----- Original Message ----- > From: "Mike Hommey" <[email protected]> > To: "Ehsan Akhgari" <[email protected]> > Cc: "Chris More" <[email protected]>, [email protected], "Daniel > Veditz" <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 7:09:30 PM > Subject: Re: Breakdown of Firefox full installer > > On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 09:03:30PM -0400, Ehsan Akhgari wrote: > > On 2014-10-14, 6:53 PM, Mike Hommey wrote: > > >On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 11:11:01AM -0700, Chris More wrote: > > >>Very interesting. When Firefox 4 was launched, it was 12MB. When > > >>Australis was launched it was 28MB. Now, Firefox 33 is 35MB. That's > > >>almost a 200% increase. I did an A/B test last year when the installer > > >>was 22MB and there was a strong correlation between average internet > > >>speed in a specific region of the world and install-rate of Firefox. > > >>If world-wide internet speeds are not increasing faster than the > > >>growth of the installer, it could be having a negative impact on > > >>adoption of the product. By how much? No one is for sure as the A/B > > >>test was just testing the current size of Firefox and one 3MB bigger. > > >>The conclusion of the test was that 22mB vs 25MB didn't have a > > >>statistical difference in conversion rate, but now a year later, we > > >>are more than 10MB bigger. > > >> > > >>It looks like everyone provided helpful information and this is a > > >>great start. I am going to work on creating a document to help to > > >>quantify what are the drivers in the growth of the installer. After > > >>that we can decide what does this tell us and if the growth of the > > >>installer has negative impacts. > > > > > >On the other hand, what is the download size of the downloadable > > >alternatives to Firefox? What is their adoption in regions with poor > > >internet speeds? If the answer to both those questions is "bigger", > > >(which I genuinely don't know if it is) there is nothing wrong with > > >our download size. > > > > Coming from a country with typically slow Internet connections, I strongly > > disagree. We should absolutely strive to be better than the competition by > > providing a smaller download size. Only matching the competition should be > > the minimum bar. :) > > I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for better, but I'm questioning the fact > that download size would be affecting our growth. If the download size > of our competitors is not affecting theirs, why would it affect ours? > (and again, the premise is an interrogation) Also agreed. The study with the 3 MB increase shows that it didn't significantly affect conversions. I personally think it would be better to allocate resources to make the stub installer download phase more resilient for the poor network connectivity case though resourcing this work is not possible from my end with the other work currently going on.
It would also be a good thing to fully understand and show why there is such a dramatic difference between the entire conversion process (~70%) vs. the stub installer process (~90%). As I understand it a large portion is due to bots repeatedly downloading the full installer without ever performing an install and the first run page not being shown under certain conditions though I wouldn't be surprised at all if there were several others. I've repeatedly asked for this and asked that when that number is presented to people that caveat is included since it is consistently assumed that if we just changed the stub installer we could improve the install process conversion rate by an amount that isn't even available to the stub installer. Robert _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
