Firefox passes one billion downloads

Mozilla announced Friday that it had passed one billion downloads of Firefox, its Web browser that has gained popularity as a free alternative to Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer.

The Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization which builds and refines public, open-source software through a network of volunteers around the world, made the announcement on the Mozilla blog.

It said the figure of one billion downloads was based on user-initiated downloads of Firefox, not automatic updates.

Mozilla claims to have 300 million active users of its browser, which was launched in November 2004.

Mozilla last month released the latest version, Firefox 3.5, claiming it was more than two times faster than Firefox 3 and 10 times faster than Firefox 2 on complex websites.

According to research firm Net Applications, Internet Explorer has a 65 percent share of the Web browser market, followed by Firefox with around 22 percent, Apple's Safari with around eight percent and Google's Chrome with around two percent.

(c) 2009 AFP