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Firefox Goes for World Download Record
Kelson writes "For the upcoming release of Firefox, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."
You clearly haven't worked with Fx3 yet. At first I was skeptical about the new smart bookmarks and address bar, but now that I've used it for a month or two (starting with beta 2) I'm quite pleased with it. The address bar basically does exactly the same as it always has, except now it actually does an on the fly substring search in your history instead of just giving an arbitrarily sorted list of previously visited sites. I would dare say this is one of the biggest improvements to the web browsing experience in the last several years.
It's like inviting a DDOS attack. I suppose it has the dual merit of setting world record and testing their server capacity.
QuantumPete
will be counted most probably. I dont know of many linux users who download directly from mozilla website. Most would use a package from their distribution which generally is not available on the same day (and even if it is, how will they count those downloads).
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
If they set a record - they'll be in the news.
If they are so successful that the servers go down temporarily - they'll definitely be in the news.
As you can see, just submitting the idea has put them in the news. This is a great idea for a company with growing market share.
I think this is a cool idea. There are still lots of people who don't know there are other browsers in existence; when they open IE they say they're opening "the internet." Anything that makes the news and makes them aware of alternate browsers is good - especially if it's "hey this thing is really popular." For many people, that's the best argument for trying it.
Mozilla seems to have done pretty well by harnessing the power of fanatic users so far - remember the big newspaper ads? And check out the "pledge map" on the site. Think how proud you'd be to see that you're one of a very few people in your country who has pledged to download it. Kind of a mix of national pride and geek pride.
Every web developer's dream is a world where all users have more standards-compliant browsers, and IE is forced to follow suit. I say hooray for almost anything that makes that closer to reality.Maybe they need more silly publicity stunts like this one.