Firefox 4 for desktop launched yesterday and we’re excited to report that within 24 hours of being announced it had been downloaded 7.1 million times. This is in addition to the more than 3 million people who were already running the release candidate that became our final version. Firefox 4 is blazingly fast, cleverly intuitive to use, and for the first time, will be delivered consistently across desktops and mobile devices when Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo lands in the next couple of weeks.

Beyond the obvious, Firefox 4 more profoundly starts the redefinition of the “browser” – from a piece of code traditionally used to simply view, and link to static information, to a trusted environment we live our online lives in, and which we rely on to securely engage with information, applications, friends, colleagues and so much more.

As we do so much more online, we must expect so much more from our browser environment. We should expect it to know who we are, wherever we go. We should expect it to remember such simple things as history, passwords, open tabs, open applications – and remember those on our behalf, wherever we go online, on any device, and without the need to re-enter anything. We should expect it to move at human speed, while being completely customizable and yet so simple and intuitive, anyone can use it. We should expect it to enable us to live in the level of privacy and security WE choose to, everywhere WE go.

In short, we should expect our browser to answer to no one but us!

Mozilla is a community of nearly 50,000 contributors worldwide who come together to build a better Internet that is free, open and accessible to all. If you are one of the more than 400 million users of Firefox already, or if you are brand new to Firefox, welcome to 4, we hope you enjoy the freedom.