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Firefox 140 Brings Tab Unload, Custom Search & New ESR
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this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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Why is Firefox 4 or 3 versions ahead of Chromium versions (Edge, Chrome)?
Because it's a completely separate codebase that is not chrome based
Not everything is Chrome just yet. We still have Gecko and Webkit holding on.
Why are the buses different colours?
Why is Chrome 121 versions ahead of Android?
Windows 11 and OSX are so outdated
Literally the same reason why Ford sells 150s and 250s and Volvo sells 70s and 90s: They are different products and don't base the version numbers on their competitor.
Why is Sony 1000XM1 versions ahead of Apple?
Competitors tend to do that. Originally Firefox used traditional version numbering up until 3.0, but then when Chrome came out with their numbering scheme of incrementing the main version number with every minor update, Firefox followed suit. It's the same reason Microsoft called the Xbox successor the Xbox 360, if the average consumer would see the Xbox 2 next to the PS3, they'd at least subconsciously think the PS3 was more advanced.
All the downvotes here kinda got me legit angry. Incurious fools and jokers.
It's not a complete answer, but it's partially because the development of Chrome and Firefox have always been highly competitive resulting in them both adopting rapid release cycles around the same time in the early 2010's.
I haven't read too much into the topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was as much a marketing decision as well as a developer one. Similar to how Microsoft didn't want to release an XBox 2 in competition with a PlayStation 3.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Development
These are just the Wikipedia links, but there is interesting discussion of development history to be had, here.
Version numbering has no implications on development. Firefox released just as frequently before, just that they didn't increase the major version that often.
I understand that, so then why change it?
This does not appear to be true.
That blog post has an aura of marketing speak around it.
Version numbering has no implication on development and doesn't even need to align internally and publicly, so somewhere a conscious decision was made to do it this way for "reasons". I conjecture those reasons are at least partially due to marketing. Is this not fair?
Read again. I quoted something along the lines of "just as much a development decision as a marketing one" and I said, it wasn't a development decision, so what's left?
Why don't you take a look at the version history instead of some marketing blog post? https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/releases/
Version 2 had 20 releases within 730 days, averaging one release every 36.5 days.
Version 3 had 19 releases within 622 days, averaging 32.7 days per release.
But these releases were unscheduled, so they were released when they were done. Now they are on a fixed 90-day schedule, no matter if anything worthwhile was complete or not, plus hotfix releases whenever they are necessary.
That's not faster, but instead scheduled, and also they are incrementing the major version even if no major change was included. That's what the blog post was alluding to.
In the before times, a major version number increase indicated major changes. Now it doesn't anymore, which means sysadmins still need to consider each release a major release, even if it doesn't contain major changes because it might contain them and the version name doesn't say anything about whether it does or not.
It's nothing but a marketing change, moving from "version numbering means something" to "big number go up".