Mozilla has claimed a download record for the Firefox 3.0 release. The software was downloaded over eight million times in the first 24 hours after the web browser was made available, stated its creator Mozilla. Statistics available from the download servers are now being scrutinised to give an official figure, which will be sent to the Guinness World Record organisation.

The record attempt was nearly wrecked as the servers, which handled the flow of downloads, almost collapsed under the load of visitors checking if the new version was available. After the servers were up and started functioning normally, the record attempt took off.

At their busiest the servers could handle over 9,000 downloads every minute. The number of downloads for Version 3.0 crossed the 1.6 million mark by Firefox 2.0 in 2006. This milestone was reached within just five hours.

However, the Firefox 3.0 launch was marred to an extent by news from computer security companies that have found some flaws in the new software.