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Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

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Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#91

Post by VancouverMan »

miroljub wrote: post #16

Can confirm. Google is a new Microsoft, they leverage their position to cross promote their shit browser and their shit data stealing services. Sorry guys, if your data collection website doesn't work well with Firefox and uBlock Origin, I just won't use it.

Promoting Chrome may have gotten more people to install it and give it a try, but it didn't force those people to continue using Chrome. It didn't force them to keep using Chrome for years and years, in many cases.

Most people, including a great many former Firefox users, simply chose to keep on using Chrome because it offered (and still offers) a superior web browsing experience compared to its competitors.

This isn't specifically tied to the performance of Google's various web sites, either. Firefox still feels slow and bloated even on non-Google web sites. A lot of people who don't even use Google's web sites or services still choose to use Chrome anyway.

Many of Chrome's users could easily switch to Firefox at any time, yet they choose not to.

Firefox's developers simply haven't given people a compelling reason to start (or to switch back to) using Firefox.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#92

Post by dymk »

timw4mail wrote: post #48
zelias wrote: post #32

going by Hanlon's Razor, i would guess that this is merely the result of an engineering update that nobody bothered to QA on Firefox rather than a malicious attack on a single browser that isn't _really_ winning market share let's not assume Google malice is _too_ competent

Yeah no, this has happened too many times to be just incompetence. It's malicious, plain and simple.

Everybody knows a company can’t be incompetent a bunch of times in a row.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#94

Post by neilv »

louky wrote: post #6

Glad I saw this - I thought it was some local issue. Amazingly laggy for me with firefox/Debian 12. I restarted firefox thinking it was the problem, apparently not. Very high CPU usage as well.

Just now, I soon saw excessive delays on Debian 12 with `firefox-esr`, more than the occasional usual-of-late several-second blank video area spinner, though the videos otherwise play OK.

The noticeable first delay this session, they displayed a still image of the Chrome logo in the video area, with text saying that they recommend Chrome, and maybe a button to get Chrome.

(Edit: Screenshot from reproducing this in new browser session; again, it was the first ad, blocking before playing any content video: https://i.imgur.com/GkasyRX.png )

(I'm wondering why they bother with this, if under antitrust scrutiny, when they have more subtle and deniable ways of leveraging their platform control.)

Though, I should mention that YouTube is not showing ad videos when it seems to be trying to, which could explain some of these delays. It will overlay white text in upper left of video area, identifying an advertiser (e.g., Old Spice, Liberty Mutual?), but then not run the ad at all, and move on after several seconds. I suppose that my uBlock Origin rules might be blocking something for ad display now, though that's not my intent (and I normally see YouTube videos without having consciously changed something since then), or the ad-showing failure might be the fault of YouTube.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#95

Post by safety1st »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Google has been degrading YouTube in Firefox for me for about six months. Where are the antitrust enforcers when you need them?

Well, um, er.

As a matter of fact the antitrust enforcers just won their case against Google.

They are in the remedy phase now. Figuring out what Google's punishment is going to be.

Google no longer being allowed to pay Firefox for its default search placement is most certainly in play as part of the possible remedies.

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/boom-judge-rules-google-i...

If you follow the money the idea that Google would sabotage Firefox doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's more likely that Google kept Firefox on life support so they could plausibly deny that they had a browser monopoly. Firefox blew that by mismanaging its market share into oblivion though.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#96

Post by IncreasePosts »

jeroenhd wrote: post #83

Took a performance benchmark in both Firefox and Brave. Both of them are unusually slow (addons/extensions disabled, fresh profile), but Firefox especially so. Source for the huge render times seems to be desktop_polymer.js, specifically the part that's registering and setting up custom web components. Once the website loads, performance becomes a lot better. My guess is that a Polymer update made Youtube slower for…

Also, it is Firefox on the desktop. 90% of YouTube views come from mobile, and Firefox only has about 5% market share on the desktop. So desktop Firefox is a half a percent of the overall users of youtube.

Is it any surprise that maintaining support for a browser that delivers less than a percent of the total users is deprioritized or just forgotten about?

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#97

Post by knodi123 »

cholantesh wrote: post #72
xnickb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might as well just download videos and watch them later.

The one thing you lose I guess is discovery, but the algorithm is so volatile that maybe that's not the worst thing in the world.

Yeah, i've used tampermonkey and various other scripts to remove all discovery/suggestions from youtube, and I've never regretted it. It's great. But that's just my personal style, if you sit down and watch it like TV then I can see how that would be a sacrifice.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#98

Post by pessimizer »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #4

Yeah, it's time for Google to be broken up into pieces because of anti-competitive laws and really get back to making America into a capitalistic society once again.

Capitalism, an undeniable driver of innovation, incentivizes firms to endlessly innovate ways to avoid competition. The only question is whether the anti-competitive innovation is more or less expensive than the innovation they'll have to do to compete.

It's not even really a question, it's a collective action problem, nominally hampered by price-fixing laws. Price-fixing laws are an indication that the desire to avoid competition is so strong and so dangerous that to slow it down we're willing to abridge the supposedly universal freedoms of speech and of association.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#99

Post by ChocolateGod »

jeroenhd wrote: post #83

Took a performance benchmark in both Firefox and Brave. Both of them are unusually slow (addons/extensions disabled, fresh profile), but Firefox especially so. Source for the huge render times seems to be desktop_polymer.js, specifically the part that's registering and setting up custom web components. Once the website loads, performance becomes a lot better. My guess is that a Polymer update made Youtube slower for…

I have a strong feeling the developers behind sites like YouTube and Reddit don't actually use the software they make, because both are slow and laggy to use on any computer I use.

I just can't think of any other reason why they're both so infamously bad.

Re: Starting today, YouTube is almost unusable on Firefox

#100

Post by miah_ »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #96
jeroenhd wrote: post #83

Took a performance benchmark in both Firefox and Brave. Both of them are unusually slow (addons/extensions disabled, fresh profile), but Firefox especially so. Source for the huge render times seems to be desktop_polymer.js, specifically the part that's registering and setting up custom web components. Once the website loads, performance becomes a lot better. My guess is that a Polymer update made Youtube slower for…

Also, it is Firefox on the desktop. 90% of YouTube views come from mobile, and Firefox only has about 5% market share on the desktop. So desktop Firefox is a half a percent of the overall users of youtube. Is it any surprise that maintaining support for a browser that delivers less than a percent of the total users is deprioritized or just forgotten about?

Despite those stats, if Google wants to avoid being called a monopoly they need to support it, and it needs to receive the same level of support as their own product.
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