The Mozilla Foundation is basking in the glory of an official Guinness World Record thanks to the efforts of Firefox fans.
The software company announced on Wednesday that Guinness adjudicators had finished checking the results of the Download Day and had confirmed the feat as an official World Record.
The Download Day, which was a twenty-four hour period starting on 17th June at 1816 UTC when Firefox 3 was officially released, was a rather clever marketing gimmick. By measuring the number of downloads of the new browser, the team hoped to set a new world record for the most downloads of a software package in a day. Which wasn't really hard, as until Mozilla came upon the idea there wasn't a record for most downloads of a software package in a day.
Despite server issues that resulted in the download being unavailable for a time, the official figure for the twenty-four hour period stands at 8,002,530 downloads – which represents a not-inconsiderable 59.5 terabytes of data shifted in that twenty-four hour slot. That's an average data transfer rate of 5,779Mb/s – or rather faster than your average 8Mb/s ADSL line – for the entire day.
Since the end of Download Day, the total downloads for Firefox 3 have increased to a staggering 29 million – of which the UK represents just over a million, with another eight million being downloaded in the United States.
The main problem with new records is that they give people a target to aim for – and, as a result, don't tend to stay records for long. While no other companies have announced official plans to best Mozilla's efforts, it'll be interesting to see who the record holder is next year.
Did anyone here participate in the Download Day, or did you grab Firefox on the day of release just to upgrade – not realising you were participating in a world record attempt? Perhaps you think software companies should leave gimmicks like this alone? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
The software company announced on Wednesday that Guinness adjudicators had finished checking the results of the Download Day and had confirmed the feat as an official World Record.
The Download Day, which was a twenty-four hour period starting on 17th June at 1816 UTC when Firefox 3 was officially released, was a rather clever marketing gimmick. By measuring the number of downloads of the new browser, the team hoped to set a new world record for the most downloads of a software package in a day. Which wasn't really hard, as until Mozilla came upon the idea there wasn't a record for most downloads of a software package in a day.
Despite server issues that resulted in the download being unavailable for a time, the official figure for the twenty-four hour period stands at 8,002,530 downloads – which represents a not-inconsiderable 59.5 terabytes of data shifted in that twenty-four hour slot. That's an average data transfer rate of 5,779Mb/s – or rather faster than your average 8Mb/s ADSL line – for the entire day.
Since the end of Download Day, the total downloads for Firefox 3 have increased to a staggering 29 million – of which the UK represents just over a million, with another eight million being downloaded in the United States.
The main problem with new records is that they give people a target to aim for – and, as a result, don't tend to stay records for long. While no other companies have announced official plans to best Mozilla's efforts, it'll be interesting to see who the record holder is next year.
Did anyone here participate in the Download Day, or did you grab Firefox on the day of release just to upgrade – not realising you were participating in a world record attempt? Perhaps you think software companies should leave gimmicks like this alone? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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