Built with Gecko, it was initially called the 'Phoenix'.
Born from the ashes of Netscape Navigator, the browser called Firefox, had more than 30% of the global market share.
It was powerful enough to directly fight against Microsoft Internet Explorer, in ways that its Netscape Navigator predecessor simply couldn't. It had all it needed to compete and win.
Firefox is one of the very few web browsers that could really compete in the tight and unforgiving market.
Being the favorite amongst fans and privacy-concerned individuals, now, Firefox is 20 years old.
Read: Microsoft Versus Netscape: The First Browser War
Mozilla started shipping version 1.0 of its Firefox browser on November 9, 2004.
At the time, people could download it or buy a CD-ROM, or download it in the relatively young internet.
From the very beginning, Firefox was made to be powerful and very capable, thanks to it being built by the Mozilla community, which was created by Netscape in 1998, before its acquisition by AOL.
"Firefox was built by a group of passionate developers, and has been supported by a dedicated community of caring contributors since day one," said Mozilla in a blog post.
As the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, it had the resources it needed to thrive.
It was a leaner and faster browser if compared to Internet Explorer, and emerged to only resumed the battle for browser supremacy.
But what followed was a period of stagnation.
After the arrival of Google Chrome, which followed by a handful of other web browsers, Firefox caught itself in a difficult situation.
While Mozilla continuously improve Firefox in each and every new version, and that the web browser keeps getting better and better, Firefox simply cannot keep up.
Firefox is now far from its former glory.
By 2017, Firefox's influence was already declining.
Andreas Gal, former head of technology at Mozilla, said that "Chrome has won the browser war". Google snatched Firefox's place, surpassing it and others, in a little less than ten years after first launching Chrome in 2008.
And due to the fact that the Chromium project technology on which Chrome is based is also used in many other browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi and Brave, there is not stopping Google from winning the war.
While Firefox is slowly slipping into insignificance and that its market share is shrinking, it continues to living for its fans.
In a separate blog post, Mozilla gathered a list of comments from users who keeps using Firefox as their daily driver.
"Whatever it is that made you fall in love with Firefox, we’re so glad you’re here. Thanks for being part of our story and helping us keep the web open, safe and truly yours," said Mozilla.