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Mozilla reached a milestone recently as Firefox hit 500 million downloads. If that were people, that'd be about a twelfth of the earth, or about eight percent of everybody.

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(Photo Credit: Mozilla)

More than likely though, there are at least a few users who've updated their versions a couple of times, so it doesn't represent half-a-billion people. It does represent about 17 percent of the browser population, which means it takes more than "free" and "cooler than Microsoft" to break the we'll-just-use-whatever's-on-the-desktop mentality.

Still, half-a-billion is pretty day-um good, and brings Firefox more market share than Safari. To commemorate, Mozilla promoted a word-game to help raise 500 million grains of rice for the UN World Food Program.

Via FreeRice.com, visitors can select the right definition of a difficult word, and earn 20 grains of rice in the process. Don't worry if you're vocabulary's deficient. If you really, really want to help and don't mind cheating to do so, Google's [define:] function works amazingly well, so make use of Firefox's nifty tabbing function.

For example, did you know vermiculate means "with worm-like projections," "worm-eaten," or "infested with worms?" You do now, and that earned somebody somewhere 20 grains of rice (hopefully not minus 80% for administration fees like much of the aid that goes out there).

At any rate, we know how Mozilla feels about grain, especially since that crop-circle misunderstanding I got into with an intern a couple of years back. We're assuming no rice is harmed in the transportation of aid to developing nations.