FireFox had an astounding 8.7M downloads in 24 hours.
I am sure that the Guiness Book of World Records folks will award them the record for most downloads in a 24 hour period.
Having been using the Beta releases of FireFox 3, I am pretty familiar with the latest updates to the browser, and I need to point out that FireFox 3 is a HUGE improvement over FireFox 2 (not that FireFox 2 was a bad browser).
Laterz
FireFox is trying for a world record in regards to the number of downloads in a 24 hour period of their latest browser, FireFox 3.
I have been running their various FireFox 3 Beta version since they first released it. I had found that FireFox 2 was slow to open, and would ‘bog down’ when I had a couple of dozen tabs open. I also found that web apps that were very JavaScript intensive didn’t run quite as fast I wanted in FireFox 2.
Therefore, when the FireFox 3 Beta release was available I installed it without thinking twice on the subject.
Today at 10am Pacific they kicked-off their efforts to win the world record, or so at least I think they tried to.
Since Noon (here, 10 am Pacific) Jeremy and I have been trying to download FireFox 3. We have not had any luck. Their servers were getting just SLAMMED, presumably because everyone and their brother (and uncle, and cousin, and so on and so forth) have been trying to download the latest version.
The main FireFox.com site was not working, nor was the SpreadFireFox.com site either. However, the Mozilla Blog was still up and running. I checked there for updates, not until about 40 minutes after the noon hour did a post come through, confirming that the FireFox servers were getting slammed and they promised to get them working normally very soon.
OK, ummm… yeah.
I have been party to a few product launches in my day, so I feel safe to say “This ain’t my first rodeo.”
However, I am very surprised that the good folks over at Mozilla didn’t have their sh!t together before going for a world record. I mean spin up a few mirrors (servers) on EC2 @ Amazon or get RackSpace to help you out with a special for the 24 hour period, I mean I am sure RackSpace would have killed to be part of a Promo, something along the lines of “Our servers and network handled the load the world record setting release of FireFox 3.”
For a brief moment there both Jeremy and I were able to get to a very pretty looking screen that said it would let us download FireFox 3 via the SpreadFireFox.com site. However, when we finally downloaded from the ‘Download FireFox 3′ button, it turned out to be FireFox 2, not FireFox 3, suck!
Now when I try to go back to SpreadFireFox.com, I keep getting a screen that looks like the following…
Again don’t get me wrong, I love FireFox it is the best browser I have used in years (notably my default browser for everything I do, sometimes though I end up having to use IE)
Jeremy and I joked that maybe the FireFox guys were using the TwitterAPI and that is why they are down. (In case you didn’t know, the TwitterAPI has had problems recently — article1 – article2.)
Speaking of Twitter, Jeremy was able to find a link to download FireFox 3 that actually worked, because someone posted it on Twitter.
Back to the grind.
Laterz