200 Million Downloads for Firefox

Mozilla representatives have announced that of August 1, 2006, its Firefox browser has passed the 200 million downloads milestone. While Internet statistics confirm an ascendant trajectory for Firefox in the detriment of Internet Explorer, the figures released by Mozilla have marketed the beginning of an open source celebration as such a ranking of popularity is synonymous with a 12.93% share of the global browser market. Firefox has reached 200 million downloads at just a year and nine months since the browser initially debuted on the market.

"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. That being said, 200 million people seeking Firefox is a huge accomplishment and we're right to celebrate our role in driving that number," reads a message posted on Spread Firefox Web site by Mozilla engineer Asa Dotzler.

On a global basis Firefox has market performances that have varied according to location, but the browser has seen the peak of its success in Germany where it owns 39% of the market, in Australia with 24% and in the United States with 15%. In comparison IE has been loosing increasing percentages of popularity totaling a global 5% decrease in audience in just one year. As the browser wars continue, Mozilla is arming with Firefox 2.0 in order to counteract the imminent launch of Internet Explorer 7.

"Going forward, I'd also like to find a better way for our community to measure its success. At Mozilla, we've developed a much better system for measuring users than what we had when the counter launched back in the Firefox 1.0 days. One of the things I'd like to see us do here at SFX is to transition away from counting download clicks and build tools that let us celebrate our very real and swiftly growing user base," stated Dotzler.