June 21 2011 saw the release of Firefox 5, almost three months after its earlier version Firefox 4 was released. By the time users got acquainted with the usage of Firefox 4, Mozilla sent them a new release version in three months.
And now its surprising to hear the Mozilla Firefox team announce the release of Firefox 6 by August 2011, i.e. in six weeks time. And Firefox 7 will follow suit and shall release after six weeks of Firefox 6. And Firefox 8, and 9, 10 … At this rate, by the time IE10 gets released in late 2012, Firefox will be on version 16!
What is Firefox upto?
Releasing a new version every six weeks and withdrawing support for the earlier version looks like a bad decision taken by the Firefox team. Users will hardly get time to utilize the browsing experience that Firefox offers to the fullest. Instead they will be forced to lookout for the new version as soon as it gets released because the earlier version(s) wont hold any good, according to Firefox.
Companies wont be able to keep up with this release pace of Firefox due to their vast infrastructure and settings involved. And when confronted, guess what? The Firefox team bluntly replies, “Expect zero support“.
And yes, this decision by Firefox led to champagne-popping in Redmond with huge grins and an aura of relief. This will actually help Microsoft solidify its once shaken Internet Explorer position and increase its share among web users. We can predict a lot of Firefox users jumping base to either Internet Explorer or Google Chrome after which Firefox cannot boast of “2 million Firefox downloads per day from regular user types“. Bah!
Its time somebody actually punched the Firefox team in their face and made them realize that this is a very bad decision and gonna cost them big time.
What do you think!? Why do you think Firefox took this decision and is it the right one!?
