Firefox 3 downloads blast past 5 million

Downloads of Mozilla's Firefox 3 Web browser have already passed the 5 million mark, approximately halfway through its 24-hour world-record attempt period.

The Mozilla team had aimed to exceed the 1.6 million downloads that Firefox 2 achieved in the first day of its release period and had hoped for 5 million downloads for Firefox 3 in its first 24 hours of release to set a Guinness World Record.

Approximately 14 hours after its release, Firefox 3 passed the 5 million download mark. President of Mozilla Europe Tristan Nitot told CNET.co.uk's sister site ZDNet.co.uk that he felt as though he was in "a dream".

"We have exceeded our wildest expectations," said Nitot. "I'm so proud of the community. Five million downloads in 14 hours is mind boggling. I'm just concerned it's a dream and I'm going to wake up."

Nitot said it was difficult to predict what the final number of downloads would be, but that the total could reach 8 million.

"Europe is just waking up, so we expect a few more million," said Nitot. "I don't know where it will end up, but we could get 7 or 8 million [downloads]."

Mozilla aimed to set a Guinness World Record for the total number of downloads of a piece of software in a 24-hour period. As part of its marketing effort, it encouraged users to pledge to download Firefox 3 on its release and to hold download parties.

The release was scheduled to begin at 6pm BST on Tuesday 17 June. However, the release could not begin as planned as Mozilla's servers had problems, which were exacerbated by the number of people wishing to download Firefox 3, according to Mozilla.