Let's see, we have it here somewhere.... ah, yes, hubris. "Excessive pride or self-confidence". Well, they'll have some time to look it up at Firefox headquarters, once they've stopped scurrying around trying to get the servers that were going to host the world record downloads to actually, um, serve some downloads.
We don't know what the problems are, but a vague guess might suggest that inviting millions of people around the globe to download your product, which millions of them already use, might put a teensy bit of pressure on the servers.
Getfirefox has, since the official opening of the site (at 10am US Pacific time, 1pm US Eastern time, 6pm UK BST), struggled to show anything, or else happily pointed you to a nice download. Of Firefox 2.
So lots of people blogged it (I was at a talk at the Future of Journalism about celebrities; oh, the fireworks), which has led to lots of other people going to see the car crash. This hasn't helped.
Lesson: world records are hard. As I write, my web browser (which isn't Firefox) has, after 20-odd seconds of "Waiting for mozilla.com", finally loaded the page.
Yes! It's Firefox 2! (Try the image link above. Obviously, by clicking on it you'll contribute to the breakage. But don't let me stop you.)
Come on - hubris does say it all, doesn't it. What we need is for Angelina Jolie or Geri Haliwell to come along and sort it all out. Or do you have a different celebrity who you think today's "launch" of Firefox 3 more closely resembles?
Update: ZDNet warns that some URLs to "Firefox downloads" that you might come across at this point could be diversions to spyware or malware drive-by downloads. Be smart: stick with the Getfirefox site. (It'll come back.) And don't make the mistake some people do, which is to pay for such free downloads. Don't believe me? Re-read Money for nothing, in which Danny Bradbury describes the site which charge people to download free software.
Another update: OK, now (11pm UK time) it is offering Firefox 3. Wonderful what a couple of hours can do, eh. And now it's guaranteed the world record - since there is no existing world record to beat. Still, it will be interesting to see how many it actually does.
(Edited: fixed typo in link, changed to spreadfirefox, changed back to getfirefox. Ta, all.)
