Why does Google Hangouts still not work in Firefox? | Hacker News Reader

Why does Google Hangouts still not work in Firefox?

52 pointsfletchowns27 comments

It seems a little ridiculous that Google Hangouts video calling still does not work in Firefox 57. Why is it still not supported?

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AFAIK, it uses NPAPI plugin. Chrome stopped supporting NPAPI plugins, but that only means user can't install them, Google chooses now what plugins you should have, and it bundles Flash and Hangouts with browser. These plugins are well hidden, no more chrome://plugins and I can't find them in filesystem.

You can see "Extension: Google Hangouts" in Chrome Task Manager when Hangouts is active.

But I still think it's not malicious trick for browser wars, more likely that they abandoned Hangouts and will shut it down after some time, launching even more half-working chat services before that, with machine learning, VR, brands engagement, integrated video news and other crap everyone can't live without.

For the same reason Microsoft used to make things that only worked in Internet Explorer.

AFAIK Google Hangouts uses non-standard WebRTC functionality.

Found a decent write-up: https://webrtchacks.com/hangout-analysis-philipp-hancke/

Can't tell you whether or not that's the real reason. But I can definitely confirm that the lack of widely supported 'Plan B multiplexing' is (was?) a real pain point for WebRTC devs.

Vanilla WebRTC in its current form is still too unstable to actually be usable for production video chat applications. Its limitations affect all of the leading commercial providers: Tokbox, Twilio, Agora, etc.

For example, on MacOS, there is a severe breaking CoreAudio bug in WebRC that hasn't been fixed for over 3 years which affects 8% of users by causing unmuted microphones to not transmit any audio [1]. We've never seen this problem come up with Hangouts though.

iOS builds for Google's WebRTC libjingle_peerconnection library have been broken for over 2 months, too [2].

It's no surprise that there is some core Hangouts team within Google building something else. Even Google's own AppRTC "reference" application implementation has some seriously questionable design decisions in its code (such as sending signaling messages to Google App Engine to forward over websockets).

Google needs to figure out how to bridge the gap between both organizations so that everyone can benefit from the stability gains made by the Hangouts team.

[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/webrtc/issues/detail?id=4799

[2] https://github.com/pristineio/webrtc-build-scripts

AIUI, they're also relying on some parts of WebRTC that aren't interoperably implemented yet, like the statistics model.

There is no technical reason, Google has simply decided that they won't support Firefox.

Seems unGoogley.

Hey now, they're "actively working to develop a solution that will enable Hangouts to work in Firefox without a [NPAPI] plugin" [0].

These things take time, you know. Especially with the limited resources of Google, Mozilla not already having announced the deprecation of NPAPI plugins two years ago [1] and there not already being a web standard, mainly pushed by Google, that enables video and audio calling for every modern browser out there [2].

[0]: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2017/02/google-hangouts...

[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plu...

[2]: https://webrtc.org/

That's some hugh quality snark right there. Thank you good sir.

It's hard to understand who you're trying to blame here, but it sounds like a classic case of the "two ways of doing a thing" (the deprecated way and the one that doesn't work yet).

It’s never not worked for me if you’re referring to https://hangouts.google.com I use it daily as my primary IM and am primarily a Firefox user across all platforms. Never had an issue with Hangouts even after the Quantum update

I used to be a Firefox user, but I switched to Chrome. With the new Firefox and the way Google are doing things nowadays I'm really considering switching back.

You ought to do so

I made the switch. I want to say its glorious, but there are definitely some pain points. Not with Firefox itself, mind you (it's seriously amazing), but with 3rd party apps. Things that I use every day _suck_ on Firefox. Top of the list right now is Lastpass, which while completely seemless on Chrome, doesn't even have the ability to copy a username or password on Firefox (what??) (anyone have a two-factor auth alternative?).

Still, they really nailed it with quantum. The dev tools are excellent (finally!). I can deal with the second rate extensions if it means compartmentalizing just a small slice of my life from Google.

When I switched to Firefox I also switched to bitwarden for password management. Auto-filling is still in beta but I don't miss it. The Firefox extension is fast and simple to use.

https://bitwarden.com/

I use the built in auto fill with Kee (for KeePass). It works great, my password manager types my passwords in initially and Firefox stores and syncs them across devices with reliable auto fill.

I'm a web dev, used Chrome heavily for years. Switched to Firefox 6 months ago. It was ok, but now with 57 it's great. There's hardly anything that doesn't work. Only use Chrome for Hangouts and Google Cast now.

considering? just do it. The moment Google did this, I swore off chrome. I open chrome to have meetings with in hangouts, that's it. My 300+ open browsing tabs are in Firefox. I also switched a lot of Google products, such as making duckduckgo default search on all my devices. I encourage every none tech person I know to switch to Firefox if they use chrome.

I prefer chromes DevTools, that's the only reason I'm still using it.

Google search also looks lousy on Firefox mobile for no apparent reason.

They use user agent detection to serve Gecko-based browsers a lesser version of their pages. Override your user agent to WebKit and you'll see what I mean.

Slack also doesn't support FF for its Slack Calls functionality. It's infinitely infuriating.

Not true, I’m a work from home consultant and use slack calls vie Firefox several times a day without a problem even after the Quantum update

"Doesn't support" does not mean "doesn't work". It just means that if you have a problem with slack on Firefox that doesn't happen in Chrome, they will not go out of their way to fix it and, probably, that they don't test slack on Firefox (or not as much as they test it on Chrome).

I should have been more clear. I meant that it doesn't work. I get a message saying that I should use chrome. I'll get a screenshot and update here.

Here is their doc: https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/205138367-Common-is...

Also web.whatsapp.com, mighty text and the allo equivalent - none seem to work on firefox.

Whatsapp Web works perfectly for me in Firefox, but only after messing with my adblocker settings; the website depends on javascript from at least three domains to work.

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