Firefox Passes 500M Downloads; Celebrate with a Rice Donation!

Sometime last night Firefox passed the 500 million download mark. That's something to celebrate, but the celebration is more than just the balloons above: SpreadFirefox.com wants to celebrate by earning 500 million grains of donated rice, enough to feed 25,000 people.

I wrote about Freerice.com before, a way to feed the hungry with a simple Internet word game. It's a vocabulary game, and the words get harder as you advance. Yesterday, according to the site, 144,429,360 grains of rice were donated, so if Firefox users could reach 500 million ... that would incredible.

The last major milestone was achieved in September of last year, when Firefox crossed the 400 million download mark, indicating an average rate since then of about 20 million downloads per month.

And yes, of course, many of us are waiting for Firefox 3, right?