There has been talk for some time now of the official release date for Firefox 2.0. Narrowed in on Tuesday October 24, 2006, the launching is still a tad off from the initially announced release date that was scheduled for mid-August. And almost a week after Internet Explorer 7. Although IE7 was originally scheduled for availability later this week, considering the context, Microsoft has rushed its browser to the launching to get the lead on Mozilla. And it is a considerable lead, as the Redmond Company has counted over 3 million downloads in the first four days.

How is Mozilla coping with these figures? Extremely well for an open-source project. According to Mozilla's community coordinator, Asa Dotzler, in excess of 20,000 testers have signed up for the testing stages of 2.0. As for the downloads, Mozilla is experiencing some 350,000 downloads per day. Less than Microsoft, but you have to consider that the Redmond Company is flooding every media channel available with advertisements: TV, Internet, traditional press, outdoor. Not to mention that Microsoft has even produced its first ever radio commercial for Internet Explorer and is jamming traffic in 10 major US cities with mobile billboards.

Mozilla - in the words of the same Dotzler - has little traditional advertising. In this regard, the only conclusion is that Mozilla's community is hard at work spreading the browser.

Firefox 2.0 was tested by Softpedia as being 100% Free and is available for download here.