The young browser named Firefox reached yesterday a number of 100 milion downloads. A day to celebrate for the Mozilla Foundation.

Released last year in November, Firefox took its place quickly in the browser market, forcing other browsers to be changed. Opera became free, Microsoft decided to work on a new version of its Internet Explorer.

After its appearance, the number of downloads exploded but then settled somewhere around 200.000-300.000 per day. Yesterday, Mozilla celebrated the 100 millionth download and has great plans for the version 1.5, planned to be released later this fall. “Our community of more than 100,000 Firefox developers, testers, and grassroots marketers, is rejuvenating Web browsing, which is why millions of new users make the jump to Firefox every week,” said Mozilla developer Asa Dotzler. “This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users - not to mention the developers - have helped to put out a product that’s really kicking butt,” he said.

Unlike other products, Firefox had a large community that helped it to be spread quickly worldwide. Thousands of volunteers help spread the word about the browser, participate in free support forums and discussion lists, and scour its code for flaws.

The browser had and has problems also. For example, Symantec reported that in Mozilla browsers were discovered more vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer in the first semester of 2005. For things to be worst the marketing web site, SpreadFirefox.com, was brought down by hackers just last week.

But bad things hasn’t stopped the celebratory spirit among Firefox’s users. A group of enthusiasts launched a weather balloon called Firefox 1 and SpreadFirefox.com hosted a contest to see who could guess the exact minute that the 100 millionth download would take place. The site is also hosting a page featuring photos of users in front of the site’s celebration page.

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