On this day, eleven years ago, 31st March 1998, the Mozilla codebase was unleashed on the world with the simple command “Come and get it“. And, since then, people have – at least 865 million times.

Here’s Netscape’s press release (on the Wayback Machine, as Netscape’s new owners have no sense of history). One has to have a giggle at the blatant product-plugging and lack of clue about what actually happened that this quote demonstrates:

“For the past year Intel has supported Netscape’s efforts to enhance and optimize Communicator 5.0 for the Intel Pentium II processor,” stated Ron Whittier, Sr. VP and GM of Content Group, Intel Corp. “The results of this effort benefit developers by allowing them to readily take full advantage of the Pentium II processor features as they develop new web content and advanced e-business applications.”

Sure, Ron – it’s all about optimising web content for the Pentium II. :-)