United States loves Firefox 3, Turkmenistan, not so much

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browsers

United States loves Firefox 3, Turkmenistan, not so much

by Brad Linder Jun 18th 2008

Mozilla's attempt to break a world record by getting as many people to download Firefox 3 in a 24 hour period as possible got off to a bumpy start. But almost a day later, the Mozilla servers are humming along and sending out copies of the company's latest browser to every corner of the globe. Wait, a globe is round. Nevermind.

Anyway, as of this morning, Firefox 3 had been downloaded over 6 million times, with more than 2 million downloads coming from the US. Mozilla has set up a nifty little page where you can track downloads by region. And all we can say is Turkmenistan had better step up its game. Seriously, 7 downloads? There have been more downloads from Greenland. We didn't even realize that people lived in Greenland.

Of course population size, poverty levels, and access to computers all come into play, which is why much of Africa is shaded in blue on the map (meaning most countries have had less than 1000 downloads) while more developed nations like the US, Canada, Spain, the UK, France, Germany, China, Russia, and India are colored in orange or red to show that 50,000 or more downloads have come from those locations.

The world record attempt concludes this afternoon at 11:16am Pacific, 2:16pm Eastern. Anyone want to take a stab at what the final number will be? Keep in mind, Mozilla's already secured a world record, since this is a new category for the Guinness Book of World Records.

In other news, you can also download the portable edition of Firefox 3 today. This is a version of the web browser that you can run from a USB stick without installing anything to your system. That means you can run Firefox 3 portable without uninstalling Firefox 2 or any earlier release candidates, which makes the portable application a great way to test the new browser without making a full commitment to it.

Tags: download-day, firefox, firefox-3, world-record

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

revolutiondude said 9:28AM on 6-18-2008

Notice how Chad only has one download. That's pretty cool, though.

Almost every single country in the world uses firefox....that's pretty interesting. Even countries in Africa that I have never even heard of.

cole said 9:31AM on 6-18-2008

Everyone except North Korea that is. Maybe that's an export restriction or something.

All 3 people in Montserrat have downloaded Firefox.

anasqtiesh said 9:40AM on 6-18-2008

yeah... this could be a selling point: "Firefox 3 teaches you geography!!" maybe not.

Lane said 11:59AM on 6-18-2008

French Guiana doesn't have any downloads either.

Jeebus said 9:28AM on 6-18-2008

Where can I get the x64 version?

Jacob Butler said 9:32AM on 6-18-2008

Guinea-Bissau has had 0 downloads!!! (next to Senegal in Africa)

Shawn said 9:35AM on 6-18-2008

Um, a globe is not a circle...it's a sphere.

Brad Linder said 9:38AM on 6-18-2008

That'll teach me to blog before I've had any caffeine. Fixed.

Kim Schulz said 9:35AM on 6-18-2008

Notice that ff3 have been downloaded around 14mio times from download.com sofar - not bad :-)

Michael K Pate said 10:24AM on 6-18-2008

Hey, lay off Turkmenistan, at least they have some. Svalbard and Jan Mayen are showing up with zero downloads.

Juan Policho said 10:24AM on 6-18-2008

Go Argentina :D!!!!

Its funny how it was a complete bumpy start and now they are managing to pull everything through, 9 hours ago I remember that it was around 2.7M downloads and today I was really surprised, I just woke up and I found this amazing number.

I hope it reaches a number around 7.5M or even more.

I also remember http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/06/17/firefox-whos-that-opera-says-4-7-million-have-downloaded-ve/

that entry, and all I can say is Firefox completely kicked Opera's ass.
But well its not about the challenge or the downloads, the best thing about this is that Open source is being used by more and more people around the world and that is awesome, even if its a slow start this is definitely a whole new chapter.

Those are my thoughts.

Saludos
Juan

Riddar said 12:56PM on 6-18-2008

Coincidentally, an infuriatingly absurd bug made me go and download Opera 9.5 just yesterday after giving up on Firefox 3. Firefox 3 would not launch from the start menu quick link when installed into a non-default directory, something simple do to with Firefox 2. After several different tries, uninstalls, reinstalls, and a bit of searching, I gave up, downloaded Opera, and have been fairly impressed with it so far. I have used Firefox 3 too, I gave it a shot and it isn't bad, but it doesn't make sense for me to keep a browser that must be installed to a non-functional partition of my hard drive which I plan on formatting soon.

Juan Policho said 1:21PM on 6-18-2008

Riddar, Something that the installer made in my case is to Duplicate the Quick Launch buttons, I just erased the old ones...

In your case try looking for a duplicate or if you don't have the duplicate, Hit properties on the quick launch and add the route to the .exe manually, that is if you want to use Firefox 3.

6 Minutes Remaining and its already on 7.779.679!!!!

julian said 1:37PM on 6-18-2008

GO firefox
kicking some Opera ass
Opera is ok i just feel that they whine too much
their numbers are not as good. period. Even though they claim that they are counted as IE and all that nonsense

Bufsabre said 10:36AM on 6-18-2008

DAMN YOU TURKMENISTAN

james delaney said 10:38AM on 6-18-2008

There has been 1 download from the Falklands Islands so far.

@Shawn: love your comment.

Todd said 10:58AM on 6-18-2008

so.... everyone w/ a computer in Turkmenistan downloaded Firefox.

Christina Warren said 11:56AM on 6-18-2008

Way to be a global imperialist Brad! (I'm kidding, everyone, I'm kidding!)

Doug said 12:04PM on 6-18-2008

I find it really interesting that Iran has more downloads than most countries, including Canada and China (separately, not combined).

idodialog said 12:13PM on 6-18-2008

Gotta put a hand up for Australia - less than 8% the pop of Russia yet about the same number of downloads - easily comparable in the No. of downloads from China yet barely a drop in their ocean of people. And what hapenned to the super techno oriented Koreans - most wired country in Asia (on earth?) 43,000 downloads - what DO they use there?
I've no idea but even compared to parts of Europe where the Fox is popular Australia seems to have the biggest per capita uptake. (oh and did I say what a good browser it is the awesome address bar is, well, awesome!

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