According to w3counter.com, the open source, cross-platfrom Firefox is now very close to breaking the 25% market share barrier. The percentage includes users of the current 2.0 version (14.47%), the older Firefox 1.5 (9.10%), and the archaic 1.0 (1.25%). The most popular browser in use, by far, remains Internet Explorer 6, which at first may seem strange, given that the undeniably better IE7 was pushed as a critical update by Microsoft months ago. This editor's guess is that the 49.54% using IE6 are either people in corporate environments where wide-scale adoption of the new browser will happen slower, or Windows boxes that didn't quite pass the online Genuine Advantage check. Or they are in Korea.

There is some variation in the Firefox usage percentage across web metrics services. The discrepancy, however, does not occlude the continuing trend of rising Firefox usage.

Firefox entered the browser races with version 1.0 in November 2004. The next major update, 1.5, came one year later, and the current 2.0 was released in October 2006. Firefox 3.0, called "Gran Paradiso" by its developers, is slated for release before the end of this year. Each version introduced some new features and improvements, to the point of people complaining that the browser is becoming too "bloated." Nevertheless, each successive new version received a wider adoption than the previous one, and today nobody will bet on Firefox' market share going down.

At least some of Firefox's popularity is due to a quirky sense of humor, which is harder to find in sober products by serious multinationals. For example, the Options panel in an earlier version described cookies as "delicious delicacies." Even now, if you write "about:Mozilla" in the address bar and press Enter, you are treated to a mystical excerpt from the cryptic Book of Mozilla.

Currently when you install Firefox on a PC, it has Google set as the home page. Google search capability is provided via a small search box in the upper left corner of the browser. This, and other activities of the Mozilla Corporation -- a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla foundation, are reportedly turning up yearly profit in the range of tens of millions of dollars.

That a project started by a non-profit foundation could so quickly achieve product adoption on par with Microsoft proves but two-things: first, there are very talented developers and user interface designers in the open source field, and two, you can do no wrong when you enter in a promotion deal with Google. Occasionally, a third reason is voiced, and it usually involves sentences combining the Internet Explorer brand with four-letter words. While Microsoft's browser has its shortcomings with respects to standards compliance, for the majority of people Internet Explorer was their first window to the world wide web, and as such its importance for the development of the internet is significant.

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