Stockholm, Sweden - (The Hosting News) - January 12, 2006 - The founder of the largest Swedish web hosting company, Loopia, has launched an Internet advertising page to help fund the Firefox web browser.

Entrepreneur Sam Nurmi, created HelpFirefox.com based on the recently popular pixel advertising concept. Each of the one million pixels on the page costs one dollar, and all revenues will go to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, which develops Firefox. Several companies have bought ads linked to their web sites already.

According to Sam Nurmi, the creator of HelpFirefox.com, ''Today, Firefox is the best browser on the market. Its developers are doing an incredible job, but for Firefox to be able to surpass Internet Explorer with its unlimited budget, external funding is necessary. We will give them that. Here's the opportunity for MySQL, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and all others who want to support open source to make a difference.''

The pixel advertising idea comes from the British student Alex Tew, who in the autumn of 2005 succeeded in enlarging his education budget with nearly one million dollars through his ad page: TheMillionDollarHomepage. The Mozilla Foundation actively encourages donations. Firefox has been downloaded over 100 million times. Companies Active24, Crystone, Eastpoint, Ipwalk, J Sulo, Loopia, Nendea, NU Domain, Quality Unlimited, SEDO.com and Troxo have already bought ad space on www.helpfirefox.com, for $10 000 after less than one day of sales.

''A monopoly is a bad thing, particularly when it came about through unfair competition,'' added Mr. Nurmi, referring to Microsoft having attained a monopoly in the browser market by spreading their web browser, Internet Explorer, with their operating system.

Mr. Nurmi concluded, ''Open source applications, on the other hand, are a positive and natural phenomenon, in an evolution directed towards cutting the costs of goods and services. Firefox is based on everybody's support and free exchange of ideas. Now we add ours, and hope to be just as persuasive sellers as Alex Tew. Web advertising has never been hotter than now. On our page companies and individuals will be able to support both Firefox and themselves. Alex Tew has shown that the expense for a few pixels was in most cases exceeded by far by the benefits of the resulting traffic.''

Sam Nurmi is the 28-year-old entrepreneur behind the web hosting company, Loopia, which was founded in the end of 1999. Loopia is now Sweden's largest web host.

To learn more, please visit: www.helpfirefox.com.