Considering that it only launched its web browser officially back in November 2004, the Mozilla Foundation has every reason to pat itself on the back over the news that Firefox has now been downloaded for the 400 millionth time. Whichever way you spin it, that's some number.

A tangible, deserving champion of the open source movement, Firefox has been widely credited with achieving something many thought doubtful: not only has it delivered a product that instantly showed up the failings of existing alternatives, it's seriously hit its Microsoft competitor. Whereas the web sector was once Microsoft dominated to a level of over 90 per cent, it's the giant of Redmond that has been on the back foot in this sector for much of the last three years.