Mozilla sets Guinness World Record with Firefox 3 launch

The launch of the open source Firefox 3 web browser has set the new Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads in 24 hours. Mozilla's mirrors served 8,002,530 complete, individual downloads during the download day event following the official release of Firefox 3 last month.

The download day grassroots marketing campaign was orchestrated by Mozilla's global marketing team. When the idea was first announced to the public in May, Mozilla encouraged enthusiasts to pledge in advance. Over 1.7 million users from all over the world visited the SpreadFirefox web site to affirm their support prior to the day of the launch, and many Firefox enthusiasts planned special parties and download-fests for the day of the release.

I attended Mozilla's official Firefox release party at the organization's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Despite some initial technical problems that prevented some users from being able to access Mozilla's servers, over 1 million downloads were recorded in only the first four hours.

Within 24 hours after the initial release, Mozilla's counter showed over 8 million downloads. The server logs and download information then had to be subjected to an independent audit so that duplicates and incomplete downloads could be removed from the final count. The documentation was then submitted to Guinness and has now received final approval.

"As the arbiter and recorder of the world's amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla's achievement to our archives," said Guinness records manager Gareth Deaves in a statement. "Mobilizing over 8 million internet users within 24 hours is an extremely impressive accomplishment and we would like to congratulate the Mozilla community for their hard work and dedication."

The download day event reflects Mozilla's approach of using inclusive grassroots marketing campaigns that give users a way to contribute and be part of the Firefox community. The success of the event demonstrates the commitment of the Firefox user base and represents one of the greatest open source success stories in recent history. Mozilla credits its users as the architects of this victory.

"The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was instrumental in achieving this record," said Mozilla marketing vice president Paul Kim in a statement. "Our community members came together and not only spread the word, but also took the initiative to help mobilize millions of people to demonstrate their belief that Firefox gives people the best possible online experience."

Firefox 3 has proven extremely popular with our readers here at Ars. Our statistics show that nearly 45 percent of Ars Technica readers are using Firefox, and uptake of the new version has been very swift. Approximately 65 percent of Ars Firefox users are already running Firefox 3.

Although the Firefox 3 launch has been a major success, Mozilla isn't slowing down. Planning and development has already begun on Firefox 3.1, an incremental update that will likely include user interface enhancements, security improvements, and new HTML features. The first alpha release of Firefox 3.1 is tentatively planned for next month.

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080702-mozilla-sets-guinness-world-record-with-firefox-3-launch.html

Mozilla Expands Its Universe With Weave

Mozilla is expanding its universe today, moving beyond desktop software products like Firefox (browser) and Thunderbird (email) and into cloud territory - web services.

The initiative, Weave, is a new project that will store user information - like bookmarks, passwords, history, preferences and customizations, and sync it to your Firefox account. Users can then access that information in the event of a hard drive failure, or if they are on a guest machine (say, at a cyber cafe).

An early version of Weave is available (you must be using the Firefox 3 beta) here. I have not been able to sign up for an account (the confirmation email won’t send).

The service clearly overlaps with initiatives by Google and Microsoft to store user information in the cloud (and Mac users can already sync some user information to the cloud via .Mac). And there will likely be a slew of casualties in the “web OS” space, as their main selling point is to store user settings and other data and make them portable for the cyber cafe crowd.

Based on the proposed architecture and use cases, Mozilla is not yet proposing to get heavily into the online storage space. Backing up non-browser content like photos and videos would compete directly with service providers who store this information online for customers (Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, etc.). But by managing passwords to those services, Firefox is both supporting those service providers and encouraging users to not even bother keeping a desktop copy of content. Keep it all online, and use the browser, from any computer, to keep it all organized. And don’t forget, the social graph just may be hosted by Firefox, too.

Mozilla’s vision is clearly to become the operating system of the Internet, much as Windows is the OS for most desktops. Web applications already run through the browser, and now some of the user data will be stored on servers connected to the browser, too. While Google and Microsoft fire away at each other in the battle for users’ online life, they just may want to keep an eye on Mozilla, too. It’s a non-profit, but its brand is solid gold and they just might do an end around and grab all the users.