Mozilla COO John Lilly has released data that indicates a minimum 125 million people are using Firefox.

According to Ars Technica that figure is grossly under exaggerated, as it doesn't take into account the users behind corporate firewalls what don't allow communication with the Mozilla update server, and Linux distributions that ship with Firefox's auto-update disabled.

Either way you look at it Firefox is here to stay, something you and I have known for a long time.

If you ever wanted further convincing, consider that Microsoft recently disabled the WGA check in Internet Explorer 7 in an effort to make it more attractive. This is the first time Microsoft have deliberately removed what is essentially an anti-piracy check on any of their products, making it possible to run an illegal version of the new browser.

Microsoft are well known for taking the hard line when it comes to pirating their products, so removing the piracy check from Internet Explorer to gain market share means they take the browser market very seriously, even if they still don't care much for web standards. But that's a topic for another day.