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Former Mozilla exec: Google has sabotaged Firefox for years (2019)

by hashhar on 11/20/23, 3:15 PM with 120 comments

• by xd1936 on 11/20/23, 4:58 PM

  Just today, the /r/YouTube subreddit was discussing how Polymer adds an artificial 5 second delay based on user-agents other than Chrome.

  1. https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_ha...

• by mtVessel on 11/20/23, 4:39 PM

  There was a period of time when sites pretty much worked everywhere. In the last five years or so, the number of sites that only work in Chrome was risen precipitously. It's either malice or incompetence, and I have no trouble believing either.

• by Arubis on 11/20/23, 3:40 PM

  I keep a Chromium browser kicking around on my personal machines basically for the sole purpose of using Google properties, particularly Hangouts. Firefox is fine on virtually everything else, but absolutely drags on stuff owned by the Goog.

• by rabbits_2002 on 11/20/23, 4:53 PM

  Google went from my most trusted tech company in 2010 to being just blatantly evil. I think it must be the new CEO.

• by WhereIsTheTruth on 11/20/23, 3:46 PM

  Mozilla did more harm than google, like killing Servo and embedding Pocket, and let's not forget how they siphoned the money they made with their Google contract, they chose to fund their other questionable endeavors instead

  When you choose to sell your user base to google, you are part of the problem

• by jsnell on 11/20/23, 3:48 PM

  Previous discussion from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19669586

  (I'm kind of surprised it's just the one previous submission.)

• by aeurielesn on 11/20/23, 3:58 PM

  > Slowly but surely, Google is becoming the new Microsoft, and Chrome is slowly turning into the new IE

  Honestly, Microsoft is becoming the new Microsoft.

• by TheMiddleMan on 11/20/23, 4:18 PM

  For years, when searching "Firefox" on the Google Play store, the only way to install apps on most Android devices, the first result would be a Google ad for Chrome.

• by upofadown on 11/20/23, 4:19 PM

  >"I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent.

  They might be that indifferent though. If everyone in an organization knows that there are no repercussions to being incompatible with a particular entity, they will spend no time ensuring such compatibility. Entropy will do the rest.

  Sometimes an anticompetitive situation can evolve without anyone taking an assertive action.

• by leoc on 11/20/23, 3:56 PM

  Reminder again, again that 'Google' here amounts to two individual human beings, Page and Brin, who largely have full liberty to do as they wish with the company. It would be unfair to particularly blame them for some of the undesirable things that happen at Google: for example, problems that are somewhat inevitably the result of Google's somewhat intractably broken corporate culture, or problems that are genuinely too small to be likely to ever reach the ear of the Tzar. But this is another place where those excuses don't seem to apply.

• by Tagbert on 11/20/23, 5:12 PM

  Related story:

  “YouTube artificially slows down video load times when using Firefox” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38345858

• by gkoberger on 11/20/23, 4:52 PM

  I'm surprised more people haven't noted this is 2019 article is here now because of OpenAI.

  Both Mozilla and OpenAI were for-profit companies fully owned by a non-profit of the same name, and dependent on a large corporation (Google/Microsoft) for a large majority of their finances.

  And both times, the large company ended up competing directly (Chrome/whatever's happening here) due to being slowed down, while still being the main financier of the original company.

• by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on 11/20/23, 4:21 PM

  > [They accuse] Google of carrying out a coordinated plan that involved introducing small bugs on its sites that would only manifest for Firefox users.

• by throw7 on 11/20/23, 5:14 PM

  of course. most of my friends have switched to chrome just because of these "oopses" or niggles. switch to chrome and "it just works". it's not just google here... a lot of heavy javascript sites just don't care to make things work in firefox now.

  I keep chrome/chromium around for "broken" sites and to chromecast even. It is what it is.

• by mepian on 11/20/23, 3:33 PM

  (2019)

• by FooBarBizBazz on 11/20/23, 8:24 PM

  I've noticed serious performance issues with Firefox Android on certain websites, and this has always crossed my mind, but I've thought -- "nah, it's probably an innocent issue". Maybe not.

  Generally don't unnecessarily ascribe things to malice --

  -- unless we're talking about a tightly-managed megacorp. Then the probability that one of their managers has engaged in whatever fuckery approaches one.

• by etimberg on 11/20/23, 4:21 PM

  I dunno, I use Firefox on my laptop and it just feels so slow and clunky compared to Chromium based browsers. It's been like that for years and doesn't seem to get better

• by dmbche on 11/20/23, 3:40 PM

  Isn't google the main source of funds for Mozilla?

• by ravenstine on 11/20/23, 3:53 PM

  Let's pretend for a moment that it's a certainty that The Google sabotaged Firefox.

  Practically speaking, would things have turned out appreciably different from the way things are now?

  People today but especially back during the time that Chrome was released had an disproportionately positive view of The Google in terms of trust and delight from "innovation." If you asked any of them what they think of Mozilla, chances are they'd reply asking "Is that like Godzilla?"

• by pipeline_peak on 11/20/23, 4:58 PM

  Even if these conspiracy theories proved true, we all know Firefox didn't stand a chance lol

• by r0ckarong on 11/20/23, 10:21 PM

  So Google is employing the same tactics that Microsoft has used for the last 40 years. I'm shocked ... SHOCKED.

• by bsimpson on 11/20/23, 3:45 PM

  As a Googler, I find this hard to believe.

  A more plausible explanation is that there's a very strong culture of using Chrome for work stuff at Google, and a general belief that automated tests can replace manual tests. These "oops"es are more likely the result of engineers doing most of their work in Chrome, and not noticing subtle changes in browsers they don't often use.

• by seec on 11/20/23, 8:31 PM

  Firefox was never really good no matter what some tried to imply. It was always a bit crappy, slow, and sometimes ugly. I never understood the passion some people have for it. Sure, it had a lot of extensions but at the time where this was relevant actually using the extension would slow the browser so much it required an overkill computer to be worthwhile.

  I doubt Google had any need to pay any kind of attention for Firefox to be bad. They were doing that themselves very well already.

  Maybe the problem with Firefox has a lot more to do with their overpaid most likely hippie-feminist person they have as a CEO, no need to search for Google malfeasance when you have THAT type of CEO. Fairly sure she can create political bullshit out of nothing that would bring any org to failure.

  I hate the modern world. So hypocrite. We go look for answers on the other side of the planet when it is right there. But you can say it, because it is not politically correct. Seriously kill me already.

• by Seb-C on 11/20/23, 3:51 PM

  Funny, I was under the impression that Mozilla didn't need any help sabotaging Firefox by themselves.

  Or maybe it's also the fault of Google if they suddenly broke all the old extensions and never honored their promise to bring their capabilities back. Or when they disabled the extensions on mobile and did not bring it back despite their promise. Or when they break the user's habits by doing a useless UI revamp every 6 month and ignore the community's feedback.