Yahoo Firefox toolbar reaches Mac and Linux

Yahoo has started offering a beta version of its toolbar for the open source browser Firefox on Apple Mac OS X and Linux.

The Firefox version of the Yahoo toolbar, which includes extended bookmarking and anti-spyware features, has been available on Microsoft Windows since February. Before then, the toolbar was only available for Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Earlier this month, Google released a beta version of its toolbar for Firefox users on Windows, Linux and Mac. The Google Toolbar, which provides features such as spellchecking and translation, has been available on IE for more than four years.

The availability of such applications on Firefox is further evidence of the growing importance of the open source browser. Over the last year, Firefox has taken a significant proportion of the browser market from IE, obtaining more than 10 per cent of it in some countries.

Web analytics firm OneStat.com reports Firefox quadrupling its market share between May 2004 and April 2005, while IE's share dropped by more than 7 percentage points over the same period. Firefox appears to have grabbed even more market share in Europe, with 30 per cent, 24 per cent and 22 per cent of Web surfers using Firefox in Finland, Germany and Hungary respectively.

Earlier this week, CNET.co.uk's sister site ZDNet UK published an interview with Asa Dotzler, the community coordinator for the Mozilla Foundation, in which he spoke about the rise of Firefox in the enterprise, future marketing campaigns and how the Mozilla Foundation plans to target less tech-savvy consumers.

The Firefox toolbars can be downloaded from the Yahoo and Google Web sites.