You might recall that Mozilla, the Mountain View organization that oversees the development of the free Web browser, made a splash last month by publicly stating its goal of earning the download title with the release of Firefox 3.

Never mind that there really wasn't a record to break. Mozilla wanted to show off the popularity of its software.

It was so popular, in fact, that users overloaded the site at one point and slowed the pace of downloads. Still, the browser easily pushed past Mozilla's initial goal of 5 million downloads in a day. Now, they can officially claim Guinness World Record bragging rights.

More than 180 million people worldwide use Firefox. Since the June launch, there have been 28 million downloads of Firefox 3, including 7.7 million in the United States.

Firefox has 19 percent of the Web browser market, making it the second-most popular browser after Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle