Los Angeles - The open-source Mozilla Firefox browser claimed 20% of the total market for the first time in October, Webmonkey reported, citing data from browser usage tracking service Net Applications. Market share for Microsoft's Internet Explorer was 71.27%, down from 78.36% during the same period a year ago.

Los Angeles - The Mozilla Firefox Web browser, an open-source alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's (NASD: MSFT) Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator or Apple's (NASD: AAPL) Safari, has now been downloaded over 500 million times, according to a note on SpreadFirefox.com. The browser passed 400 million downloads in September 2007. Firefox now commands about 17% of the browser market, and 28% of visitors to NYTimes.com in February were Firefox users, according the paper's Bits blog.