With over 50 thousand UK users pledged to download Firefox 3 within the 24 hour time limit for the world record attempt - and hundreds of thousands more outside the UK - things are not looking good so far.

Reportedly, 14 minuets after the launch Mozilla’s servers where down. The main Mozilla website and GetFirefox website are returning a Http/1.1 Service Unavailableerror. One possibility is the Mozilla’s servers over overloaded and inundated with hundreds of thousands of users trying to download Firefox 3. Another possibility an update to the website has gone wrong, or even they could be refusing connections to the server.

I’m sure Mozilla will tell us what is going on in their own time, but for now we have to sit tight and keep trying!

Firefox 3 will finally be officially launched later today. After five beta tests and three release candidates more than 15,000 improvements have been made and firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than before. Over 1.5 million people have pledged to download the improved browser which will form part of a Mozilla World Record attempt for the most downloads within a 24-hour period. There is currently no existing record to break, however Mozilla are keen to smash through the number of Firefox 2 downloads.

This is the first record attempt of its kind so there is no set number. We’d really like to outdo the number of Firefox 2 downloads on its launch day, which was 1.6 million. Let’s shoot for 5 million–the sky is the limit!

Firefox 2 was heavily criticised as a memory hog, for having memory leaks. But over the months a lot of work on Firefox 3 has been completed, especially on the memory footprint, and it seems people are much happier.

We are signed up to the pledge, are you?