The open source software developer says it has received over eight million downloads of its Firefox 3 web browser on the first day of its release. Mozilla even launched the website Spread Firefox to keep track of the number of downloads.

Mozilla wrote about setting the world record in its latest blog entry:

"Awesome job!  I am truly impressed by everyone's hard work.  We exceeded 8 million downloads in our 24 hour period.  We'll need to be patient as our judges and Guinness World Records validate our record attempt.  We'll keep our map up and tracking downloads on  Spread Firefox, but our judges will be reviewing the time period from 11:16 a.m. PDT on June 17th to 11 a.m. PDT on June 18th."

The site went offline early Tuesday, and would only periodically work throughout the morning, preventing users from being able to download the browser more than an hour later.

Firefox 3 was supposed to be available for download during its much-publicized Download Day, starting 1 p.m. EST on Tuesday. But by the time of the launch, the website was overwhelmed with user traffic, says Mozilla, causing html errors and being mostly unavailable.

The company decided to postpone the official download day until it resolved the technical issues. When the site eventually went live almost five hours later, Mozilla began tracking the number of downloads to submit towards a world record.

But many question whether such a world record is even significant, considering that there is no previous record of its kind for Mozilla to compete against.

Firefox 3 is based on the Gecko 1.9 web rendering platform, which the company has been developing for the past 34 months. The new browser includes "more than 15,000 changes to improve performance, stability, rendering correctness, and code simplification and sustainability," says Mozilla.