 AM
Firefox is Number 1, love Firefox 4ever !!!
Posted by: mrHighLife | November 10, 2008 6:54 AM
really firefox number one
Posted by: Salih S. DEMİR | November 10, 2008 11:50 AM
ofcourse
firfox
the best
Posted by: free free | November 11, 2008 6:28 AM
in all honesty i prefer Safari to Firefox any day. if i were a developer, i would think differently, but as a general user, i think it blows FF away.
Posted by: andrew rohman | November 11, 2008 11:12 AM
This is awesome! Happy Birthday!
This growth is testament to the potential for ANY platform that develops and nurtures their third-party plug-in/developer community - which as a not-new-trend at all, a finally-getting-realized in the market trend (i.e., open source) of success.
Impossible for one company to be the be-all - but with the help of an entire forest of additional external eager developers, developers motivated to do good clean work independently, in the end - collective developers push it up to rightful success.
The extra needed features finally happen, gets the limelight, and hopefully those developers get to eat extra bacon for their extra credit work, as they deserve for ultimately making the host product a better product for the world!
Mozilla's open source card finally getting proper acknowledgment... hope it's QUADRUPLED by next year!
Posted by: Ellen Feaheny | November 14, 2008 1:49 PM
Happy Birthday firefox ! It is must be good Birthday celebration with all this sucesses.
Posted by: Jeylan | November 16, 2008 6:36 AM