When Mozilla released the Firefox browser in 2004, Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominated the market with a whopping 95 percent share. Now Firefox has 18 percent of the market and Apple's Safari has another 6 percent.

Most Firefox users don't realize that Firefox's current existence is owed almost exclusively to its search partnership with Google wherein Mozilla Corp receives a portion of ad revenue from Google queries initiated from Firefox's search bar. This revenue amounts to tens of millions of dollars.

The Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind the Firefox web browser, has published its first ever Quarterly Analyst Report on the state of the internet and its browser's worldwide market share

Google Chrome is without doubt the fastest growing web browser in terms of global market share. It was first released as a beta version on September 2008, and in just two years it quickly climbed to third place (behind Internet Explorer and Firefox) eclipsing Apple's Safari.

On the back of the release last week of Firefox 3.0, Mozilla's open-source browser gained market share at the expense of rivals Internet Explorer (IE) and Safari, Net Applications said Monday.

Google Chrome has now eclipsed Mozilla Firefox in the speed category. However, I still use Firefox as my main web browser because it is still better than Chrome in certain areas.But just recently, I tried a few tweaks that significantly improved the speed of Firefox making it a little bit snappier than the latest version of Google Chrome when loading webpages.

Pressure from Google Chrome and, increasingly, from other main players in the web-browser market is forcing Mozilla to change its ways. Most notably, it's starting to rethink its update schedule and system for Firefox and favoring small incremental updates, a la Chrome, instead of major releases months or years apart.

Mozilla Firefox needs no special mention to anyone who is associated with internet. Perhaps the fastest and most reliable browser in this world is the most popular one too as they achieved the Guiness Book of World Records for most download in a single day.

Mozilla achieved an important milestone in November, sailing past 20% market share over an entire month for the first time since its release in November 2004. While Safari and Chrome were able to take over share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as well, Mozilla’s Firefox leaped by almost a full percentage point over October, according to data provided by Net Applications.