Chicago (IL) - Mozilla announced that the Firefox web browser has been downloaded more than 200 million times since its launch in November of 2004. And Firefox isn't slowing down: The latest 50 million downloads were added in a record time of less than five months.

According to the download counter posted on the spreadfirefox.com website, 150 million downloads were reached in the week of 6 March of this year, which came about five months after the 100 million downloads announcement in October of 2006. It took Firefox to cross the 50 million and 100 million barriers a little more than six months in each case.

This morning, the counter is approaching 200.3 million and Mozilla posted a note confirming the count: "(...) today we celebrate. Congratulations to every single person who made Firefox the success it is today."

Mozilla conceded that 200 million downloads may not translate into 200 million users "because this number includes both Firefox 1.0 and Firefox 1.5 (soon Firefox 2,) because not every one completes every download, and because not every download results in a new Firefox user."

According to a survey conducted from OneStat.com, Firefox accounted for a global market share of 11.79% in May of this year, while Internet Explorer was estimated to stand at 85.17%. However, each web analytics firm comes up with slightly different numbers, as the browser market share heavily depend on the websites that are being monitored. For example, 39% of the visitors of TG Daily currently use Firefox.