Eight years ago, when I first saw Firefox posted on a message board that I frequented, I thought it was so cool that someone was trying to make a new browser. The post was flamed to death with all sorts of negative comments about how Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the best there was and Mozilla was never going to be able to compete with Microsoft. Fortunately, Mozilla didn’t see comments like that and decide to throw in the towel. Because of that, the Firefox team at Mozilla are able to celebrate 8 years of development today.

If you take a look back, you can absolutely see how Firefox was directly responsible for some of the major changes in how we use the web today. Firefox made a name for itself by being something that was so much better than Internet Explorer at the time that the only reason IE was used was to install Firefox. The team has even gone so far recently as to poke fun back at Internet Explorer 10‘s release. The browser has grown with the intention of delivering a web experience that “put people first” as they put it. Now, 8 years later, Firefox has absolutely become a staple in the web ecosystem.

Firefox now exists on Windows, it’s a default browser in many versions of Linux, OSX, and now Android as well. On each platform they support, Mozilla strives to offer the open web standards and practices that the company has dedicated themselves to from the beginning. With a global browser market share that hovers just behind Internet Explorer by a few percent, it’s not hard to imagine that Firefox will be around for a long time. Happy Birthday Firefox!