14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is urging Firefox users to gear up to push Firefox 3.0 into the Guinness World Record book by making it the most downloaded piece of software in the first 24 hours after launch in history. The D-Day (Download Day 2008) is set to coincide with the official launch of Firefox 3.0. Currently, Mozilla plans to drop the next iteration of its open source browser in mid-June, but has yet to announce the actual deadline. The Download Day 2008 official website is accepting pledges, and the number of users that have committed to help turn the first 24 hours of Firefox 3.0 into a veritable Guinness World Record was over 120,000 at the time of this article.
"Sounds like a good deal, right? All you have to do is get Firefox 3 during Download Day to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours - it's that easy. We're not asking you to swallow a sword or to balance 30 spoons on your face, although that would be kind of awesome," Mozilla promises, adding that "Download Day will coincide with the general availability of Firefox 3. The clock will start ticking when Firefox 3 goes out the door! We don't have a definitive date for Firefox 3 yet, but it should be in June."
Back in October 2006, on the heels of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla launched Firefox 2.0. The predecessor of Firefox 3.0 managed to climb all the way to two million downloads in the first day alone, while IE7 took four days to reach three million. With Firefox 3.0, Mozilla is aiming for at least 5 million downloads in the first day of availability but, of course, the sky's the limit, as they say.
"Mozilla will only count downloads that are fully and completely transmitted, not partial or complete updates. We will also discard duplicate downloads with the help of a cookie system. We will be logging our downloads using Apache and these logs will be made available for audit to Guinness World Records," Mozilla informed.
On May 28, 2008 Mozilla gave green light to Release Candidate 2 of Firefox 3.0 but, for the time being, RC1 is available for download here.