Firefox reaches 500 million downloads

The Firefox Internet browser reached a golden target of 500 million downloads today, and their parent organization Mozilla is celebrating by raising money to deliver 500 million grains of rice for the UN World Food Program.

Mozilla has withstood the competitors’ onslaught (especially from Microsoft's Internet Explorer) and with perseverance, it has reached a golden target of 500 million downloads.

Mozilla is celebrating this download mark by trying to raise money to donate more than 500 million grains of rice on FreeRice.com. Mozilla asks users to participate in a word game and for every question answered correctly, Free Rice will donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program to end hunger.

Go play this game here and help fulfill Mozilla’s goal of 500 million grains of rice that will feed 250,000 people for a day.

Marketshare reported Firefox has more than 17 per cent market share and 150 million active users. Internet Explorer is still dominating but mainly because it is preloaded with every computer. It's dominance is slowly diminishing.

Mozilla released Firefox 3 beta 3 recently mainly for developers and its testing community. After testing it, many have said it is one fastest browsers available on the Web.