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Mozilla Firefox is a free, open source, cross-platform, graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and hundreds of volunteers. Beginning as a fork of the browser component (Navigator) of the Mozilla Application Suite, Firefox has since become the Mozilla Foundation's main development focus (along with the Thunderbird mail and news client), replacing the Mozilla Suite as the foundation's official main software release.
Before the November 9, 2004 1.0 release, Firefox had already gained acclaim from numerous media outlets, including Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. With over 25 million downloads in the 99 days after the initial 1.0 release, Firefox became one of the most downloaded free and open source applications, especially among home users. On October 19, 2005, Firefox had its 100 millionth download, less than 1 year (just 344 days) after the release of version 1.0 (see Download count below). Firefox 1.5 was released on November 29, 2005, with more than 2 million downloads within the first 36 hours. Firefox hit 200 million downloads in August 2006 according to the spreadfirefox website.
Firefox includes an integrated pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, support for open standards, a skinnable interface and an extension mechanism for adding functionality. Firefox has attracted attention as an alternative to other browsers such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari, which are included as standard browsers with versions of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, respectively.
As of July 2006, estimates suggest that Firefox's usage share is around 12% of overall browser usage (see market adoption below), with its highest usage in Germany (about 39% as of July 2006).
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