If you are reading this news story using the Firefox browser, then you've joined a few hundred million others, as the browser has just gone past the 400 million download mark.

Firefox, which rose from the ashes of the Netscape browser (which is still going and has a few fans), passed the 100 million download mark within a year of its launch in November 2004, 200 million a year after that and 400 million in three years.

"With your amazing efforts, Firefox has reached 400 million downloads and demonstrated that not even the world's most powerful companies can keep people from a better, safer and faster web experience," said a posting on fanboy marketing website Spread Firefox.

The Mozilla Foundation, which is responsible for keeping Internet Explorer developers awake at night by producing a browser that doesn't have endless numbers of security bugs, said that the amount of downloads of the browser increased by 56 per cent. 
According to research firm Xitimonitor, the browser has 27.8 per cent of internet users while IE holds onto 66.5 per cent (it used to have well over 90 per cent a couple of years back). Other organisations report different figures but the trends still don't look good for Microsoft which ever one you look at.

Mozilla also has an email client called Thunderbird, which isn't as popular, shame!