Firefox Achieves One Billion Downloads, 31% Marketshare [Browsers]

Firefox, the open-source upstart launched in 2004, is officially now a powerhouse, having been downloaded over one billion times in the last five years. Hell, it's prominent enough to attract the attention of the Secretary of State.

The one billion downloads milestone includes users downloading multiple copies for different computers as well as any manual downloads for upgrading purposes, though not any automatic updates. With so many users, it's now holding about 31% marketshare, second only to that ornery old dinosaur Internet Explorer at around 60% (Opera, Chrome and Safari are all below 5%). Once Firefox Mobile and the oddly Chrome-like Firefox 4.0 come out, we can expect that number to skyrocket even more. Congratulations and mazel tov, Mozilla. [BBC]