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Firefox Gets Guinness World Record for Most Downloads

by Evan Shamoon on July 3, 2008 at 09:46 AM



As we now well know, the Internet is serious business.

And to further clarify the point, the Guinness organization (World Records, not beer) has now given the title of "most downloads in a 24-hour period" to Mozilla, which hurled 8,002,530 copies of its Firefox 3 browser into cyberspace on June 17.

"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," as Mozilla branded it, may have been a bit of a publicity stunt, it's still a pretty hefty achievement; this is the biggest launch to a piece of software, free or otherwise, in the history of the series of tubes that we have come to know as the Internet.

So how do things stand? Net Applications gave Firefox 3 2.31 percent market share for the entire month of June, compared with 4.28 percent for Safari 3.1, 16.13 percent for Firefox 2, 26.38 percent for Internet Explorer 6, and 46.45 percent for the Internet's 400 lb. gorilla, Internet Explorer 7.

And to the longtime users of IE, we have some advice: try Firefox for a week. Install some plug-ins. You may never go back. [Source: CNET]

Tags: browsers, downloads, firefox, guinness world record, GuinnessWorldRecord, superlatives, web

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