Mozilla Foundation’s open source Firefox browser turned five years old on November 9. During the past half decade, the browser has managed to attract more than 330 million users from all over the world.

On the same day five years back, Mozilla Foundation launched the open source Firefox 1.0 web browser. It immediately amassed popularity that the demand caused its dedicated linux servers to crash. It took an hour for the engineers of the Foundation to get the situation controlled and resolved.

The browser has managed to reach new heights that only a few have ever thought possible. It has become so popular that it was only second to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, enjoying about 25 percent of the market share for web browsing.
Fans of the web browser are commemorating the occasion through parties organized under the campaign dubbed, “Light the World with Firefox.”

In a blog post, Christopher Blizzard, open source evangelist from the Mozilla Foundation writes that the organization has brought on several of the advancements enjoyed by the browser market. He said that the Foundation has managed to keep Microsoft honest, compelling them to release updates and newer versions of their web browsers regularly.

Blizzard also discussed further changes and developments in the Firefox web browser. He said that users can expect more from the browser and these changes are going to eternally shape the web browsing experience. He said to expect bigger changes particularly in video space. The Web is seeing HTML5-based video as well as open video codecs with web developers continuing to offer support a royalty-free and standard-based approach.