Andre Yoskowitz
28 Mar 2011 1:33
In its first 24 hours, Firefox 4 was downloaded 7.1 million times, followed by a second day boost of 8.75 million, blowing away the previous Guinness World Record record for single-day software downloads.
The previous record was held by Firefox 3.0, which saw 8.1 million downloads in one-day in 2008.
After a year of development, 12 betas and two RCs, Firefox 4 launched to much fanfare last week.
The new record will be unofficial because there were no Guinness representatives on-site this time around to independently audit the number.
Mozilla also crushed Internet Explorer 9's download numbers, with Microsoft reporting 2.3 million downloads for the first 24 hours. That number may be deceiving, however, as many Internet Explorer users are in corporate environments where updates are controlled by the IT team and are normally rolled out slowly. An overwhelming majority of Firefox downloaders are personal and "power" users, not corporate, says CW.