Friday, 4 August 2006

Firefox Surpasses 200 Million Downloads

Mozilla has announced that its web browser Firefox has passed 200 milliomth download as it announced yet another updated version of its browser, v1.5.0.6.

"We know that this number doesn't represent actual users because this number includes both Firefox 1.0 and Firefox 1.5 (soon Firefox 2), because not every one completes every download, and because not every download results in a new Firefox user," said a Mozilla spokesman on the Firefox site.

"That being said, 200 million people seeking Firefox is a huge accomplishment and we're right to celebrate our role in driving that number."

Web analytics firm OneStat has reported that the combined usage share of Firefox and Mozilla browsers (now mostly Firefox) has climbed to nearly 13 percent worldwide, and almost 16 percent in the U.S. OneStat also pointed out that the usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer series -- including the new IE7 betas -- had dropped by 2.12 percent.

Since its release of v1.0 in November 2004, Firefox has given a tough competition to Microsoft Internet browsers.

Microsoft and Mozilla are on a race to complete major update to their flagship web browsers scheduled for release this fall. Firefox better record for security issues has given it an edge to its growing popularity and at the same time forcing Microsoft to beefed up security features in IE7.