Firefox 3: 8 Million Downloads in 24 Hours

The latest version of Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser was downloaded more than 8 million times in the first 24 hours it was available making the “Download Day” a success, claimed the software's developers on Wednesday.

Mozilla is pushing to set the record for the most number of times any software was downloaded in a 24-hour period, and it is clear that Mozilla is set to beat that goal, in addition to surpassing its own target of more than 5 million downloads over that period. Mozilla said that it's waiting for the Guinness Book of World Records to review the results.

The download rate peaked to about 17,000 copies a minute on Tuesday and was going strong at more than 6,000 per minute on Wednesday morning. Downloads came from some 200 countries, led by the United States, Germany, Japan, Spain and Britain.

Firefox 3’s Tuesday's release had its share of hiccups getting delayed by more than an hour as visitors checking for the update overloaded Firefox's Web servers. According to AlertSite, an Internet performance monitoring company, the site was slow or unreachable for about two hours starting about 12:45 p.m. Eastern Time, 15 minutes before the scheduled release time.

All research for this article was done using Firefox 3 on a Windows PC and I can vouch for its much improved internet browsing experience compared to Firefox 2. Firefox 3 uses less of the computer's memory to display web pages in the blink of an eye.

Mozilla claims that the Firefox 3 includes about 15,000 enhancements though I am still in the phase of discovering most of them. There are enhancements to help users organize their frequently visited Web sites and block access to sites known to distribute viruses and other malicious software.

Firefox 3 also offers one-click bookmarking, the ability to easily zoom in and out of areas on a web page, near limitless customization and personalization, and a handy password manager.

Yahoo Mail users can also use Firefox 3 to send e-mail by clicking a "mailto" link they might come across clicking on a name or a "contact us" link on a Web page. Previously such links could only open a standalone, desktop e-mail program.

It's quite likely that the majority of those who downloaded Firefox 3 at this stage will just use it to replace Firefox 2 and not a competitor such as Microsoft's still-dominant Internet Explorer or Apple's third-place Safari but the download rush does demonstrate that Mozilla has momentum on its side, which it will need to take on Microsoft.

Firefox grabbed 18.41% of the market in May, up from just 11% during the year-ago period, according to Web tracker Net Applications. Microsoft’s share has fallen to 73.75% from 84% over the same period.

This might have been just a PR stunt, but the fact that Mozilla's Download Day drew as much attention as it did indicates that Firefox is more than just a piece of software. It's a movement people want to belong to.