[iigs]

It's clear that a benefit was seen. Moreover, it's clear that in other cases (shopping at Amazon, searching at Google), more responsive servers mean an increase in traffic, since people are free to shop / browse more, and it keeps people's interest.

In the case of a single site with a single product / purpose (ignoring Mozilla's other products), is there a generally agreed on explanation for what is going on here? Do people really change their mind about something as big as changing their web browser because of a delay of one-two seconds? Are these people marginal users and unlikely to actually finish installing it, or likely to abandon the browser after a single use?

I'd like a peek into the psychology of the marginal people in a scenario like this.

[tokenadult]

I often conclude that the people running websites are doofuses, and thus their product may be a no-good product, if the website doesn't meet the universal usability standard of speedy page views. That's a simple quality proxy heuristic.