Scandal, heresy and preferential treatment! YouTube would intentionally degrade people’s experience on Firefox to encourage them to use Chromium. Except in reality… not really
It was a Reddit post that ignited the situation. On the famous forum, an Internet user named vk6 claims to have made a sad discovery: YouTube would impose a 5-second delay on users who are bold enough to browse on Firefox rather than the in-house Google Chrome browser. In a video, we see that the page is slow to load on Firefox, but that once the user-agent is changed (a variable which makes a site believe that it is using a browser other than its own) for that of Chrome, the video starts instantly.
An anti-adblock measure, not anti-Firefox
Some amateur developers even claim that a piece of JavaScript code embedded in the YouTube page, which effectively delays the page loading by 5 seconds, provides evidence of this software discrimination. Except that the reality is both more complicated and much simpler than that.
If there is indeed a piece of code delaying the loading of the page, this seems more linked to the use of ad blockers than to the choice of the Internet user’s web browser. Google would once again punish those who try to block ads by making them wait longer before launching a video. The firm also confirmed this to the 9to5Google site, explaining that “Users who have ad blockers installed may have a suboptimal experience regardless of which browser they use.» This crusade against Adblock software could ironically push Internet users towards Firefox elsewhere.
It would appear, however, that this Adblock sabotage policy has not yet been widely deployed. During our tests we were unable to replicate this “bug”, whether with Firefox, Firefox disguised as Google Chrome, with or without adblock software and with a Premium or standard Youtube account. The famous 5 second delay never manifested itself in any situation.
Google and Firefox, a complex story
If this time Google seems more interested in sabotaging ad blockers than users of competing browsers, it is easy to understand why some Internet users immediately saw red. The company actually has a poor history regarding the compatibility of these sites with browsers other than Chrome.
As a former Mozilla manager explained to ZDnet in 2019, Google Doc, Google Drive, YouTube and many other services from the search giant frequently caused bugs on Firefox and Edge once Chrome’s dominance was well established. A change in programming interface in 2018 notably increased the loading time of a YouTube page on Firefox by 5, without affecting that of Chrome. Google has pleaded the error each time, but we understand why Firefox users are on edge today.
Source : Reddit, 9to5Google, ZDNet
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