Firefox 3 has entered today in the Guiness Book of World Records as the most downloaded software in 24 hours. As you might remember, in its first day of release, Firefox 3 was downloaded for 8,002,530 times. Mozilla has removed form the server logs the duplicates and incomplete downloads and then has submitted the documentation Guinness World Records, which announced today its approval.

"As the arbiter and recorder of the world's amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla's achievement to our archives," said Guinness records manager Gareth Deaves in a statement. "Mobilizing over 8 million internet users within 24 hours is an extremely impressive accomplishment and we would like to congratulate the Mozilla community for their hard work and dedication."

In fact, Mozilla’s impressive effort to keep its servers alive it paid off and Firefox 3.0 registered 10 million downloads in the first two days.

Firefox was officially born in November 2004, as the project of Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross. In fact they began working an a new Internet browser since 2002 and initially Firefox was known as Phoenix. However, due to the trademark problems with the Phoenix Corporation, the browser was renamed in 2004 as Mozilla Firebird. The new name did not last long because of the opposition from the community behind Firebird database and in February 2004 Mozilla’s browser has become officially known as Mozilla Firefox.

Firefox was born in a period when Internet Explorer was the undisputed leader of the market and its declared goal from the beginning was to offer a better, speedier and more secure alternative to Microsoft’s king of the Internet.

Many have thought that Firefox didn’t stand a chance in face of Microsoft’ heavyweight browser, but year after year and version after version, Firefox fought back, bringing new things, new enhancements, proving the power of the open source.For Firefox 3.0, Mozilla promised a browsing experience like never before, and it delivered exactly that, by working on improved performance, better stability, less CPU usage, more sustainability, and by giving it a personal touch.

Based on the Gecko platform, which has been under development for the past 34 months, Firefox delivers protection for anything from malware to forgery and data leaks.

The password manager finally delivers what I (and others) have been waiting for: a manager that offers to remember passwords after a successful login, not every time I type my password wrong!

The download manager is actually useful now, and the resume button makes other download managers useless. And another thing: if you miss you last browsing session, Firefox can save it for you.

But what got everyone saying “wow!” was the “Awesome Bar,” which replaced the old and dull location bar with a Smart Location Bar, which basically works like a search engine, offering multiple matching results based on bookmarks and browsing history.

The Install Add-ons Manager makes Firefox easy to customize, while the Library makes every search through bookmarks and history a stress-free one.

In terms of speed, there’s no doubt about it, Firefox is a winner, by making some applications run twice as fast as before.
In addition to that, your computer won’t cry for over usage of memory anymore, as Mozilla developed a system that reduces the amount of memory used during a browsing session.

Firefox 3.0 also integrates malware protection, a system that will warn users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware.

As Mozilla promised there are over 15,000 enhancements and Firefox 3.0 is quickly moving to a share of 20 to 25 percent of the browser market, putting the future Internet Explorer under heavy pressure.