Firefox was created in 2002, under the name "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who wanted a standalone browser rather than a bundle of different Mozilla applications. Even in its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-popular Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released in November 2004 and was highly successful with 60 million downloads within nine months, marking the first time that Internet Explorer's popularity was being challenged. Firefox is considered the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator since the Mozilla community was created by Netscape in 1998.