What would your guess be? Which is the most, officially, downloaded program on the web? The first name that probably comes to mind is ICQ, and rightly so since it was the most downloaded program for a long time. On Friday however, all that changed and a new popular champion stands at the top. Reaching 100 million downloads in August, 2002 and then jumping on to 200 million on March 11th, 2003 Kazaa Media Desktop has now reached the staggering 230 million plus, mark which makes it officially the most downloaded free program on the web. All these figures are as measured by Download.com, which is owned by CNET Networks Inc.
Sharman Networks have done a good job of convincing users that Spyware, the controversial "funding" mechanism used by Kazaa's previous owners, is out and arranging a variety of licenses for offering legitimate downloads, they seem to have overcome the last hurdles in their way.
The greatest hurdle, of course, is still to come and has to do with a little known organization called the RIAA. Kazaa is facing a variety of law suites regarding the use of its service. The news of the record set by Kazaa will certainly strengthen record label resolve to throw everything they've got at Sharman.
There is hope for Kazaa however, since Record labels suffered a setback in April when a federal judge decided that similar networks, Grokster and Morpheus, could not be shut, claiming that they had no control over what is traded on them.
In order to better place themselves for their time in front of the Judge, Sharman have entered into a partnership with a company called Altnet, in order to provide a variety of content including, music, movies, games and software.
