Score a billion for Firefox

Though downloads are not a clear indicator of usage metrics, it does show the popularity of a software project.

That being said, I am happy to see that Mozilla Firefox’s tribe is increasing: It is expecting to see a billion downloads by today. As of July 31, 2009; Firefox is has clocked 999,283,140 downloads at roughly 13.8 downloads per second.

The official counter is on twitter. The number includes all the versions of Firefox till date.

Firefox has made a major dent in Internet Explorer’s marketshare over the past few years. Latest numbers put IE’s share a wee bit over 54%, and that of Firefox is quickly approaching 30%.

But that is not all, Firefox’s tribe should increase even faster now. Earlier this month, Microsoft submitted to the EU decision of giving users a choice of browsers. They will now give users a choice of five-to-six browsers. Needless to say, Firefox should now ideally be first on this list.