Break the Guiness World Record For Downloads? Flash Already Did It

Posted on by

Simsons Did itMozilla is doing trying to break the record for software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox 3. Having used Firefox 3 I’m pretty impressed, I like it, and the downloads thing is good marketing. But it’s nowhere close to Flash. Here’s the quote from their FAQ courtesy of Larry Dignan:

This is the first record attempt of its kind so there is no set number. We’d really like to outdo the number of Firefox 2 downloads on its launch day, which was 1.6 million. Let’s shoot for 5 million–the sky is the limit!

So there’s not actually a world record to break, but to put that in perspective, we get 8 million installs of the Flash Player…..on an average day. I don’t even know what it is on one of our release days (but I’ll try and find out).

The image reference.

Related posts:

  1. Flash widgets are taking over the world
  2. Empowering the Third World With Flash
  3. Is Ted Patrick Taking Over the World?
  4. Technology at the Top of the World
  5. Running Flash Player 10 beta and Flash Player 9 Side By Side
  • http://blog.vivisectingmedia.com James Polanco

    Oh man, I LOVE the pic….

    Flash has already done it!

  • http://scriptplayground.com Matthew Keefe

    I always am weary of downloads, especially in the sense that people download multiple times, and all that. Funny though how many people download Flash, I for one didn’t know it was quite that big a number.

    Also, on the subject of Firefox 3, did you read about the AS3 issue surrounding key events? Kind of shocking they still intend to ship FF3..

  • http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd John Dowdell

    Ryan, in March 2008 Kevin Lynch quoted “twelve million successfully completed installations per day”, and I believe it has climbed again since then:
    http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Adobe-Floating-on-AIR/

    (Yes, the Mozilla evangelism group may not understand the nature of the real web today, the web evolved from countless ongoing decentralized choices… such a gap between rhetoric and reality would explain many other phenomena too.)

    jd/adobe

  • http://blog.jeffhaynie.us Jeff Haynie

    I’m so ignorant on this so forgive me for a stupid question.

    why would so many people download flash on a daily basis given it has like 99% penetration or something like that.

    that’s like 4 billion downloads a year… are there that many people on the web worldwide?

    like i said, this isn’t so obvious what this even means.

  • ryanstewart

    Hey Jeff,

    when I do that math I get 2.9 billion downloads. Within a year we get about 90% penetration for new versions, so within a year a bulk of people in the world have downloaded a new version of Flash. That could be because sites require a newest version or any number of reasons, but people are still downloading the Flash Player a bunch each day.

    =Ryan

  • http://dreamdrummer.com/ Erki Esken

    Ryan, I bet most of Flash Player downloads are automatic upgrades or express install upgrades. A lot less people go to adobe.com directly to download.

    And that’s what I think Mozilla folks are trying to do here, record of manually started downloads.

    I work at Skype and I can also say that with pushing out update notifications we’ve had millions of downloads a day. But I wouldn’t count that as a record either.

  • Sergio

    It’s good for firefox, but what about safari being distributed with itunes?

  • http://www.netbois-consulting.com/ Wilfried

    Hi, I have used Firefox 3 (RC); The fact is that performances and rendering seem to be better. I use others web browsers only for web test…
    Compared with millions installs of the Flash Player, I think that Download Day will be a very good thing because it will set a record of manually downloads, which is different than automatic install/upgrades (how many people ?). But at the moment, with less than 400.000 pledges, the record is not set.

  • http://polyGeek.com polyGeek

    I’m not impressed with FF3 at all. I can’t copy/paste in Buzzword anymore, Gmail is all messed up. I kept going back to the Help->About screen to look and make sure I didn’t have a beta or something.

    So screw it. I just made my own browser with AIR. Took 10 minutes to create the browser, location bar, tabs, pretty much everything I need. Works much better.

  • http://www.tipsformoms.net goonie

    Hey, Where I could get latest version of Firefox (3c)?I have subscribe to this firefox download Buzz but I only get an email not the download link.

  • http://beejex.co.cc Beojan

    Polygeek, FF3 hasn’t been released yet. You have either a Release candidate or more likely a beta. Don’t expect it to be as stable or bug free as FF2 until it is released.

  • Dan

    I find it more likely he has some bad profile data, or a broken extension. A number of things can break ANY app, and third-party code is at the top of the list. See if you still have your problems in safe-mode or with a fresh profile, both of which are fairly easy to test if you really wanted to give Firefox a fair try and not just bash it. If one of them fixes it, it’s a problem with profile data (the former most likely indicates extension or third-party theme problems… latter means some other profile file).

    Also your AIR browser is most likely (99% chance) based on Internet Explorer. So you’re just using Internet Explorer with all the same vulnerabilities and shortcomings that are causing users to flock to Firefox and other browsers…

    I find it funny when people switch away from IE to use an IE-based browser ignorant of what they’re using. Not sure if you were using IE previously, I’m just saying in general.

    I was a bit disappointed to learn about Flash’s download records… Still, Mozilla has already beaten their previous record… 3million and climbing!

    http://downloadcounter.sj.mozilla.com/

  • http://slashback.org/ Tim F.

    Not to burst your bubble or anything, but it *is* true that it’s the first *record attempt*. It may be true that Flash has exceeded FF2′s download statistic, but I the Mozilla Foundation is the first to attempt an official record with Guiness.

    So, I say Flash should give the Mozilla Foundation a run for its money. Next release day, try and beat Firefox’s record for *manual downloads* of the new version.

  • ryanstewart

    @Dan, AIR isn’t a browser. It does have an HTML engine and we’re using WebKit, not IE.

    @Tim, Okay, I’ll buy that. Maybe we should do something like that when we release Flash Player 10. That would be kind of cool.

  • Interoperability

    Except Flash sucks on every other platform except on Windows, whether due to Adobe employees laziness or incompetence nobody knows, god knows how many exploits you can find in it(google Pwn 2 Own), and also it’s a proprietary vendor lock-in just like Silverlight.

    No wonder Apple isn’t including it in the Iphone, truth hurts doesn’t it? Google Sproutcore and you’ll get a better idea. With the world changing and embracing open protocols, proprietary vendor lock-in plugins aka Flash and Silverlight will have no place in the future.

    Choose open source, say no to proprietary vendor lock-in crap.

  • http://www.baby-iphone.com Josh Stratton

    Saying Adobe gets X* amount of downloads is like saying quicktime gets so many downloads each time Apple updates Itunes which a majority of the world uses. The flash you are talking about is a “Plug-in” not a actual program, Ill make a bet 90% of the firefox 3.0 owners are downloading flash as soon as they get a chance because they need it for most sites. Mozilla Firefox is the small man trying to compete with Microsoft and this stunt is getting them new users who they hope will stick with them. I personally think Mozilla has been better since they released it. I remember thinking the beta versions were better then IE just because I had ownership feel of it that was not brought with IE. They are now a leading browser developer since you can see in IE 7, They took some functions that Mozilla brought to the field like tabs. I have and will continue to support the open source community because they have truly brought a great program to life and it can only get better.

  • http://xlinuks.googlepages.com xlinuks

    By the end of 2008 Flash Player won’t be as relevant as it is, for Silverlight (v2) will be installed on 95% computers regardless. M$ will take care of this.
    So hurry up with Flash Player 10 to “set a record” for it might be too late.
    And oh, this fall also comes the release of JavaFX which is much faster than both Flash and Silverlight with true hardware accelerated 3D and movie support (and other cool stuff). Umm.. I’m afraid this won’t be published :)

  • ryanstewart

    @xlinuks, It’ll get published, but I just think you have no idea what you’re talking about :) .

    @All, Cheers to Mozilla for the number. It’s awesome.

    @Josh, I don’t think that’s entirely fair. How many downloads of Quicktime happen in an average day? Even on release day, why is that less than what Mozilla’s doing?

    I’ll buy using the auto-update is kind of cheating, but we don’t have auto-update in the Flash Player. You have to actually initiate the download.

  • http://xlinuks.googlepages.com xlinuks

    Well since I’m a Java developer I watch closely JavaFX (and the speed of ActionScript implementation compared to Java), so I actually know what I’m talking about, but I think it’s off topic :)
    Back to topic, the software you’re talking about is a plug-in while Firefox is an application, so we should compare apples to apples.

  • Maritza

    I don’t choose to download Flash. My browser also had a problem downloading it and so it downloaded Flash every time I visited a site needing it. With Firefox, no one is forced to use it for any reason. Most computers come with IE, Adobe Reader, Flash, and other mandatory programs. My comp never came with Firefox. I willfully learned about it, went to the site, and have used it ever since.

  • God

    No one consciously chooses to download flash, it just happens when an update is available. And sometimes I have to switch back to the old version because the new one is COMPLETELY BROKEN! If you didn’t release a shity new version every month and actually made a usable version, the numbers would be much lower.

  • http://meandthecomputer.blogspot.com Anthony

    I love Flash to death man. But please don’t be too cocky and spoil the other guy’s party.

    In the first place, Flash and Firefox are different beasts.

    So please.

  • Ikky

    Flash can beat this, but not official.
    Adobe can break this Guinness Record by the next release of Adobe Flash Player, 10. To be the most downloaded software in a day.

  • http://features20.blogspot.com Ivan I?in

    If you define “download” as something that should leave one single file on your computer, I think that Flash doesn’t qualify.

    As far as I tried, it got installed on my computer, and I didn’t get installation file.

    If that is the truth, then you must download Flash on every single computer, which is not necessary for Firefox.

    Also, as some people noted, Flash doesn’t qualify as ‘program’ as I can’t start it without browser.

    Finally, while I am sure that numbers of Flash downloads are huge, 8 millions a day translate into 3 billions a year, and there are only 1,5 billions of Internet users in the world, so there might be some math problem in that.

  • http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/ Jem

    Given that you have little choice whether or not to download Flash – if you don’t, a huge percentage of websites don’t work – it’s hardly a fair comparison to Firefox. I could choose not to download FF and still have a variety of browsers at my disposal.

    I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I’d ditch Flash plugins in a heartbeat if only Flash were less commonplace on the web.

    Dislike for Flash aside, it sure will be interesting to see companies making and breaking more web-related records now that the Mozilla guys have started on it.

  • http://blogs.adobe.com/jd John Dowdell

    “we don’t have auto-update in the Flash Player.”

    Typo there. Adobe Flash Player has had auto-update capabilities for a few years:
    http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help10.html#117343
    http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=16701594&sliceId=2

    We try to trigger it only when necessary, however. I don’t think v9.0.115 was on auto-update (MovieStar was a feature update), but 9.0.124 was a security version, and so entered the auto-update cycle.

    Wish we had the real name of that guy with the “SL 95% in 08!” and “JavaFX will ship *and* be faster!” lines… he’d buy us all beers…. ;-)

    jd/adobe

  • Ebrahim

    Don’t you think Google logo image (which appears on search result page) has done it before Firefox 3 and Adobe Flash?!
    What about antivirus updates? What about Windows critical patches? … you say!