Firefox created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL. Firefox usage grew to a peak of 32% at the end of 2009, temporarily making version 3.5 the world's most popular browser. Usage then declined in competition with Google Chrome. , Firefox has 11.6% usage share as a "desktop" browser, according to StatCounter, making it the second-most popular such web browser; usage across all platforms is lower at 5.44% (and then 4th-most popular overall). Firefox is still the most popular desktop browser in Cuba (even most popular overall at 62.77%) and Eritrea with 78.3% and 91% of the market share,
Firefox 3.5 to support X BitMap images. Estimates of Firefox 3.5's global market share in February 2010 were around 15–20% and rose rapidly in July 2009 as users migrated from Firefox 3.0. From January 2010 it began to decline as users migrated to Firefox 3.6. Between mid-December 2009 and February 2010, Firefox 3.5 was the most popular browser (when counting individual browser versions) according to StatCounter, and was one of the top 3 browser versions according to Net Applications. Both milestones involved passing Internet Explorer 7, which previously held the No. 1 and No. 3 spots in popularity according to StatCounter and