IBM announced this July that they will "strongly encourage" employees to use open-source Mozilla Firefox as their default browser.

In his blog IBM executive Bob Sutor wrote, "While other browsers have come and gone, Firefox is now the gold standard for what an open, secure, and standards-compliant browser should be."

IBM reportedly has over 400,000 employees who will be encouraged to make the switch to Firefox if they don't currently use the browser.  All new computers at IBM will have Mozilla Firefox loaded as the default browser as well.

Sutor added, "The longstanding commitment of Mozilla to open standards and the quality of the implementation of them in Firefox gives us confidence that this is a solid, modern platform that should be part of IBM's own internal transformation to significantly greater use of Cloud Computing."

Mozilla recently unveiled Firefox 4 Beta 1.  According to Datamation.com, with Firefox 4 Mozilla has added features to "drive performance and support HTML5, offline storage and add-ons, while also improving the user interface over the current Firefox 3.6 release."

With thousands of free custom add-ons, Mozilla Firefox has become the second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer. 

To make the switch, start by downloading Mozilla Firefox 3.6 for free here.