Although Mozilla Corp. down-played the first anniversary of its Firefox browser, an executive Wednesday 's said that the demand for the alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer had "completely outstripped our expectations."

Nov. 9, 2004, the Mozilla Foundation launched Firefox 1.0 after a several-month beta campaign that had drawn an impressive eight million downloads. A year later, Chris Beard, the head of product and marketing for Mozilla, crowed about the upcoming release of Firefox 1.5 and the browser's 100+ million downloads.

Still, the last year has been a surprise, Beard said. "None of here could have anticipated the level of uptake and growth that we've seen. The adoption [rate] of Firefox is a validation of our work, and shows that our focus and philosophy are appreciated."

Among the more concrete ways to measure Firefox's success, said Beard, is to watch the browser usage figures coming out of Web metrics vendors. Late in 2004, Mozilla set itself a goal of grabbing 10 percent of the market, and as far as Beard's concerned, it's met the target. "It looks like we have [met 10 percent]. A number of web analytic firms that have validated that."

Some have, but not all. According to the most recent numbers cited by NetApplications, Firefox accounts for 8.6 percent of the browsers used, still slightly down from the year's high of 8.7 percent in June.

To boost those numbers, Mozilla's planning on changing its marketing tactics. "We've had very strong adoption by power users, far beyond what we're seeing for average consumers," acknowledged Beard. "Next we'll target technically-savvy consumers with a campaign that focuses on a great user experience, how Firefox is simple to use, and how it has a good security profile."