Firefox 5 is now the poster boy for all that’s wrong with slip-stream, blink and you missed it, auto-updating software. I just don’t get it; this hands-free approach has been, in other instances, a real boon for me.

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My Apple iPad is full of software that regularly gets significant updates. They do not happen automatically, but they do wipe out previous versions with no fuss or muss. Online, I love that Google’s Chrome web browser auto-updates. On any given day, I can be pleasantly surprised with a new version and new Chrome features and functionality. Sometimes the changes are super-subtle and address things like speed and stability. Other times, the logo has changed and I notice odd new buttons. None of this bothers me or slows me down. Sometimes I benefit greatly from the changes, other times, I scarcely notice them until someone mentions their existence.

Firefox, a Web browser I long-since stopped using, now follows the Google Chrome model, with auto-updates and, scandalously, no support for previous versions. Yes, I’ve heard the controversy. Businesses, in particular, are up in arms because Firefox 4 has been cast aside in favor of the shiny, new Firefox 5.

Out of curiosity, I downloaded Firefox 5 and was stunned by how much it had changed since my last update (somewhere around version 3.5). Firefox 5 is leaner and faster than any Firefox I’ve used before. Its interface actually reminds me, just a bit and not in a bad way, of Ubuntu, a Linux distro. In this version, it has managed to carve out a look somewhat distinct from the increasingly indistinguishable browser competitors. Overall, I’m happy with the Firefox 5 update, but there are many who are not.

Companies and their IT managers are not happy about what Firefox’s parent, Mozilla, just did. Slipstream updates and lack of support for legacy products is a big no-no in the IT world. Businesses move to new technology at a glacial pace. This is to protect their bottom line. New hardware and software that doesn’t work with other mission-critical products could mean lost work, lost time and a whole bunch of confused employees.

This is as it has always been. It is why Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows XP survived for so long in the business world. To this day, I can walk into local businesses and find them running custom or industry-specific applications on Windows 95. Doing so also saves businesses a lot of money. That copy of Windows 95 is likely running on a 10-plus-year-old PC.

I would argue, of course, that companies stuck in the last century will likely get last-century business results while their newer competitors upgrade and race ahead at 2011 speed.

Web browsers are an interesting case. IT admins clearly see Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Firefox as just another piece of software—one they have to manage and ensure the entire company is standardized on. This seems like madness to me. A Web browser is little more than a container for everything you’ll do on the Web. Web sites and Web services are built with some legacy browser compatibility, but they’re also being built using new tools and with the latest browser features and functionality in mind. Internet Explorer 6.0 won’t do as well as IE 7, 8, and 9 with some of the newer Web services.

When Google started doing auto-updates, no one complained. I’m guessing that this is because Google is making the biggest inroads in the consumer space. Internet Explorer gets weekly security updates, but as a business veteran, Microsoft would never dream of silently upgrading customers from Internet Explorer 7 or 8 to IE9.

Firefox became the darling of business and, especially, Web developers, in the mid Oughts (2000-to-2010). In my own company, our developers started using Firefox almost exclusively, with the result that sometimes my own Web sites weren’t entirely Internet Explorer-compatible. For a time, I used Firefox. Eventually, I grew tired of its buginess and propensity for resource hogging and turned to Chrome and then back to IE9.

I think the size and intensity of this Firefox upgrade and support dustup is also a result of many businesses adopting Firefox over the last decade. Perhaps they fell in love with the vast array of extensions, some of which were probably designed for their industries. Now, however, these same IT admins feel betrayed. If Firefox 5 does not work with some mission-critical business app, they’ll be blamed. On the other hand, I wonder if those same IT guys are simply upset that a little bit of control has been wrested from their hands. I suspect that Firefox 5 will work quite well in the majority of businesses and that companies simply don’t want software and system update controls to migrate from IT to the end user. Unfortunately for them, I don’t see anything stopping this trend.

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