Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

125 pointsjjbinx00779 comments

I recently switched back to Firefox after being a Chrome user for a long time and I noticed that a Youtube live stream I was watching kept breaking. I would reload the page only to find the stream lagged and then stopped working completely over and over again. When I loaded it in Chrome I still had occasional lags but the stream never completely broke once.

This morning I was trying to edit some photos in Google Photos and I noticed that if you apply a few filters it stops working as well. The first few edits work okay, but after 3 or 4 filters the edits no longer apply.

Can't help thinking it's Google either deliberately breaking things in Firefox or genuinely not caring. Reminds me of tactics Microsoft used against competitors in the 90s and 00s.

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There's a known buffering issue with YouTube on Firefox. Apparently it's been fixed and will ship in the next point release:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1878510#c114

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1djkdql/for_people...

According to the reddit comments it's a broken implementation by Google that doesn't trip up Chrome.

On Linux (Kubuntu with KDE and Wayland), I cannot use Youtube at all as it freezes for a long time when I start playing a video. It plays the sound but the browser stays frozen for around half a minute or so. It does eventually start showing the video as well... Do you know if there's any known issue for this?

Use yt-dlp and a frontend like tartube?

I can use Chromium. Just wanted to report the problem.

I've seen numerous instances where Firefox Wayland has caused issues. Setting MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=0 fixed the issue I was having.

In case you're curious: My issue was that it'd cause a burst of high CPU usage, which would result in an emergency shutdown of my system.

Doesn't that confirm that google is breaking firefox? We can't prove deliberately without evidence, but it seems to fit

Firefox is fixing youtube's bug because google won't fix a bug

Google pays money to Mozilla for being a default search engine. I think "Google breaking firefox" is kind of conspiracy.

Google only pays because Firefox has enough users to justify it. If enough users switch to Chrome because of broken Google-owned websites, why would they keep paying?

Also: controlled opposition.

From the zdnet interview with Johnathan Nightingale someone else linked:

"All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks."

"Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?"

"I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done,"

When exactly should we shift our framing of an issue from "conspiracy theory" to "actual concern"?

Interesting to see from the inside, where it shows so obvious that such tactics are indeed successful on large scale.

I suppose you believe that the "artificial five-second delay” for Firefox was also a conspiracy ? Google already have billionaire-rich lawyers defending them - there is no need for unpaid volunteers.

Not sure if it's related, but I have been having multiple issues on multiple sites related to Firefox, and where the issues go away when using Chrome.

I don't have much problems (Firefox on Mac) but seeing how many others complain I guess it is just a matter of time before I get moved to another A/B testing "experiment" testing how much I can endure before I give up and switch to Chrome (it won't happen).

Seeing how many of the users report the problem goes away if they let Firefox report as Chrome I personally am rather sure this is intentionally from Googles side:

Yes, I believe there are some real bugs, but I also think Google do take advantage of "useful" bugs to force us over to Chrome.

So I have decided to put my money where my mouth is and since last month I am a nebula subscriber. I am also considering Patreon.

Please consider doing the same, and please do write competition authorities in your country and do ask about when they will look into Googles rampant abuse of market position.

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

I feel its far more likely Google devs are just lazy and don't bother to test in Firefox, much like devs at pretty much every company these days. Unfortunate, but (probably) not part of some deliberate evil plan.

On the other hand: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

this is right for individuals, not corporations like those where every single decision is reviewed in meetings. you should actually apply the opposite for them : guilty unless proven innocent

Devs are lazy, but management systematically underfunds the web test team to keep it difficult to test on other browsers.

Never apply Hanlon's razor to that which can be adequately be explained by disregard for the consequences.

Sufficiently profitable stupidity is indistinguishable from malice

No I think the lack of testing is due to laziness but a concerted effort to minimally test FF. Which comes down to malice.

Now, if YT and Chrome were distaste companies, then we might not have this problem...

Hanlon's Razor is for applying to single instances.

When you have a long-standing pattern of behavior, you need to start using critical thinking, instead.

Is there a benefit to Google from breaking Firefox?

Yes, clearly.

Does Google have the technical competency to avoid breaking Firefox if they want to?

I would say this is very likely.

If you misapply Hanlon's Razor where it's no longer appropriate, you're liable to cut yourself off from the truth.

At a certain size, making sure ones company doesn't destroy whole ecosystems should be a management responsibility.

Also, as pointed out by others, when again and again these stupidities benefits the bottom line there is good reason to ask if someone somewhere doesn't have a bonus that goes up with every mistake.

Let's face it. Chrome is the new Internet Explorer. Especially when it comes to google and microsoft websites 'extending' the standard.

They may not be using explicit "Works best with Internet Explorer" stickers, but I come across a "requires edge or chrome to work properly" or "for best results"-style popup at least twice a week. Or sometimes things just straight-up don't work until you switch to chrome.

Don't get me started on text-fragments.

I use Firefox for most things at home, including a lot of browsing YouTube. I don't have the issues you're describing. Though I am on YT Premium and use uBlock.

> Though I am on YT Premium and use uBlock.

YT Premium is supposed to be ad-less? What the advantages of uBlock here?

They might not show you the ads but I guarantee the code is still in the background keeping track of your habits so they can show you more targeted ads elsewhere.

uBlock, not much but SponsorBlock is very useful. I am using all of those with YT Premium and I do have issues. I was recently offered their redesign and it made it a lot worse. It's hard to watch a video uninterrupted now. Note that I also chose not to allow DRM videos, so no Netflix on Firefox for me. This might actually influence the codecs used by Youtube and these issues might only appear on "fallback" codecs when you refuse DRM ones.

The Google Adsense dashboard does not work at all on Firefox, only Chrome. It must be deliberate.

I have found, rather amusingly, that Firefox for Android runs YouTube better than the official Android app. The official app randomly closes itself for no reason during long videos, while the web version in Firefox stays up forever (even in the background!)

Usually when you have a choice of using a web site or using an app you are better off using the web site. There is the problem of React pages showing you stale or invalid content in the process of re-re-re-rendering but on iOS I find some apps basically render right, others (like Skype these days) are like a bad React app squared.

The Google Cloud web interface is horribly slow for me in Firefox. For instance, while filtering logs, it can take a few seconds for my keystrokes to show up. This is the only website I've noticed performing poorly like this.

Dear god that website is slow as molasses for almost anything. So frustrating to use.

Same. Disabling DarkReader extension made it a bit more tolerable.

For anything other than logs, I just use the Lens desktop app.

that issue is visible in any browser, the GCP console is really bad in some places. for example checking metrics can freeze chrome on a desktop with 7800x3d+64gb ram

If you want to make a case against SPA/Angular just show someone the monstrosity GCP dashboard is.

Visually ugly, poor performance, functionally buggy with no sign of support for an independent developer.

I know all of that is not Angular's fault but some of it sure is.

Malice, incompetence...

Every team has a mountain of bugs screaming for their attention and a director losing their mind over AI.

And no one gets promoted for fixing bugs anymore.

> Every team has a mountain of bugs screaming for their attention and a director losing their mind over AI.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Smile grimly and carry on. At least they're not trying to shoehorn blockchain in everywhere anymore.

I have not noticed issues with YouTube, but it's been clear to me how gimped Firefox is compared with Chrome on Google Meet. Some missing minor features, sluggish performance and lower streaming quality to name a few.

They did recently (last 6-12 months) add virtual backgrounds to Meet in FF, and it feels fine now. That said I only use Meet on FF and Safari so maybe I don't know what I'm missing out on.

Sharing screen on Google Meet + Firefox either doesn’t work or crashes the browser for me.

In a word: yes. I'm not going to provide links. There are many already in this page.

I've been always a Firefox user (never switched to Chrome). And everything works fine for me (on both Linux and MacOS). I remember when they disabled on purpose the Google Meet background feature in Firefox (yes, it was working in the beginning). After nearly 2 years they put it back on Firefox. It was never a Firefox bug.

The thing is that by pushing people to use Chrome / Chromium browsers they have more control on us (even was fined 5B for tracking uses in Incognito Mode: https://www.npr.org/2023/12/30/1222268415/google-settles-5-b...)

So yes, even in Private mode, Chrome / Chromium were spying on users without notice, which is unacceptable.

Photo edits sometimes won't respond on Google Photos in Firefox. It is not just Google. Microsoft Teams, Excel online etc don't work very well in Firefox and it is deliberate.

I exclusively use Firefox and I don't have major issues with YouTube. I don't know about the other stuff. However, from what I gather, Google often does A/B testing, so different sessions may get served different versions of the same website, and I do see this often. Because of that, sometimes it's hard to pin down where it's breaking.

Edit to add: To clarify and be more specific, I watched a live stream on YouTube recently and it seemed to work fine.

> Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

Yes, and they have been doing so for years.

> a former Mozilla exec who bemoaned intentional sabotage from the Google camp over several years. Johnathan Nightingale, who worked as a GM & VP on Firefox, saw relations between Google and Firefox sour as the former grew more ambitious for browser market share. Not only did YouTube suffer, he saw "oopses" hitting functionality and performance in other popular Google properties like Gmail and Google Docs.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delaye...

I only use Firefox, I haven't open Chrome in months... But I try to stay away from Google most of the time, so probably not the best.

And as some other people it's better Firefox on Android than the app. I don't have to deal with adds on Firefox, the official app always have 2 or 4 adds waiting for the next video

I use all the time with Fedora Linux. No such problems, including a new experimental ui available for premium users.

Now the experience with other Google services, plus Firefox mobile is terrible. I log into Gmail from time to time, it's awful. No, I don't want to use the app, I have other reasons and procedures.

I've had similar experiences. Switching to Safari seems to help when this happen. I don't expect they'll be doing this on purpose.

It could be that the encoded video block required by Firefox and not used that much, as such the cache hit rates are bad requiring trips back to an overloaded origin server.

I’ve definitely noticed issues with YouTube on Firefox where a video will start buffering for ages, but I’ve chalked that up to YouTube and uBlock Origin breaking each other. Quite often it’s been a better experience to just use mpv (yt-dlp) instead of the website. Haven’t tried it on Chrome though.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Contrary to popular believe Google IS Evil.

I have no problem with people wanting to make money,but sabotage and strong arming opponents(e.g. captcha(once again refuses me when I am on firefox)) is just vile.

Anyone giving their data to that corporation and trusting them to do the right thing(project dragonfly anyone) is an veritable idiot. IMHO it is high time that conglomerate is split up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38924300

https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delaye...

https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-developer-claims-google-i...

https://www.techspot.com/news/79672-google-accused-sabotagin...

https://tech.co/news/google-slowed-youtube-firefox-edge-2019...

That is enough reason for me to never touch Chrome or a Chromium based browser(nothing good can come from a hostile upstream(Manifest V3 anyone?))

I am a fanatic Firefox user who develops in it most of the time so in the last few places I’ve worked (except for one) I was keeping our products compatible with it.

We have one screen in our admin Ui which loads way too much data and it is notably slow on FF, but otherwise it is great.

I have definitely noted sites hat are incompatible with Firefox are turning up but YouTube is by far the worst and most common. So I browse YouTube with Edge.

There is a simple solution: do not use youtube. After I stopped watching youtube my side projects finally started moving forward, and I get quite a few extra hours in a day, especially on weekends. Although I still watch a video or two on archive.org or one of Peertube instances: tilvids, makertube, to name a few. But no more algorithm induced binge watching of random videos till late in the night.

I faced this too but I attributed it to some obscure bug or setup issue. Seems like I am not alone.

Google sheets takes forever to load (Just 150 records on the biggest sheet. 9 other sheets with paltry records). Any keypress or scroll takes 10 seconds or more to take effect. I am torn between getting work done and being annoyed by how I am forced to use Chrome. Didn't yield, yet.

I haven't noticed any problems with Youtube on Firefox, but I also have some privacy toggles enabled that lie about my user agent.

I've seen sites with Firebase-based logins breaking only with Firefox. The OOTB config works only in Chrome family. Unbreaking Firefox requires this crap:

https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/web/redirect-best-prac...

I have a similar issue using a (non-google) videoconferencing tool on Firefox. It is very irritating that I have to switch browsers (both Konqueror and Chrome work) just for my VC needs...

I think it is a Firefox issue (another friend reported the same issue).

I don't think Google cares at this point to break Firefox on purpose vs simply not testing changes on it at all.

Whenever I need to use Chrome for whatever reason, I simply open Microsoft Edge - not that Microsoft is any better than Google in general, but at least it doesn't own the Internet.

Edge is Chrome-based these days unfortunately. And they first leveraged their ad platform to feed people Chrome, then they broke the internet where they could for competitors to gain a greater marketshare to ship this spyware in browserdisguise and now they wanna eat the whole cake.

Something to note is there is a thousand of experiments running on YouTube at the same time. They test a lot of stuff directly on users. Try VPN, change user agent and/or open in private browsing mode to get a different set of feature flags.

I couldn’t use Google Maps on Firefox on Mac yesterday. I couldn’t click on the search bar.

Usually I have zero issues with Google Docs (which I only use because of my company) or Youtube (which is use quite rarely). I'm using uBlock though, not sure if it makes any difference. Never used Google Photos.

Does no one use Brave? I like how there's a Scripts on/off toggle, and various shields

Lots of stuff breaks, but I blame stuff, not the browser

Turning off my ability to turn off autoplay videos is what made me flee, angrily, Chrome.

I always use YouTube in Firefox because it allows one to disable autoplay. For the past week I've had frequent issues with buffering/stuttering, but reloading the page tends to fix it.

I solved it by avoiding Google products and services, whenever possible.

That 'whenever possible' qualifier gets more significant everyday

Main thing I've noticed is missing/fewer features, rather than outright breakage. Particularly Google meet on Firefox missing the fancy background effects and things like that.

I think the youtube streaming issue can be fixed with the h264ify extension. I've had it installed for years and I think that was why I did so.

I switched to Firefox, start of this year, I have some issues with YouTube, but I think it must be related to Ad blocker I use.

who's going to be their monopoly buffer if FF goes away?

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (stupidity is the wrong term here, lazyness is more apt).

Firefox is a the one different browser with an entirely different pedigree. Assumptions made about _all– other browser will not necessarily hold true for Firefox.

>"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (stupidity is the wrong term here, lazyness is more apt).

Ah, but sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice

Adding for completeness sake, two things can be simultaneously true.

Safari and Edge I guess. A lot of people use those, probably a lot more than Firefox, unfortunately.

Safari outside of iOS is tiny. Edge is Chrome with a Microsoft skin and Microsoft advertising swapped for Google's.

>Safari outside of iOS is tiny.

Are you sure about this? It's the default and main browser on every Mac computer, and there's a fair number of those out there, probably far more than the number of people using Linux on the desktop (unfortunately IMO).

>Edge is Chrome with a Microsoft skin and Microsoft advertising swapped for Google's.

Sure, but it's still a different browser, maintained by a competing tech giant and promoted as the default browser on the world's most-installed desktop OS. Tech people may understand it's just a Chrome re-skin, but the people running the court system don't understand or care.

I haven't noticed any problems using Firefox.

Are there people who still watch videos from that cesspit domain called youtube.com?

Do yourself a favour and use Libretube/NewPipe/Tartube/mpv, or any other youtube-dl/yt-dlp based wrapper.

No trackers, no ads whose aggregate duration is longer than the video itself, no idiotic Google employees who regularly break the UI, no aggressive policies against adblockers or any other extensions that you want to use.

Avoiding youtube.com and making sure that not a single dime goes in Google's pockets for providing such a shitty service is a moral duty. Directly fund video creators through Patreon/PayPal if you want to feel less guilty.

Yes, it's always been.

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