Firefox: One month, 10 million downloads

Firefox, the open-source challenger to market heavyweight Internet Explorer, has surpassed 10 million downloads in a little more than a month since the browser was released in November.

The free web browser from the Mozilla Foundation surpassed 10 million downloads on Saturday as web surfers continue to move away from Microsoft's market-dominating IE. The milestone highlights growing frustration with the security vulnerabilities that have dogged IE during the past few months. Nearly two dozen holes in the web browser have been discovered during the autumn, ranging in degrees of seriousness.

Niels Brinkman, co-founder of research firm OneStat.com, said in a statement in November: "It seems that people are switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's new Firefox browser."

Firefox has surpassed the 10 million download mark while gaining five percentage points in May to 7.4 per cent in November, according to OneStat.com.

Firefox's percentage gain helped cut into Microsoft's dominance of the web browser market, cutting its market share to less than 90 per cent. OneStat reported in November that IE's market share had slipped to 88.9 per cent in the third week of November, down five percentage points from its share in May. Mozilla-based browsers, including Firefox, rose to 7.4 per cent, up five percentage points from May.

Microsoft has disputed these numbers, claiming that they do not represent corporate users.

Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, said of OneStat's statistics: "It doesn't jibe with what WebSideStory shows, and what neither of these count is corporate intranets where users aren't actually hitting the web."

On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania State University's Information Technology Services department recommended that students drop IE in favour of Firefox and Apple's Safari to reduce attacks through vulnerabilities in the Microsoft software. The university said "media reports" and a string of warnings by Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Emergency and Response Team led to its recommendation.

Steven Musil writes for CNET News.com.