Mozilla said that it may have to release more betas fro Firefox than initially planned, possibly nine, and that it will drop the number following the “beta” as a result. At least when it talks about beta releases in public.

How many beta releases for a single product make sense? There was a time when beta was synonymous with the today’s release candidate and the state of a software just before final release. Today we have Google leaving some of its applications in beta for years, we have developer, alpha, beta, release candidate and now also canary versions of applications. I wonder, if we still care and how the consumer perceives this mess of pre-release descriptions.

Mozilla typically stayed with the alpha, beta, and release candidate order. However, there seems to be an inflation of betas for Firefox lately and the confusions and misinterpretation of what beta really means has convinced the Mozilla marketing to make some changes. Firefox 3.0 was released after five betas and Firefox 4 was originally planned to go through seven betas (three feature-complete betas.)

Laura Mesa, Mozilla’s product marketing manager, announced that Firefox 4 may see more betas and that the organization would have “to call out Firefox 4 Beta 9 in tweets, blogs, videos or social media” which she believes could indicate that Mozilla had an “inefficient development cycle.” I would have to agree that Beta 9 could convey the story of a never ending beta cycle that is a bit out of control.

The numbering system will stay in place, but Mesa said that Firefox 4 Beta will be referred to in public only as “latest” or “newest” Firefox Beta in future. Mesa claims that this move could prevent negative news stories about the length of the development of the software. That could make sense, but then we also know that Google has many more than five, seven or nine beta versions of a browser before it is released. For example, Chrome 5 went through 14 beta versions between January 25, the date the first Chrome 5 beta was released, and May 25, when the first Chrome final was released. In total there were 16 Chrome 5 beta updates with two releases that followed the final.

Interestingly, the frequency of beta releases has given Google the perception of being extremely efficient in its development, which is the opposite of what Mozilla is seeing.

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