Firefox and the open web
An origin in ashes
Firefox started life as Phoenix - named after the bird of Persian mythology - which rose from the ashes, but was later renamed Firebird because of trademark issues, and finally became Firefox in 2004 to end confusion with the Firebird open source RDBMS project that had sprung from Borland's release of Interbase in 2000.
The first release of Firefox (0.8) under the Firefox name was in February 2004, and was immediately successful because it was able to defy gravity and take Microsoft on, despite the in-built advantages that come from the Windows monopoly on the desktop.
Between 1999 and 2004 there had been no effective competition for Internet Explorer and browser development for the wider market came to a standstill. There was a crying need for a web browser that was fast and easy, standards compliant and secure, and unencumbered with the bloat and feature creep that had been inflicted on the users of Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE) during the browser wars.
Firefox filled that space with alacrity, gaining 100 million users in its first year alone, fuelled by a grass roots campaign initiated by Blake Ross to spread its uptake. This was aided and abetted by the five year gap between the release of IE 6 and IE 7 (which didn't arrive until October 2006) and an innovative approach to add-ons and extensions, which allowed users to create their own features, taking control away from the makers of the browser and putting it in the hands of the user.
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