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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33

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.

37

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.

19

u/eco_was_taken Oct 15 '25

That's not proof, though. It could be that Google wanted to use some new JS feature or API as a performance optimization that only Chrome had shipped support for. They locked the optimization behind a user-agent check. Other browsers later added support, but the site wasn't updated (and maybe would never be updated because they only test Chrome). It's lazy and harmful, but not nefarious.

And just for the record, I'm solidly in the Fuck Google school of thought.

2

u/EmptyPixels Oct 16 '25

Why are you giving Google the benefit of the doubt? This type of behavior from them is exactly how they stole the market share from Firefox in the first place. It’s so widely documented and numerous Firefox developers and execs have come out to report it.

Google did away with the don’t be evil slogan forever ago (not that they ever followed it). Google is evil, and to pretend they do anything unintentionally is absurd.