let's not assume Google malice is _too_ competent
I found a nice article on exactly this from a former Mozilla exec: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...
> Gmail & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as 'incompatible' […] 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?
This latest article is basically the same thing again. Google would tell Mozilla it's a genuine bug; they would fix it soon; but Mozilla loses some users and Chrome gains some. Nothing new.
Just because there's no one person twirling their mustache and mwahahaha-ing doesn't mean this isn't malicious and hostile behavior by Google. It doesn't matter even if there's no individual human at Google that intended this.
What does matter is that the leadership at Google clearly doesn't do what is necessary in preventing hostile behavior as a consequence of negligence. They know that if they don't put in the effort to ensure compatibility, side effects will degrade competitor performance. It's an inevitable consequence; they've done, and been forced to do, the right thing, and provide quality assurance and compatibility review in complex systems. There are people that know the consequences of not being proactive. Hell, they probably have lawyers that know the exact numbers - they probably make some tens of millions of dollars more revenue by "slacking off" and not being proactive about compatibility.
On the contrary, i think it applies more. The larger the group, the more stupid stuff it does.
Megacorporations aren't more competent,they're able to get away with more incompetence and tell whoever complains to shove it.
It’s like saying evolution has no purpose, it’s just random mutations, but then there is a selection process that picks non harmful and beneficial mutations, so it does go in a predictable direction.
Yes, it's not a massive browser share these days, but it's basically the only major browser left that doesn't share any lineage for the rendering engine.
I agree it'll be incompetence, but they'll definitely have Firefox QA testing.
It's tiring seeing people be so, so confident they know what's going on behind the scenes. In reality, they know just as much as everyone else.
My app is also having performance issues with WebGL on Firefox so I guess I'm part of the conspiracy?