Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gcp | Hacker News Reader

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I wouldn't say those people were "ignorant". Things like YouTube, Google Docs, most Google properties work better in Chrome. This isn't always intentional, even.

Google can control both ends of the pipe, which means whenever they make big changes Chrome users will have a better experience. They pushed ahead there with MSE, codec support (VP9), SPDY, HTTP/2, etc and other browsers had to catch up. If other browsers were ahead in some areas, it didn't matter, because the content side didn't support it. Sites are designed and optimized in Chrome first and foremost, so Chrome never risks looking slow.

Similar things apply to Safari on iOS, or Edge on Windows.

The problem in my mind is that by having the same parties sit on both ends of this story, it's inevitable the middle man (that could be a leverage against DRM) gets pushed out. It's very, very hard to explain to the majority of users that they have to accept short term pain to avoid an outcome that is much worse for them. Ask any politician.

But we don't even need to kill the web to get there (pushing out any middlemen). We have native apps! Nobody is complaining their Android or iOS phone has DRM, do they?

> Things like [Google] YouTube, Google Docs, most Google [projects] work better in Chrome.

I wonder why that is.

> This isn't always intentional, even.

I don't think everyone at Google is evil. There are many passionate engineers and hackers like you and me. However, if a Youtube developer has an issue with something running extraordinarily slowly, it's a much shorter call to the Chrome department than it would be to Apple's Safari or Mozilla's Firefox. So while developers might not be actively hindering other browsers, they are developing for Chrome. That it technically works on other browsers is a requirement but optimizing for the competition's browsers is not something I imagine management allocates hours for.

The end result is that they are hindering competition in the browser market, and quite a few people saw that coming. Still, even more people (vastly more people) either did not care or know and recommended Chrome anyway.

> Nobody is complaining their Android or iOS phone has DRM, do they?

My Android phone does not have DRM beyond what it in the SIM and I am complaining about people whose phones do. Many friends and peers share my view on this, so it's at least not "nobody".

My Android phone does not have DRM beyond what it in the SIM

https://developer.android.com/reference/android/drm/package-...

"Added in API level 11". Maybe you have a custom build with this ripped out, but then we're stretching by calling it "Android".

I suppose you might be right. I actually realized after posting that there is probably something somewhere in my phone that still contains some kind of DRM. Assuming this is still in Cyanogenmod, you're probably right.

Then again, I'm not sure I have any apps that use this.

I use Firefox over any other browser precisely because I can "hack" it. I've changed so much under about:config that I have to document it for the next install. Firefox allows so many useful hacks that are truly in favor of the user. Chrome not so much. I don't use anything other than macOS or *nix, so I cannot speak to IE or other platforms.

Unfortunately, you are in a tiny minority in being able to do that, wanting to, and actualy getting round to it

Except that as of FF 48 you can't install unsigned addons, even if you allow it in the config.

It's like they're trying to give up every advantage.

> That it technically works on other browsers is a requirement but optimizing for the competition's browsers is not something I imagine management allocates hours for.

Youtube exists to sell ads, and a slow browsing experience on any device or browser does not serve that goal. So while Chrome may be their default testing environment, there's a very strong incentive to have it work well across the board.

Say in the YouTube app you perform a search for a song. The results come back very quickly and the first result is what you want so you tap it. An ad starts to play. Except its not an ad. Its a video from the advertised spot above your search results - wait a minute you didn't click that. So you go back and realize, it loads 1 second after your search results and pushes them downwards, so your tap ends up on the advertisement that wasn't even rendered yet. Hm.

That might drive short term revenue but would drive down their CPM/CPC rates and user engagement longer term. I don't think Google's culture is conducive to playing those sorts of tricks.

Maybe they don't do it on purpose, maybe they A/B test their way into a black hole of emergent anti-patterns.

> Things like YouTube, Google Docs, most Google properties work better in Chrome.

As someone who has never used Chrome, I'd love to understand what exactly "works better" means. I've never had problems with any of those sites using Firefox and Safari.

Google Docs is more responsive and faster in Chrome (it improves in Firefox if you fake the Chrome UA, hah). YouTube relied on Flash much longer in Firefox, while Mozilla was working to make their MSE implementation compatible with Chrome.

Google broke YouTube for Firefox users right before the last Christmas holidays. Mozilla pushed out Firefox updates over the holidays that faked the UA as a workaround.

Google Inbox didn't work on Firefox initially, because Google claimed Firefox was too slow. When reported to Mozilla, it was fixed in a few hours, and they found that Chrome's implementation of the "thing that was too slow" was actually broken and not spec compliant.

Hangouts (used to?) require a plugin in Firefox, and just uses WebRTC in Chrome.

And so on...(sigh)

For more backstory, here's the Firefox bug report with the fix for Google Inbox being "too slow" due to JS array slice being faster in Chrome than Firefox due to a V8 bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963

Here's the Firefox bug report about Google Docs being 3-9% faster, in a particular performance benchmark, when Firefox spoofs the Chrome UA:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1307024

When you change the user agent in Docs, the JS app tries to use a webkit-specific selection API and just crashes. The timing results for that test seem bogus.

Google deployed SPDY on Google sites when only Chrome supports it. YouTube deployed streaming with QUIC when only Chrome supports it. I'm not saying Google sites are sabotaging other browsers, just that these are examples of Google sites the work best in Chrome because Google teams can work closely together.

Google Hangouts uses WebRTC and NaCl without plugins in Chrome, but requires an NPAPI plugin or ActiveX Control (confusingly called the "Google Talk Plugin") in other browsers. Support for any browser other than Chrome is not listed on the Hangouts home page. You must search their KB to find the plugin installer.

https://hangouts.google.com/

https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1216376

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