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.
Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
71–80 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#72Does 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#73There 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#74There'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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#75Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#77There'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?
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.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 we…
Interesting to see from the inside, where it shows so obvious that such tactics are indeed successful on large scale.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#79In 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?
#80I 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).