Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox!

Can you believe that five years ago today, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0? Since then, the company says that 330 million users choose Firefox — Mozilla claims that it’s one-fourth of the Internet population using their browser. I can’t verify that, but I can validate that just over 40% of our visitors see us through a version of Firefox at last check. Clearly, the vast array of browser extensions — a big differentiator — have much to do with Firefox’s popularity. Maybe we should have seen the rise of the app store as we watched browser extensions add value to Mozilla’s platform.

Probably the most memorable bit I have of Firefox is the large New York Times advertisement in December of 2004. But through the years, Firefox has provided plenty of other memories and new features. Here’s a stroll down memory lane with some of them:

• Firefox 1.0 — Tabbed browsing, RSS / Atom support
• Firefox 2.0 — Session restores after a browser crash, suggested search, web feed previews
• Firefox 3.0 — Smart location bar, improved download manager, increased performance. This version also set a world record for most downloads in a day with 8,002,530 downloads

Related to Firefox’s birthday is a new official emblem for mobile versions of Firefox. “Pocketfox” was chosen to represent Fennec through a contest held by Mozilla. I like the image — Firefox in your pocket is exactly what mobile users are looking for.