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Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#51

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

infotainment wrote: post #29
eitland wrote: post #24

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…

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.

Sufficiently profitable stupidity is indistinguishable from malice

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#52

Post by passwordoops »

infotainment wrote: post #29
eitland wrote: post #24

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…

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.

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...

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#53

Post by jelly »

iillexial wrote: post #39
mu53 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#54

Post by M2Ys4U »

perbu wrote: post #10
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.

>"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

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#55

Post by aaomidi »

jelly wrote: post #53
iillexial wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#56

Post by wasteduniverse »

iillexial wrote: post #39
mu53 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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"?

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#57

Post by edarchis »

conaclos wrote: post #41
Festro wrote: post #12

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?

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#58

Post by glimshe »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#59

Post by alcoholic_byte »

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?))

Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

#60

Post by alcoholic_byte »

glimshe wrote: post #58

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.
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