Guinness awards download record to Firefox 3

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 17 June, whose server-crippling success delayed its official start, sought to popularise 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.

While Download Day was a publicity stunt, Mozilla's community pulled together and ensured the end result was achieved. Mozilla has proven that people see more in the Firefox browser than just a bundle of bits to surf the Web; they like its technology, its open-source nature and other attributes.

According to Mozilla's press release, Paul Kim, VP of Marketing at Mozilla said: "The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was instrumental in achieving this record. Our community members came together and not only spread the word, but also took the initiative to help mobilise millions of people to demonstrate their belief that Firefox gives people the best possible online experience."

While this may not shift Firefox's market share results in the short term, it may have coaxed people toward a more modern browser, which website operators are probably happy to see.

For the record, Net Applications gave Firefox 3 2.31 per cent market share for the entire month of June, compared with 4.28 per cent for Safari 3.1, 16.13 per cent for Firefox 2, 26.38 per cent for Internet Explorer 6, and in number one position is IE 7 at 46.45 per cent. The statistics are based on actual usage at various major search engines. Because Firefox 3 was released midway through June, the statistics will likely show a significantly greater share for the month of July.