Forget about the world record. Just download and install Firefox 3 today and take a moment to celebrate the significance of open Web standards and diversity of platforms.
Here's why it's important. In order for a robust marketplace of independent products and services to flourish on the Internet, we need the level playing field that open standards provide. The alternative -- the closed, proprietary world that Microsoft and others have tried in vain to promote -- inevitably feeds a dangerous concentration of power that leads to abuses. We've seen this happen all through human history, the creation of walls and toll collectors whose effect is to retard progress and cripple commerce to the benefit of the big and powerful, and the detriment of the individual and the inventor.
Firefox is just a Web browser, and version 3 is just another version. But its success -- and the standards-conforming successes of others, such as Webkit (Safari on Mac, Konqueror on Linux) and Opera -- helps hold at bay those who would capture the Web for their own benefit. Download, install, and celebrate.