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.
Actually, Firefox version numbers were totally independent for most of their history, but Mozilla recently adjusted them to roughly align with Chromium versions to reduce confusion for developers.
2004 - Firefox 1.0, no Chrome yet
2010 - Firefox 4.0, Chrome around version 8
2011 - Firefox switches to rapid releases
2020 - Firefox and Chrome both around version 85, just by coincidence
2024 - Firefox jumps from 124 to 126 to align with Chrome 126
2025 - Firefox 126+, Chrome 126+, version numbers now track similarly
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.
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.
Version numbering has no implications on development. Firefox released just as frequently before, just that they didn't increase the major version that often.
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?
Firefox released just as frequently before, just that they didn’t increase the major version that often.
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".
That's my disclaimer that my research on the topic was less than exhaustive when I posted it at midnight, smartasscool guy. I then when on to offer a legitimate, if simple answer with sources that I linked. I see now the error of my ways in trying to provider a sincere answer to a question instead of posting the same tired dunk as everyone else.
I have learned the error of my ways and will carry this lesson with me into the future as we build this Lemmy community.
No worries! I did bring a bit of heat in my response and for that I accept the downvotes.
It does just make me a little angry to see someone post a question out of genuine curiosity where there is a real answer to be researched and discussed and met with a string of tired dunks. That's some serious Reddit behavior right there (diss, intended for other posters).
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.