Firefox hits 400 million downloads

The popular open-source browser Firefox hit another milestone on Friday when it passed the 400 million download mark.

The browser, distributed by Mozilla, appears to be enjoying exponential growth in terms of downloads. From its launch in 2004, it took one year to reach 100 million downloads. A year later, it hit 200 million downloads.

In a message posted on its website, Spread Firefox, Firefox's community marketeers, thanked users for helping to achieve the latest download figures. "With your amazing efforts, Firefox has reached 400 million downloads and demonstrated that not even the world's most powerful companies can keep people from a better, safer, and faster web experience," the team wrote.

It is difficult to judge the exact share of the browser market enjoyed by Firefox. The most recent statistics published by W3Counter suggest that Firefox holds a quarter of the market, but most other organisations releasing such statistics suggest a slightly lower figure.

According to figures released on Friday by US consultancy firm Janco and the IT Productivity Center, Firefox currently has 17.4 percent of the browser market — up 5.6 percentage points in the last year. Also within the last year, Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer browser dropped 9.6 percentage points to a market share of 63.9 percent.