And within a span of a year, Firefox has grabbed 8.65 percent of the market and put a dent into Internet Explorer's dominance, according to NetApplications' October results.
"At the launch, we had a million downloads on the first day and have not seen any let up in demand," said Chris Beard, head of marketing and product management for Mozilla Corp.
In the past year, Firefox helped validate the concept of an open-source browser and encourage its use through viral word-by-mouth marketing, he added. And as Firefox enters its second year, several changes are in store.