Guinness bestows download record on Firefox

The de facto registrar of superlative achievements has credited Mozilla for officially setting a record for downloads in a 24-hour period: 8,002,530 copies of Firefox.

Mozilla's Download Day on June 17, whose server-crippling success delayed its official start, sought to popularize the open-source Web browser. Mozilla, which oversees the Firefox project, projected at the time that it cleared 8 million, but the number is now official.

"As the arbiter and recorder of the world's amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla's achievement to our archives," Gareth Deaves, Guinness' records manager, said in a statement.

Though Download Day was a big publicity stunt, it's hard to sniff with too much disdain at the total. To me at least it indicates that people see more in this particular browser than just a bundle of bits to surf the Web; they like its technology, its open-source nature or other attributes, and downloading and using it is an event somewhat akin to suffering in line for hours for rock show tickets or to buy an iPhone.

I'm skeptical that Download Day in and of itself will appreciably shift Firefox's market share results in the short term. But it did probably coax people toward a more modern browser, which Web site operators probably are happy to see, and I wouldn't be surprised if Mozilla managed to sign up more Firefox fanboys through its promotional devices.

Also for the record, Net Applications gave Firefox 3 2.31 percent market share for the entire month of June, compared with 4.28 percent for Safari 3.1, 16.13 percent for Firefox 2, 26.38 percent for Internet Explorer 6, and 46.45 percent for No. 1 IE 7. The statistics are based on actual usage at various major search engines. Because Firefox 3 was released midway through June, the statistics likely will show significantly greater share for it in July.

[wango2007]

I recently tried Firefox. I have no idea what the fuss is about. I kept it for 10 days as my primary browser, then deleted it in favor of IE7.

Yes, it was that bad.

[The_Decider]

Yeah, sure. Nice try for an astroturfer.

[cnetcensorssuck]

"Yes, it was that bad."

No, you were just that stupid.

[freemarket--2008]

How about some specifics. Also keep in mind that your IE7 most likely would not even exist if not for Firefox.

[JCPayne]

LOL..... I think you have your IE7 and FireFoxes mixed up....

[Asphyxium001]

Do you watch Fox News? Maybe you should work for them, because you're making up how favorable Firefox is due to your retarded liking of Microsoft.

Firefox is faster, better, and more secure.

And btw, Bill Gates is a democrat.

[Magallanes]

I use Firefox ***AND* IE7, both have their own pro and cons but to try and delete in a few days sound more like a astroturfer.

[Penguinisto]

Ah, but just wait until the IE/MSFT astroturfers come crawling out of the woodwork, claiming long and loud about how good IE allegedly is, or how it's not really losing marketshare hand-over-fist...

[demner]

ok... how many times is the google logo downloaded daily (number of downloads in general)? Or maybe the google maps accessed (if application download is your criterion)? or some windows patch (if download to your computer is the criterion))? PR stunt about sums it up.

Also, that number sounds suspiciously engineered. The 24 hours just happened to end 0.03% after the 8,000,000 number was reached. Highly unlikely unless (a) it's a made up number or (b) Mozilla bots downloading firefox were engineered to stop at 8,000,000...

[The_Decider]

Tin foil hats may look nice, but they don't block anything. IIRC they were predicting 1-2 million downloads before it began. Whine all you want, but it is leaps and bounds above IE.

[rsmalley2009]

Couldn't it be that people just stop downloading things at late times of day? And as for the record, no one else has done it before, so they get the record by default.

[theonlybuster]

That's awesome... It it was only 20hrs seeing as the servers were down for over 2hrs, then the download apparently "disappeared".

And to the guy that preferred IE7 over FF, it just shows it's not for everyone, if you like your browser w/ holes and flaws stick w/ IE, but there's other choices ALOT better.

[ballmerisanape]

IE is one of the slowest rendering browsers out today..... Have fun with that.

[Techedots]

Its really surprising that 8,002,530 people have downloaded FF3 in 24 Hrs. Equally shocking is FF3 gets closed quite often. Does any one know how to fix this problem. I am sure out of these 8,002,530 people, 60 to 70 percent are back to IE. [CNET editors' note: Prohibited content deleted.]

[JuggerNaut]

Dude, I have been using FF3 in productivity mode since its release (meaning I use it 9-to-5 40+ hours a week) and I have not experience this bug you speak of. I leave it running all day long.

One thing I can say; IE7 cannot compare to FF2 much less FF3!

[rdupuy11]

Maybe some of you had a problem with FF3, but I've had nothing but problems with IE7 on my new Dell. On most sites it was fine, but on my favorite site, a particular flash heavy application (web 2.0) style site...it would thrash and thrash the hard drive, and was unusuable, it was so slow.

I'm typing on FF3 right now. It runs all my favorite sites, and especially the site that was a problem for IE7, just fine. I don't think any browser is perfect, but certain FF3 is worth a try if you are having a problem with IE....I really like FF3, its my main browser now.

[frustum]

It's nice to know that IE7 works for some people and (more importantly) it's actually "prefered" by others. It's also nice to know that not a single customer of mine has complained of browser issues after FF2 and now FF3 is installed after cleaning their pc. Believe it or not, I've made a lot of money due to strictly browser issues with IE5, 6, and 7 over the years. If everyone was using firefox I wouldn't have gotten some of those calls.

[Vegaman_Dan]

You can download it, but do you actually USE it? The numbers are skewed horribly as the promoters asked people to uninstall then reinstall to get more download counts. That sort of creative accounting is more typically something Microsoft does- I'm disappointed that Mozilla would have to resort to cheating to get numbers. But... then Apple had bigger download numbers with Safari's download even though people didn't know they were doing it. So it really comes down to who is actually still using it now that they downloaded it? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him browse with it.

[cnetcensorssuck]

"...the promoters asked people to uninstall then reinstall to get more download counts."

Bullsh1t. Never happened.

[freemarket--2008]

Sound like a lot of misinformation. Where's your source? How do you explain the Firefox market share climbing to 19%? That's people actually USING the browser. Safari's share is still miniscule, so it's fair to say that even though many were tricked into downloading it, most still don't use it. If Mozilla kept a record of IP addresses, it's unlikely that they counted multiple downloads. The Guiness folks most likely required that for the record.

[Asphyxium001]

Firefox is a superior, safer browser to use. Opera is the name you are looking for.

[m.o.t.u.]

[DoohanOK]

You are forgetting the massive daily downloads for the Flash Player - over 10,000,000 each day.

[freemarket--2008]

So where is your source for this number or did you just make it up?

And maybe the record is for a user-initiated download of a full-size application, not for an automatic update of a minor plugin.

[SnidleyWhiplash]

But are the Firefox downloads really user initiated? My Firefox automagically downloads and updates. People have to go and request stuff like Flash, which has been reported as well more than 8 million a day (you'd have to be at rates higher than that to get the >98% penetration that gets publicized periodically).

[superman227]

The folks at Mozilla rushed this version out. It's buggy. It has frozen on me several times in the last 2 weeks, + it has an annoying bug - clicking bookmarks makes the page you're on a bookmark. You gotta go back to bookmarks to get your list after canceling out the attempt to make the current page a bookmark. Oldversion.com doesn't have 2.0.0.14 yet. It only has 2.0.0.7. Firefox 2 was very reliable unlike IE 7 and Firefox 3.

[superman227]

The folks at Mozilla rushed this version out. It's buggy. It has frozen on me several times in the last 2 weeks, + it has an annoying bug - clicking bookmarks makes the page you're on a bookmark. You gotta go back to bookmarks to get your list after canceling out the attempt to make the current page a bookmark. Oldversion.com doesn't have 2.0.0.14 yet. It only has 2.0.0.7. Firefox 2 was very reliable unlike IE 7 and Firefox 3.

[JCPayne]

To "Vegaman_Dan" July 2, 2008 9:11 PM PDT...

Ur Proof?

[Magallanes]

for internet and globally :8 millions is only a drop in the ocean.

[SnidleyWhiplash]

Um... when Microsoft pushes out a new patch, don't they get vastly more than 8 million successful downloads a day? And before you say that's different, that patches are pushed not requested... Doesn't Firefox push updates automatically by default? What about other software that's vastly more widely used that Firefox... Flash, Quicktime, Acrobat... some of those have to be well beyond 8 million a day. Yes, yes, this is a cute publicity stunt, but Firefox is still a tiny fraction of the browser market.