Take this statistic with a grain of salt, but Mozilla said more than 8 million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in its first 24 hours online.
Mozilla, which is behind the open-source Web browser, was trying to set a download record for the software. The 24-hour period lasted from 11:16 a.m. PDT Tuesday to the same time Wednesday, and Mozilla said it's waiting for the Guinness Book of World Records to review the results.
Mozilla showed more than 8 million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in its first 24 hours online.
(Credit: Mozilla)The download rate, which peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday, was still going strong at more than 6,000 per minute Wednesday morning.
Next question: will it make a difference?
Mozilla fanned the fanboy flames with its download record attempt, but it's likely the majority of those who downloaded Firefox 3 at this stage will just use it to replace Firefox 2, not a competitor such as Microsoft's still-dominant Internet Explorer or Apple's third-place Safari.
There's also a big difference between downloading Firefox, installing it, using it, and switching to it as the primary browser. One early sign shows at a minimum, though, that Firefox 3 usage is significant at more than 4 percent share, according to Net Applications.
And don't forget the error bars: it's impossible to say how many of the Firefox 3 copies were installed by enthusiasts trying to goose the number.
And while 8.3 million might well become an audited record, Adobe blogger and evangelist Ryan Stewart pointed out that Adobe gets 8 million installations of the Flash plug-in on an average day.
Don't let my note of skepticism detract from the occasion, though. 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.
For full coverage, including reviews and videos, see CNET's Firefox 3 resource center.
Firefox 3 gained market share rapidly, even before it was 24 hours old.
(Credit: Net Applications)Firefox 3 is spreading fast, claiming more than 4 percent of the share of Web browser usage less than 24 hours after its release.
According to Net Applications, which monitors browser usage at major Web sites, Firefox 3 rapidly ascended to what I'd call force-to-be-reckoned-with status, something Web designers shouldn't be ignoring. For comparison, Apple's Safari had 6.25 percent share in May, and Opera had 0.71 percent.
Undoubtedly, most Firefox 3 activity is from existing Firefox users, but it's still a notable achievement, given that software companies constantly struggle to get users to adopt the latest products.
Mozilla, which sponsors and oversees development of the open-source Web browser, released Firefox 3 for download on Tuesday. It primed the publicity pump with an effort to set a 24-hour download record, and interest by the abundant Firefox loyalists brought Mozilla's servers to their knees for nearly two hours Wednesday.
Mozilla has been fulfilling pent-up demand ever since. Sometime after 7 a.m. PDT, downloads crossed the 7 million mark, according to Mozilla's download counter, which is fun to watch, even though it's badly formatted.
The download rate, which peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday, was about 6,600 per minute Wednesday morning.
For full coverage, including reviews and videos, see CNET's Firefox 3 resource center.
Web site problems held up the launch of Firefox 3 on Tuesday.
The Get Firefox site went down near the 10 a.m. PDT launch time. Mozilla, the for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that oversees Firefox development, said it was having technical difficulties with the site.
Firefox 3 downloads surpassed 1.4 million before four hours had gone by.
(Credit: Mozilla)Mozilla hopes to set a 24-hour record for most downloads with Firefox 3, but the delay shouldn't affect that much. "The 24-hour period starts when the site goes live," spokeswoman Melissa Shapiro said.
Update 10:51 a.m. PDT: Mozilla said in a blog posting that the site should be available "shortly."
"The outpouring of interest and enthusiasm around Firefox 3 has been overwhelming (literally!). Our servers are currently feeling the burn and should be back to normal shortly. Download day will officially commence once the site goes live," Mozilla said.
Update 10:57 a.m. PDT: Popular projects are tough to bring to the Web for mass download.
Ubuntu's Feisty Fawn version of Linux was run over by Intenet traffic when it launched in 2007. Likewise, Sun Microsystems couldn't keep up when it released the source code for OpenOffice.
Mozilla is trying to set a record for Firefox 3 downloads. Site problems hampered the effort.
Red Hat has used BitTorrent to try to distribute download pain among many interested users of its Fedora version of Linux. That's not a great solution if you want to track your download record, though.
Update 11:17 a.m. PDT: The download page was back up for me, fleetingly--but it only showed the link for Firefox 2.0.0.14.
Update 11:20 a.m. PDT: The site is up, and the download link is working for me. Let the record attempt begin.
Update 11:30 a.m. PDT: Whoops! The download I'm getting from the download pages is still for version 2.0.0.14. I guess there's still some work to be done.
The Mozilla page redesign has a crazy combination of Firefox 3 graphics but Firefox 2.0.0.14 files, but at least the Web site is crawling back.
Update 11:49 a.m. PDT: This is like Amazon.com's outage all over again: Now all I'm getting is "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable." The Web site is totally gone again.
Update 11:53 a.m. PDT: The site is working, both the Get Firefox site and the U.S. download page.
Also, for some more details, see the Firefox 3 release notes.
Update 12:01 p.m. PDT: The clock is ticking for the download record attempt. The official 24-hour period began at 11:16 a.m. PDT, when the download began working in Europe, Mozilla told me.
The redesigned Mozilla site was a hodgepodge of Firefox 3 and 2.0.0.14 versions as it crept back online.
(Credit: Mozilla)Also, be cautious about updating: Firefox 3 will overwrite your Firefox 2 installation. The release candidate has been stable for me, but not all plug-ins are available; Microsoft warned that Silverlight 1.0 doesn't work on Firefox 3, and there could be other issues.
Update 12:05 p.m. PDT: Mozilla said on its developer blog that Firefox 3 is being downloaded at a rate of 14,000 copies per minute.
That's 13 gigabits per second. No wonder the servers were struggling.
Update 12:15 p.m. PDT: Say what you want about its ability to deliver the technology, but it's impressive what Mozilla has built around Firefox. A download rate of 233 copies per second is pretty staggering.
You can call the download record an attempt at a PR stunt if you want, but clearly it's more than that. Evidently there are a lot of people for whom using Firefox makes them feel like part of some movement.
Is it because it's open-source software? A way to stick it to Microsoft? Technologically superior? Helped by plug-ins? Something else? Weigh in below so those who aren't true believers can see why you are. Or send me e-mail at stephen.shankland@cnet.com.
Update 12:55 p.m. PDT: The Firefox 3 download counter (when it works) currently shows more than 875,000 downloads.
Say what you will about Google's plain-jane text-heavy Web sites, but they load faster than the eye candy such as all those pretty flags on the download counter page.
Update 2:46 p.m. PDT: Mozilla's Spread Firefox site shows more than 1.4 million downloads so far. The rate is tapering down--it's less than 10,000 copies per minute now.
Update 4:25 p.m. PDT: The download rate has wound down to about 5,400 per second, but the total has surpassed 2 million.
Update 5:20 p.m.: It looks like Firefox's biggest rival is being big-hearted about Download Day: Microsoft shipped an Internet Explorer cake to Mozilla.
The cake reads: "Congratulations on shipping. Love, the IE Team."
- prev
- 1
- next
