They probably did.
However wanted to screw Firefox users the same way as the YouTube slowdown.
However wanted to screw Firefox users the same way as the YouTube slowdown.
There's a silver lining though: it really doesn't matter if it's due to negligence or malicious sabotage, and if they (where "they" is hypothetical leadership within Google that is trying to eliminate Firefox) thought that pleading negligence instead of sabotage was going to be a good defense, we'll see how that holds up to future scrutiny and regulation. I mean hey, Microsoft tried to pull a lot of shit too, and they were probably more competent at it if the Epic Games lawsuit is any indicator of Google's competence right now.
Google is Firefox' primary source of income, and Firefox is strategically crucial token competition that stands between Google and an antitrust lawsuit of the sort Microsoft faced in the early 2000s (where Microsoft were basically a technicality away from being broken up).
Middle management finds a tactic that implements the friction strategy - small "random" breaks and persistent performance issues.
An engineer would find the precise measure to implement - break the UA string sniffing targeting a specific browser.
Interesting theory, but that's exactly what M$ got dinged for in the antitrust suit re: Netscape.
If the risk is a lawsuit after years of anticompetitive behaviour - if they're unlucky - that's absolutely worth it for Google. Chrome is now THE web browser platform with the only two remaining notable exceptions being competitors in name only, and no single lawsuit can just reverse that.
Google is doing more "eternal irritation by 1000 papercuts". Never one big blow, never aiming to kill Firefox, they're financing it after all. Firefox needs to exist but never be attractive to users, especially on the phone where tracking is next level.
I think plausible deniability does a lot of the heavy lifting here. But statistically speaking Firefox being the one browser hit constantly by a stream of random Google issues can't be random.
The legal and regulatory landscape changed a lot since then too, with Big Tech slowly but constantly lobbying and pushing a lot more than just these tactics into normalcy. A lot of what's normal today was outrageous in the '90s.
Assuming competence and intention is foolish.
> An engineer would find the precise measure to implement - break the UA string sniffing targeting a specific browser.
You got the strategy right but the implementation is laughable, sorry :-)))
The implementation is: "We have a budget of N story points this sprint to resolve bugs, let's prioritize them. Let's prioritize by impacted audience size."
The audience size will make 99% of Firefox specific bugs be deprioritized out of the current sprint. And the next one. And the one after that.
And unless a senior engineer stands up to update the prioritization criteria, plausible deniability forever.
Repeated incompetence from one level is actual maliciousness from the level above, all the way to the top.
They pay Firefox as they're buying a valuable product. Which is why they also pay Safari.
Sure search was their first product, but they have long since pivoted to being an ad company. And while yes, they can show ads along side search, the real cash cow is all the juicy data they can exclusively hoover up through Chrome to better target ads all across the web not just search.
If they wanted to sabotage Firefox I doubt they would choose to send a blank page. They would probably send infinite captchas or just disable most features (which they already do).
304 points by hashhar 49 days ago | 122 comments
I suspect that these problems are more to do with neglecting testing, and just not caring very much about non-Chromium browsers
(Disclosure: I'm a long-time Firefox user)
A bug that breaks others' tools but not yours is not implemented intentionally, but it's not fixed intentionally, so it looks like a benign error.
At the end of the day, you use the chance you get, and it makes real damage while you sip your coffee...
Reverse search is now completely useless for example.
Not saying that they shouldn't have detected this (i.e.: where is the automated testing for those things?), but I don't think this is Google screwing up Firefox on purpose.
And if Google really wanted to screw up Firefox, they would probably do a better job than User-Agent sniffing. Firefox already has an internal list where it applies fixes for websites (e.g.: setting a custom User-Agent), and the bug report actually comes from it. You can see it by going to `about:compat` page in Firefox.
They didn't test on it at all. It's a browser with sub-5% market share.
There are folks in Google who personally test on firefox and believe in it ideologically as an important peace of the web ecosystem, but that's not a company policy and detecting Firefox bugs does not gate feature release for most projects.
Mozilla has cachet with nerds like us because of its history. Not because it's particularly better than alternatives or because it has enough of a user base to throw its weight around.
In contrast, they do test on Safari. They'd lose double-digit percentages of users if they didn't.
The ecosystem, unfortunately, generally has room for three top browsers. I'm not even sure Firefox is number four these days.
For obvious reasons, I don't think Google is devoting any resources to optimizing the experience of navigating to google.com for people who don't want any history generated on their use of google.com.
I agree with you that the other features listed are positives, but they don't appear to be positive enough to push use of Firefox psst Safari, Chrome, or Edge numbers.
I really feel like HNers often forget how minuscule the scale of their usage patterns are.