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Firefox 3.0 launch crashes servers for 20 minutes

The most serious contender to Microsoft's Explorer web browser is Firefox. Today, the latest version of Firefox was released at 1PM EST.

Prior to the launch, the Mozilla Foundation was asking users to form download parties around the world in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in one day.

The flood of hits was so great that the servers froze up for 20 minutes.

Mozilla hopes to see 5 million downloads in just 24 hours.

The newest iteration of Firefox promises to be twice as fast for web applications such as email, more efficient use of memory, new security measures, automatic updates of plug-ins and add-ons, better integration with Windows, and virtually thousands of other improvements to the Firefox browser that are transparent to the user.

Firefox is the second most popular web browser and presently holds approximately 16% of the browser market share while Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the number one application for browsing, has 65% with the remaining numbers going to other web browsers.

While 16% sounds like a relative small number compared to Explorer's massive user base, Firefox has continued to chip away and increase its popularity over Explorer.

Geoff Johnston of WebSideStory, a web metrics company said last year, "[The growth of IE 7] seems to be exclusively at the expense of IE 6. It's not eating into the Firefox share at all. I thought that IE 7 might flatten Firefox's growth, but it's not taken a hit from IE 7. All the movement there has been [is] internal, from IE 6 users upgrading."

So what does the future hold for Firefox? If the usage trend is any indication of how well it will do, the answer to the question is bright.

[via informationweek]

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