L Firefox 3 marked the latest iteration of the second most popular browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Firefox 3 team looked to set a world record for the number of downloads in a day.

Firefox 3 was made official today with Guinness certifying that Firefox 3 was downloaded 8,002,530 times in the first 24 hours of its launch. That number weeds out all duplicate downloads and automated downloads.

Even though Firefox 3 holds the record for most downloads in a day, it still holds a fraction of the browser market that number one Internet Explorer has. According to The Wall Street Journal Firefox held 19.03% of the browser market in June while Internet Explorer captured 73% of the total browser market.

Firefox and other browsers are gaining ground on Microsoft– albeit slowly. According to The Wall Street Journal, Internet Explorer lost about half a percentage point of market share per month for the last 12 months.

Mozilla announced its record setting attempt with much pomp and fanfare on June 17 and to commemorate the occasion the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft even sent over a cake.

News Source- DailyTech