November 9, 2009 marked the fifth birthday of the Mozilla's open-source browser Firefox 1.0, which essentially replaced the monopoly of the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and gave the users a fairly competitive alternative!

Firefox, which was initially called Phoenix, emerged from the ashes of the Netscape browser that bowed down to the overpowering dominance of the Microsoft IE in the 1990s.

Though the Netscape-initiated open-source project, Mozilla, practically sank into obscurity, it re-emerged on November 9, 2004 as Firefox 1.0; and has ever since worked its way up in the browser market, presently accounting for nearly one-quarter of the market share.

The notable success of the Firefox browser may not have threatened Microsoft IE in terms of browser usage, but it has certainly put the company on the defensive, largely because of Firefox's open-source feature, which allows anyone to see, modify, and distribute the underlying source code of a program.

The other features that contributed to Firefox's success include speed, tabbed interface, add-on customizations, and pop-up ad blocking.

About Firefox and its five years of existence, Mike Shaver - Mozilla's VP of engineering - said: "When we got to Firefox, in some ways it was overnight success. From where we started this undertaking--the strategic context within Netscape--to being the single biggest force behind the rebirth of the browser as an interesting software category... It's a pretty amazing end point."