The Mozilla Foundation has set a world record and achieved new heights in its battle for browser market share. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 Web browser set a record for the most downloads in a day. It was the first duration a browser-maker attempted to set a record.

Mozilla set the record with 8,002,530 downloads in June. The Mozilla Foundation will receive the official certificate in London next week.

“Setting a world record really doesn’t matter. It’s a marketing stunt,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch. “At the end of the day you still have to look at who has the overwhelming browser market share. It still belongs to Microsoft.”

Breaking Down Browser Shares

Indeed, Microsoft’s Web Explorer is still the dominant browser. But Firefox is gaining ground, according to a new report from Net Applications. The release of Firefox 3.0 on June 17 spurred rapid usage gains, topping four percent worldwide. In

the first hour after the product was released, Firefox 3.0 gained one percent of worldwide market share.

Firefox 3 gains came mostly from users upgrading from Firefox 2, while its overall usage share grew about .4 percent, primarily at the expense of World Wide Web Explorer, according to Net Applications.

IE’s market share dipped from 73.75 percent in May to 73.01 percent at the end of June, Net Applications’ latest details shows. Firefox increased its overall share during the same period from 18.41 percent to 19.03 percent.

Is Firefox Really the Safest Browser?

In a flurry of good news reports for Firefox, Mozilla users are most likely to be using the latest versions of their browsers, with 83 percent of Firefox users patched, according to joint research from Google, IBM and Communications Systems Group in Switzerland.

By contrast, only 63.3 percent of Safari users and 56.1 percent of Opera…

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