Five hours. That’s how long it took Mozilla fans to download enough copies of Firefox 3 to eclipse what the previous version tallied in its first day.
According to Mozilla, Firefox 3 reached 1.6 million downloads by early Tuesday evening. The Web site saw almost 9,000 copies of the free, open-source software downloaded every minute in the opening hours of its availability.
The release of Firefox 3 kicked off Download Day, the Mozilla community’s campaign to set a new Guinness World Record for the greatest number of software downloads in 24 hours.
Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch, is not surprised at the download numbers, since Mozilla has been pushing the new version heavily for months. “Mozilla certainly threw a nice stunt and Firefox 3 is very good browsing technology,” he said. “Most users, though, are not going to see dramatic differences from what they were using before.”
Speed, Fidelity and Security
Still, Mozilla calls Firefox 3 a major update. “We’re really proud of Firefox 3 and it just shows what a committed, energized global community can do when they work together,” said John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla.
It took the community three years to develop the latest version. It’s available in about 50 languages. It’s two to three times faster than its predecessor and it offers more than 15,000 improvements, including a smart location bar, malware protection, and extensive under-the-hood work to improve the speed and performance of the browser, Mozilla said.
At the end of the day, Gartenberg said, browsing innovations are about speed, displaying Web pages so content presents correctly, and security features to protect users from malicious Web sites.
“Firefox’s big new feature is the ability to search your surfing history and find sites you’ve been to in the last three months,” Gartenberg said. “It’s sort of a mini-search engine for your…