Why doesn’t it just start right away?
Usually they use that time to try to display some ads or some such nonsense. Or they’re in collusion with mice and keyboard vendors because you’ll try to click “Download now” and then have to erase the duplicate automatic download five seconds later.
It means one extra page displayed, which means more ads viewed (at least in theory). 5 seconds is just a period of time that’s greater than immediately.
Or at least that’s my educated guess.
The same reason “your video will start in 5 seconds”?
What about the “your browser is being redirected. If that screws the pooch, click here…”
It’s not 1998 anymore; whose browser can’t handle a simple redirect? And if they’re out there, why is the delay still added? It’s been a while since I browsed without AdBlock, but I don’t recall ads on those pages.
What’s going on behind the scenes?
(As an example, logging in to the SMBM brings up the message)
I thought those are to inform you that the page has moved, so you can update your links. i.e. you really shouldn’t be seeing this, but if you are, your link needs to be changed.
If you’re not signed in to the Dope, hit reply (or search, I think), it asks you to sign in first then takes you to the reply page.
Again the “now being redirected page” means more ad views.
Usually it means they are trying to slow down people/bots who are trying to download large amounts of stuff from the site. Some sites even get hit by people trying to download their stuff just to swamp the site and make it useless. By spreading this out it deters a lot of load related problems.
Legit downloaders still get what they want after a modest delay.
I think this is the reason. If you’re being as practical as possible you should have a link direct to a file your browser knows to save and there would be no reason to load another page at all. Instead of that they send you to a page that says “you are downloading now but look at this extra ad while you’re at it”.
The HTTP-equiv refresh tag was never an appropriate way to redirect someone anyway. People still use it because it’s so easy, but I don’t know why they build in a delay.
Is it possible the site is trying to connect you to the nearest server where the download is hosted so you get the best possible download speed? Or is that a little too nice and optimistic to be expecting of businesses?
Because if they said “your download will start now”, and it didn’t, you’d think something was wrong and hit the Back button or leave the site or call technical support. Really, they have no idea when your download is going to start.
Because pages that start downloads right away look like malware-servers and tend to get blocked by anti-malware products.
In addition to a lot of the other answers here.
Unlikely, because:
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Finding the nearest server to you would require either pinging all the available ones (which should take longer than 5 seconds) or else looking your IP up in a geolocation database (which should not take 5 seconds).
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In terms of downloads, geographical proximity might matter less than the throughput of the pipes in between. Latency isn’t as important as bandwidth in this case.
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Even if they wanted to be nice and did this, if they weren’t careful they could easily overload the servers closest to major metropolitan areas while other mirrors remained barely used.
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If they did do this, they’d probably try it sell it to you as an addon feature or at least brag about it while you download (the way speed tests do).