Firefox 3 Downloads Cross 10 Million Mark In Less Than Two Days

Chicago (IL) - It was clear yesterday that Mozilla is likely to achieve its goal to become part of the book of Guinness World Records with the most downloaded software within 24 hours. The download pace has slowed considerably on day 2, but allowed the company to cross the 10 million mark in less than 48 hours.

Even before Firefox was unveiled on Tuesday, Mozilla’s servers were mostly unreachable. It turned out to be a minor hiccup for the organization’s Download Day campaign, which resulted, according to our observations, in about 7.5 to 7.7 million downloads within the first 24 hours the browser became available on Mozilla’s FTP server. The HTTP count started a bit later and lasted a bit longer and ended up, according to Mozilla, at about 8 million downloads, which should be enough for the browser to claim its world record. It will take about a week until the numbers will be officially confirmed.

"Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we got more than 8 million Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. That’s more Firefox downloads than we’ve ever had in a single day - an impressive feat indeed! Please be patient while the good people of Guinness review our World Record attempt. This might take a few days so please check back here. And, a huge thanks for all of your support," wrote Mozilla on its Firefox Download page.

Over 3.43 million downloads came from the US, but other countries also contributed, such as Canada (313,000), China (247,000), Russia (144,000), France (391,000), Spain (400,000), Iran (268,000), India (132,000), Italy (330,000) and almost a million from Germany.

Downloads crossed the 10 million mark on day 2 and stood at 11.7 million after 48 hours.

To promote Firefox 3, Mozilla has created Download Day campaign designed to persuade users to download Firefox 3 the same day as it ships in an effort to set the Guinness World Record as the most downloaded software in 24 hours.