No, it's really not. As a user, I'd be quite fine with the first icon in the set.
The recent changes in the latest Google re-branding, for example, were anything but well-received. Even Chrome's icon is now smaller, and in a white box, with rounded corners — because everything needs rounded corners these days — for no apparent reason other than I guess we want to feel like a phone now.
The overwhelming majority of users are not shedding tears that their favorite product hasn't updated its icon in more than 3 months.
You might be right about current users, but this kind of thing matters a lot if you're going to convince potential future users. Someone who isn't already using Firefox isn't going to have a lot of faith in trying it out if the logo looks like it was done in SodiPodi in mom's basement.
The old logo looks old and it reminds me of Windows XP software. You might think that's wrong and irrational but it doesn't matter. All the UI studies will show thats the most common feeling and feelings matter a lot for marketing
The old one was nice and reminded me of back when Firefox was in an entirely different league, far ahead of everything else: it was so extensible you could even run the worst offending pages in an IE tab.
Today Firefox is still best, bt they've been shooting themselves in both feet repeatedly IMO.
The recent changes in the latest Google re-branding, for example, were anything but well-received. Even Chrome's icon is now smaller, and in a white box, with rounded corners — because everything needs rounded corners these days — for no apparent reason other than I guess we want to feel like a phone now.
The overwhelming majority of users are not shedding tears that their favorite product hasn't updated its icon in more than 3 months.