Download Day: The perils of shooting for a world record

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Browser Tips

Download Day: The perils of shooting for a world record

by Brad Linder Jun 17th 2008

So you may have heard that Mozilla is hoping to set a world record for the most software downloads in a single day today. The company has been hyping today as "Download Day" for about a week. But a more apt name might be "Down Day." That's because GetFirefox.com is down. As in dead, kaput, service unavailable.

This probably shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but if you encourage millions of users to download your software on the same day, your servers are going to take a hammering. But it appears that even Mozilla had no idea how many people would be trying to download Firefox 3 today.

There's a good chance that you may get through if you keep hitting refresh. And there's a good chance that the company will manage to break the world record if it ever gets the servers back up. But you know what? If you don't really care about setting a world record, Firefox 3 RC 3 is pretty much identical to Firefox 3 final. So if you're already running RC2 or RC3, there's no need to kill yourself trying to update your browser today. Tomorrow, next week, or even next month will probably be soon enough.

In the meantime, if you've got your heart set on downloading a next-generation browser, you can always take Opera 9.5 for a spin. That company's servers are holding up just fine.

Update: Some users are reporting success with these download links. Windows, Mac, Linux

Update 2: It looks like the site is back up, but incredibly slow. Like dialup slow.

Tags: download-day, firefox, firefox-3, getfirefox, opera, web-browsers, world-record

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

PRC. said 2:07PM on 6-17-2008

LOL

jimmy said 2:10PM on 6-17-2008

have they ever heard of mirrors? what a cluster f

Grant Robertson said 2:11PM on 6-17-2008

Oh Brad.. You might as well have said, "I'd like to take this opportunity to point, laugh, and recommend a real browser."

Remind me not to take ill immediately after a moment of hubiris; at least while you're around. :)

Brad Linder said 2:12PM on 6-17-2008

Of course, the only reason Opera's servers are holding up is because there hasn't been a mad rush to download the program.

Ernie Tedeschi said 2:18PM on 6-17-2008

Oh, come on. This was planned all along. It's just another way to build buzz. "Ooooo! SO many people were trying to download FF3 that it crashed their servers!" I'm not even convinced the setup file is even on their servers yet. When I went to "http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US", I ended up with RC3.

Just a digital version of planned shortages, if you ask me.

PrimitiveWallflower said 2:33PM on 6-17-2008

Horray! No longer RC3!

Tool said 2:19PM on 6-17-2008

Here is the direct DL:

http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US

or use this:

http://ftp.twaren.net/Unix/Mozilla//firefox/releases/3.0/win32/en-US/Firefox%20Setup%203.0.exe

robotrock said 2:42PM on 6-17-2008

FTP connections don't count towards the total...or so I've read.

mike said 2:19PM on 6-17-2008

finally got onto http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ and the link on there is directing me to firefox 2 lol

the shame!

also it says its been downloaded 578345066 times which is..? er

mike said 2:19PM on 6-17-2008

got onto the site http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

the download button is linking me to firefox 2... nice

oh and the pages says ff3 has been downloaded

578345066

times....

mike said 2:23PM on 6-17-2008

finially they changed the link, all is good now

Jonas said 2:27PM on 6-17-2008

download works great now
(no, it's no longer RC3 on the page)

friko said 2:42PM on 6-17-2008

Not working for Mac OS yet still linking to FF2

friko said 2:42PM on 6-17-2008

...and now is working!

mugczar said 2:43PM on 6-17-2008

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10700/firefox

door0122 said 2:30PM on 6-17-2008

so is an official from Guiness scanning their log files or something to verify the credibility of this record attempt? lol

robotrock said 2:42PM on 6-17-2008

I switched language to English (British) and it came right up!

Paul said 2:43PM on 6-17-2008

It's back to linking to firefox 2.0.0.14. 2:39 EST

Paul said 2:45PM on 6-17-2008

2:42 EST

Fixed. Linking to 3.0

patchsms said 2:45PM on 6-17-2008

"Shades of Twitter, let's get a million people to simultaneously try to d/l the update and not provide the infrastructure to support it - after oh say 25 try again attempts got in hit d/l link and got sent to firefox 2 page, I can only hope this spreadfirefox site is not officially affiliated with Mozilla.org it's all flash and candy and a poorly built site at that. huge download now icon without a link to a d/l a nightmare to navigate. It's a damn good thing I love firefox or this experience would be enough to make me think about switching" I said this earlier you stole my rant!! good thing for you I'm not the AP newswire or I'd sue for content infringement! hee hee

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