Mozilla’s successful attempt to set a world record for downloads of a single program, Firefox 3 was dumb. It was also incredibly successful.
Does anyone really care about how many copies of a program are downloaded in a day? In 2008? When a program can be downloaded from hundreds of different sites? When BitTorrent and other P2P (peer-to-peer) networks makes measuring file ‘downloads’ more of an exercise in speculative fiction than a science?
I guess so because, not even counting the fuzzy downloads of P2P networks and the like, Firefox was downloaded 8.3-million times in one day. This is spiffy. Meaningless in and of itself, but spiffy.
Having said that, I will say Mozilla’s pounding the drum for downloading Firefox did do one good thing. It did a great job of marketing Firefox.
2 responses so far ↓
1 pogson // Jul 6, 2008 at 1:44 am
I agree. The “record” thing had PR value. It also revealed weakness in the download/mirror infrastructure. If they want to earn/keep the success of being popular, they need to find a better distribution channel. More mirrors is a good option but it still does not scale as well as bittorrent. I think a lot of downloaders would be tickled to upload a few copies. The liklihood that 100 million or more browsers may need to upgrade FireFox at some point gives even more import to improving the distribution system. If they need to count downloads they could probably fork/modify bittorrent to phone home with reports.
2 SilverWave // Jul 6, 2008 at 4:19 am
This stunt got Firefox3 on the BBC web site so…
… a job well done, I would say
Just like calling the smartbar the ‘awesome bar’ even people who hate it end up advertising firefox3.
Note: ‘awesome bar’ = from the address bar, search though your history and bookmarks for a site you have already been to.
This new functionality has cut down my googling by half.