Firefox and Thunderbird Garage

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was an idea: "Let's connect computers together so they can share data." Shortly thereafter the first network was born.

By 1992, the number of hosts on the Internet had grown, topping one million. Just a year before this, the first web server was created. In 1993 Mosaic was created, and a year later Mosaic Communications, which would later become Netscape Communications, was born.

As the Internet became more popular, the Web (and email) became the mainstay of Internet usage. By 1995, Microsoft entered the scene with Internet Explorer, given away free with the Windows 95 Plus! pack add-on. By 1998, Netscape was losing market share, and AOL (who now owned Netscape) made what was considered by many to be a radical move: It decided to release the source code for Netscape as open source.

By 2000, Mozilla was hard at work creating and enhancing the Mozilla Suite, whose browser would eventually become Firefox. Mozilla Suite's email client was also split off to become Thunderbird.

Today, the Mozilla Organization and mozilla.org are a major force in the Internet browser and email fields. Until recently, though, Microsoft (as large companies tend to do) had ignored Mozilla, feeling that its lion's share of the browser market was safe. Today, well over 50,000,000 Internet users have taken up Firefox, making it the most viable threat to Microsoft's domination to date.