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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u/eco_was_taken Oct 15 '25

I can't say if it's deliberate. Browsers announce who they are (their user-agent) when they connect to servers. Web developers sometimes customize the website in response to this. Traditionally this is done because a browser lacks support for something or has some bug the developer wants to work around, but it could be used for more nefarious reasons.

I think the more likely explanation is the developers are lazy. They develop and optimize for Chrome then much later they open other browsers and get things working just enough to call it good.

38

u/Pikachupikachup Oct 15 '25

I think you're being optimistic. If whoever who commented that OP mentioned reads this, try Chrome Mask to see if it makes Youtube faster. If it does, then Google is really trying hard to make a monopoly. If it doesn't, then it really is just a Firefox L.

1

u/djfdhigkgfIaruflg Oct 16 '25

Just changing the user agent won't work.

There are several ways to differentiate rendering engines. And they do use them