technology firegeezer on 18 Jun 2008 11:52 am
New Firefox Browser Seeks To Set Benchmark Download Record
WHEN MOZILLA CHOSE TUESDAY AS THE RELEASE DATE for it’s widely-anticipated Firefox 3 browser, they also announced that in cooperation with Guinness Book of Records they wanted to set a benchmark for the largest number of internet downloads in 24 hours.
Since this will be a new category, whatever they get will be a record. But their hope was to achieve 5 million downloads on that first day. The official results won’t be available for several days yet, though. Firefox 2 downloaded 1.6 million on its launch day, but that number will be shattered with this one. Currently there are approx. 171 million users of Firefox already.
There was a hiccup when the download period first started because so many people logged on that Mozilla’s servers became overloaded and stalled. In about an hour they had things running smoothly again. Their dream of reaching 5 million downloads was actually met in just 14 hours. Now they are optimistic that they can get 7 or 8 million downloaded.
Because of the initial server problem, Guinness allowed the official “start time” to be moved back one hour. If Firegeezer’s brain is functioning properly today, then the 24-hour window will close at 3 pm Eastern Daylight time today (Wednesday).
The major upgrade from Firefox 2 will make this a popular browser and Mozilla expects to finally challenge Microsoft’s Explorer for browser supremacy.
For a brief review of a few of Firefox 3’s new features, read this InternetNews REPORT.
Update, 5:30 pm EDT:
The unverified results are in. There were more than 8.3 million downloads during the first 24 hrs. The official cut-off for the time was 2:16 pm Eastern time.
The download rate peaked at 14,000 per minute Tuesday afternoon, but was still clocking along well at closing time with 6,000 per minute being sent out. People with broadband connections are getting the full download in about 5 seconds and taking about 1 minute to install the browser.
Mozilla graphic
Early report from cnet news HERE.
on 19 Jun 2008 at 8:55 am 1.Oldman said …
I’m NOT impressed. I am a long time Firefox user, and downloaded and installed 3. I took about 5 minutes of use for me to uninstall it and go back to version 2. Version 3 is not compatible with several programs, and even disabled one of the antivirus programs. Try again Mozilla!