Let's use hash values for versioning. Big numbers go bigger! Joking aside, I totally believe that there are people who would think bigger numbers means more advanced, and it's depressing.
One of the reasons why the 1/3rd pound burger lost to the 1/4 pound burger, was because people saw the 1/4, and thought that the quarter-pound was larger for some inexplicable reason.
I would be very surprised if there wasn't at least some marketing suggestion focused around "number that looks big is better".
I still despise Mozilla for changing the version numbering. It's so fucking stupid. 90% of the "major updates" are just minor shit while the minor updates are just tiny bug & security fixes. But I guess when you plan to not really move the browser forward, then you wouldn't have gotten any real major updates anyway.