The Mozilla Foundation released Firefox in 2004.
Firefox grew from an experimental standalone branch of the Mozilla project. Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and Blake Ross wanted a lighter browser than the Mozilla Application Suite, whose broad feature set had made it comparatively bulky. The project first appeared under the name Phoenix in 2002.
Trademark and naming conflicts led to further changes. Phoenix became Firebird, and then the project adopted the name Firefox on February 9, 2004. Version 1.0 was officially released on November 9, 2004, as a free and open-source browser.
Firefox challenged Microsoft Internet Explorer with features such as tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, and extensions. Safari and Chrome were different products: Safari came from Apple, while Chrome was released by Google in 2008. Microsoft Edge arrived later as Internet Explorer’s successor.