Firefox Downloads Top 100 Million

The Firefox Web browser has surpassed 100 million downloads just before celebrating its first birthday, the Mozilla Foundation said this week.

The group attributed the success of its open-source browser, which has provided the most hearty competition to Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) in recent memory, to Firefox’s community of developers who have contributed code and features to the project. Mozilla also cited the Spread Firefox community for the browser’s success. Spread Firefox is a grassroots community that develops, tests and markets Firefox to promote its adoption.

Firefox proponents believe it is a more secure, innovative and feature-rich browser than IE, and it is the first browser to win market share at the expense of Microsoft’s browser. Various researchers estimate that Firefox now holds between 7 percent and 9 percent of the Web browser market.

But Firefox has not been without its security black eyes as it approaches its first anniversary in November. A report by security provider Symantec Corp. published in September said the Firefox browser had more confirmed vulnerabilities than IE in the first six months of 2005. Symantec was quick to stress that the findings did not necessarily mean Firefox is less secure than IE.

Earlier this week, America Online Inc.’s (AOL’s) Netscape division released an update to the Netscape browser that also fixes vulnerabilities in Firefox 1.0.7, released by Mozilla last month. Netscape is based on code from the Mozilla project.

The first major Firefox upgrade, Version 1.5, is currently in beta testing and is expected to be generally available before the end of the year. At the same time, Microsoft is working on a major IE upgrade, IE 7, which also is in beta testing. Microsoft has said it expects to have Beta 2 of IE 7 available before the end of the year.

IE 7 will be included in Windows Vista, which is scheduled to be available in late 2006.

By Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service