The History of Mozilla Firefox
0Mozilla Firefox has long been one of the big browsers alongside Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge (formerly Internet Explorer), and Safari. As such, its anniversary is a pretty big deal. After all, it’s been around for a while. If you searched for Firefox’s birthday, Mozilla would have you believe it is November 9th. However, the browser’s real anniversary is today, September 23rd, and it’s 20 years old already.
here are some Firefox fun facts:
Mozilla started in 1998 when Netscape released its source code. Netscape versions 6 and 7 were built on Mozilla’s Application Suite, with Netscape 8 being based on Firefox directly. Netscape’s browser would remain based on Firefox until its demise in 2008.
The first version of the Firefox browser was launched on September 23rd, 2002, exactly 20 years ago today. Firefox and Netscape competed in the same space for years with the same code base. It’s not too different from how Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge compete now with much of the same Chromium base.
Firefox was at its most popular in 2009, when it had a 32.21% market share. By July 2009, it had surpassed one billion downloads and became the world’s most popular open-source software, a title it still holds today.
In 2009, it also surpassed Internet Explorer 7 in popularity in Europe, making this the first time Microsoft had lost a major market to another browser since it won the browser wars. Chrome would beat them both just a few years later.
It is still the fourth most popular browser behind Chrome, Safari, and Edge (in that order), with a 3.26% market share today.
It is entirely open-source and also not-for-profit, something the other top three browsers can’t boast. Some folks may bring up Chromium, but Chromium is the open-source code that Chrome is based on. Chrome itself is proprietary.
Firefox was the first browser to include add-ons and themes.
It was also the first browser to support 3D gaming. That is now standard across all major browsers.
The name Firefox is derived from the nickname of the red panda. The red panda was Firefox’s earliest mascot, and Mozilla used to host a live page where you could watch red pandas on camera.
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