Well, 2011 didn’t see the beginning of the end of Firefox after all. That is, Google renewed its agreement with Mozilla, ensuring the nonprofit’s popular browser wouldn’t lose 84% of its revenue and thus face the ominous fate that some predicted and others decried as unrealistic.
The browser was knocked from its #2 slot behind Internet Explorer, though, at least according to one company’s stats. The culprit? Google’s Chrome, a browser half Firefox’s age.
In Chrome, Firefox has found a worthy and fast-rising competitor, but it’s too soon to write off the beloved open source browser. Its future may be difficult to predict, but an infographic released by Mozilla today illustrates a pretty active year for Firefox. In addition to major performance upgrades and slow mobile progress, the browser saw its release cycle speed up and added 83 new features and 135 new APIs.
