While most of us were busy predicting insecure Web browsers would be the downfall of the Internet, the folks at Mozilla were slowly positioning themselves to save the day. As a result of promotions like Switch, Spread Firefox, and a 2-page New York Times ad, Mozilla Firefox has been downloaded over 13 million times since November with the full intention of taking 10% of the browser market before the end of 2005.

Out of all the projects out there, who would have thought a browser would be the thing to bring open source software closer to the mainstream than ever before? It’s poetic justice, perhaps. There’s something terribly ironic about the browser integrated directly into the worlds most-used family of operating systems losing ground to the browser that nobody had ever heard of.

Though the IE dragon has yet to be slain, Mozilla has a plan of attack for the next great fiend: Outlook. Though it has been in beta testing for quite some time (as Firefox was), Thunderbird already has a loyal following and will likely mirror the success of its older sibling.