Firefox 3.0: Burning with Buzz

Sam Gustin doesn't really care that Firefox's Guinness Book of World Records stunt was a publicity ploy. Firefox still rules.

Today, Mozilla, the group of developers behind the Firefox Web browser, released version 3.0, much to the delight of geeks everywhere. For years, Firefox has been the preferred browser for the tech set.

In a bid to stoke the hype, Mozilla declared that it was gunning for an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for most downloads in a single day. Late this afternoon the company reported that users were downloading 14,000 copies of Firefox per minute.

Firefox, which received millions of dollars per year from Google in exchange for embedding a Google search box in the browser, has been slowly chipping away at Microsoft's browser dominance.

In May 2005, Firefox held just 8 percent of the browser market, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer commanded 87 percent. In May of this year, however, Firefox's market share had grown to over 18 percent, while Microsoft's had dropped to under 74 percent.

Mozilla is clearly hoping today's splashy launch of Firefox 3.0 will help continue to narrow that gap.

Among the new features in Firefox 3.0 is a nifty tool known as the "Awesome Bar" that allows users to search their own Web history by keyword. The new version almost boasts faster load times, better security, and one-click bookmarking.

Despite the fairly transparent nature of it's Guinness stunt, Firefox has the buzz, and if current trends continue, Internet Explorer's days as the dominant browser may be numbered. It's not going to happen overnight, or even next year, but Microsoft executives are sure to  be watching closely.