Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#11

Post by icebraining » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:20 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #8

I've been pretty consistent in my Firefox use the past few years (probably >80% of my browsing is in Firefox), and I've never encountered this. Ever. I'm doing nearly all of this from OSX, with occasional browsing from FF and IE in a Windows VM or FF in a Linux VM. Perhaps this is more to do with a Linux string being picked up vs the Firefox aspect?

I use FF on Linux for almost everything and I've never encountered this either.

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#12

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:20 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#13

Post by xoebus » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:22 PM UTC

Could it be that this is an innocent mistake or a bug in the way that Google servers are sending HTTP. Chrome wouldn't be affected as it will be using SPDY for all Google services. As soon as Chrome switched back to the Firefox user agent it started using HTTP again and the same bug was found.

Besides, this just doesn't make sense. If this was an attempt to make Firefox look bad then it's a dreadful one. This just serves to make Google services look faulty as Firefox will still work for everything else. Because of this I doubt there is any malice behind this and it is just a bug.

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#14

Post by noibl » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:24 PM UTC

if (document.querySelector('h1').innerHTML.match(/^Is .*\?$/)) { console.log('Probably not.') }

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#15

Post by za » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:28 PM UTC

I wonder if the problem goes away if SPDY is enabled on firefox (it ships off by default in v12)?

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#16

Post by gildas » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:29 PM UTC

noibl wrote: post #14

if (document.querySelector('h1').innerHTML.match(/^Is .*\?$/)) { console.log('Probably not.') }

TypeError: Cannot read property 'innerHTML' of null

You should use UA sniffing to fix this bug.

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#17

Post by noibl » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:31 PM UTC

gildas wrote: post #16

noibl wrote: post #14

if (document.querySelector('h1').innerHTML.match(/^Is .*\?$/)) { console.log('Probably not.') }

TypeError: Cannot read property 'innerHTML' of null You should use UA sniffing to fix this bug.

Harr. :)

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#18

Post by SquareWheel » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:35 PM UTC

tomerv wrote: post #5

StavrosK wrote: post #3

What if you change Chrome's UA string to Firefox's?

That question is answered in the second part. Changing Chrome's UA string to anything other than default causes errors, so the browsing speed can't be tested.

Oops, didn't notice the second page myself.

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#19

Post by cnbeuiwx » Sun, May 06, 2012, 12:45 PM UTC

I never get any errors with Firefox on Windows, so this was a interesting article. I will have to try it out some more on my Linux.

However, I got loads of "Connection was reset" when trying to use the powerbase site where this article was. Server seems very very slow or something is wrong with it.

Re: Is Google Burying Firefox With User Agent Strings?

#20

Post by tubbo » Sun, May 06, 2012, 1:05 PM UTC

tomerv wrote: post #6

Does this mean that Google has given up completely on net neutrality? This is a very bad notion.

This article has nothing to do with net neutrality.