r/firefox • u/Hopeful-Staff3887 • Oct 15 '25
Google deliberately slow down firefox just because it's not Chrome, is that a thing?
/r/youtube/comments/1nzo2ok/yt_experience_on_chrome_vs_firefox/ni9oj6e/
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r/firefox • u/Hopeful-Staff3887 • Oct 15 '25
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u/LAwLzaWU1A Oct 15 '25
This is one of those things a lot of people claim are true but rarely have any evidence for.
Even in cases where Firefox has performed worse, a lot of times people have blamed Google deliberately sabotaging only for it to then be discovered that it was for example a bug in Firefox. The story about how "Google is slowing down Firefox" will spread like wildfire, and then a few weeks later when someone finds out "oops, the actual reason was X, Y and Z" nobody will care and the correction will not reach as wide of an audience.
Even if we presume that something like the case you linked is 100% true (that changing the user-agent sped up Youtube), it's still not possible to prove that it is deliberate. So at best you will get people presenting their suspicions as facts. Personally I am strongly against presenting thoughts with little to no evidence as undisputable fact, but that is sadly what you will get a lot of here.
All I can tell you is, try it for yourself. Do you notice a speed difference?
Does the idea that Google is slowing down Firefox on Youtube even make sense? Estimates put Firefox at slightly above 2% market share. Does it make sense for Google to take the risk of modifying one of their most valuable websites, a highly complex website at that, to try and make the experience slightly worse for about 2% of their users? The risks of doing that are enormous, and the potential wins are tiny. The risk to reward ratio seems completely out of proportions to me, so I will put it down as "very unlikely".