Firefox 3 downloads clear 8 million mark
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.
Stephen Shankland covers Google, Yahoo, search, online advertising, portals, digital photography, and related subjects. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered servers, supercomputing, open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen.
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And 'Windoze'...ur such a stud lewac. I bet you honestly think Linux has no bugs, and is immune to virus and malware attacks, unlike 'Windoze'.
Now get back to your baby training wheels Linux distro.
I'm really liking firefox 3 though. Awesome bar is...awesome and the mac look is really good. Ajax is superfast as well.
I love it though, both on Windows and Linux :)
Mac version is great, Win2000 version is perfect, I haven't had a chance to take the XP version out for a spin yet, but my wife likes it.
Am I trying to do my tiny bit to jack up the numbers? You bet. Not for Firefox, though, but for the greater cause of making people aware of alternative browsers.
I don't care in the least whether they set a record or whether Joe Noob makes FF his default browser. My everyday browsers are Safari and Flock (which is built on FireFox).
But just like with operating systems and email clients, browser diversity is vital to security, innovation, and for inhibiting virus propagation. I support any campaign that brings attention to the viable alternatives.
You can be one of those children who throws around schoolyard insults like "Fanboy" (I hate that) but the fact is that my browser, your browser, this OS, that OS, it doesn't matter as long as there is more diversity. That will do more for secure computing than Mcafee and Norton combined.
Jack
It was a marketing tactic to get people to download more copies of Firefox. Don't tack your own strange ideas onto it. It was just a count of downloads, nothing more, nothing less.
to make a hint that people who downloaded ff3 are fanboys is unfair and an uneducated allegation. it negates the fact that people downloaded ff3 because of its functionality, security, speed, and being far better than IE7 which by now I consider as crapware in my system.
the author seems to be a loser. grow up.
On Linux you get a directory of files to wade through, a readme pointing to a
URL thats not there, and, after searching the Mozilla site, and install procedure
sure to fail due to missing libraries.
And waiting for ff3 to pop up on a distros yum repository is like having to wait for new software from automatic update.
Novice Linux users are unlikely to put up with any of this, and not just from ff3.
Its a general but difficult problem, of dependencies multiplied by distros.
Windows has it easy in that department...being only one 'distro'.