Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#1

Post by jjbinx007 » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 8:40 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#2

Post by WCSTombs » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 8:46 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#3

Post by rcfox » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 8:58 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#4

Post by bryanrasmussen » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:03 AM UTC

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

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#5

Post by weberer » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:04 AM UTC

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

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#6

Post by perbu » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:04 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#7

Post by resonious » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:04 AM UTC

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!)

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#8

Post by hiddencost » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:05 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#9

Post by rodrigodlu » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:07 AM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#10

Post by perbu » Thu, Jun 20, 2024, 9:07 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #4

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.