Firefox 3.0 is now the most downloaded piece of software in the first 24 hours. The publicity stunt that Mozilla has set up with the help of the open source community has been extremely fecund in terms of generating downloads for the successor of Firefox 2.0. On July 2, 2008, the Guinness World Records officially confirmed that Firefox 3.0 had broken down all barriers when it comes to the volume of downloads in the first day after launch. By June 18, Firefox 3.0 had skyrocketed to no less than 8.3 million downloads, but the official figure that set the world record is related to the 8,002,530 unique downloads of the open source browser.

"The good folks at Guinness have certified the Firefox download record. 8,002,530 unique individuals downloaded Firefox 3 in the 24 hour period after launch on June 17th, 2008. We said it when Firefox 1.0 launched but it bears repeating: We're setting the world on fire! Congratulations also to the 8M+ people that all own a piece of this accomplishment. You all are amazing and you inspire me," stated Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's community coordinator.

Between 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, in excess of 8 million people had grabbed a copy of Firefox 3.0. Obviously, the ball is now in Microsoft's court to top off Firefox 3.0's performance with the release of Internet Explorer 8. But even if IE enjoys by far the largest share of the browser market, users have been notably sluggish to jump aboard new releases. Internet Explorer 7, for example, only made it to 3 million downloads in the first four days after launch. By the end of the first week, Firefox 3.0 exploded to no less than 20 million downloads, and is now approaching the 30 million milestone.

"This is another wonderful accomplishment in a long line of them for our community! 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!" stated Mary Colvig, director of Mozilla's events program, and the person responsible for putting together Download Day.

Firefox 3.0 Final for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0 Final for Linux is available for download here.
Firefox 3.0 Final for Mac OS X is available for download here.