Firefox 3 reaches new record but will IE 8 smash it?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Sunday, 06 July 2008 19:25

Opinion and Analysis

Firefox 3 recorded more than 8 million downloads on “download day”, and I can say I was responsible for one of those, as can 8 million others worldwide. Still, it leaves me wondering how many will download IE 8 upon its release, and whether we should all just forget about IE and Firefox and use Opera instead.

Last week, the Mozilla Foundation proudly announced that Firefox 3 had officially reached a new Guinness World Record – 8,002,530 people download the new browser between 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008.

The Mozilla Blog notes that: “This is another wonderful accomplishment in a long line of them for our community!”

It also notes that “Ever since Firefox was launched in 2004 we’ve relied on our community to help us spread the word, and thanks to projects including crop circles, newspaper ads, giant stickers, videos, blogs and more we now have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries.  Incredible work!”

The site also advises that you can download your own “personalised Download Day certificate” should you so wish.

Of course, printing it out will be a bit environmentally wasteful: you’ll use up a sheet of paper and some ink in the process, but hey, why should I spoil your fun if that’s what you want to do? It’s a free world, after all.

Still, I do wonder if Microsoft will be able to smash this record when it releases Internet Explorer 8, which is currently in beta and not due to be released until sometime next year. If Microsoft put out a similar "download day" style challenge, I wonder just how many people would give it a go?

That said I've already seen non-developer users having found the IE8 beta and are already using it quite happily, so it would be an interesting exercise. I suspect they could smash the record, but it would be funny if Microsoft tried its own download day and got fewer numbers.

I’ve been using Firefox 3 for months now, ever since beta 3 of Firefox 3 first came out, and it’s definitely a good browser, better than Firefox 2 and quite visually pleasing.

But I grown a bit tired of Firefox 3 and want to give Opera 9.5 a go as my primary browser.

Why? Please read on to page 2.