Firefox 3 records 8 million downloads in 24hrs

FIREFOX fans claim to have set a world record after the latest version of the web browser was downloaded more than 8 million times in 24 hours.

Firefox 3 was launched at 3am (AEST) yesterday morning, kicking off “Download Day” – a campaign organised by fans and developers to set a Guinness World Record for the highest number of downloads of a program in 24 hours.

The download figures had been sent to Guinness for review and would be confirmed in “a few days”, said a message on the Download Day website.

Firefox is the second most popular browser in the world after Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and, according to the figures, looks to be gaining ground. The previous version of Firefox was downloaded just 1.6 million times in the 24 hours after its launch.

About 20 000 copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded in South Africa during this record attempt and almost 150,000 in Australia.

The most downloads of Firefox 3 have come from the US (2.9 million), followed by Germany (806,000) and Japan (440,000).

Other countries that rushed to download the browser include Canada, Brazil, China, Iran, Russia, Italy, Spain, Mexico Lithuania and Poland.

There is no official world record for the most downloads of a particular program in 24 hours – the Download Day attempt was the first of its kind and had no specific target to beat.

Firefox, developed by the Mozilla Foundation, is one of the most well-known examples of the open source code ideology, a principle that encourages community participation in software development.

Download Day was organised by “community marketing” group Spread Firefox!, a volunteer-driven online organisation affiliated with the Mozilla Foundation.

ITNewsAfrica.com