Google slows down Firefox users when watching YouTube…
Guys relax. Most of the ‘research’ comes from this reddit post: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/k9w3ei4/
It points out following code in youtube’s polymer script:
setTimeout(function() { c(); a.resolve(1) }, 5E3);But exactly this code does show up on a stock installation of chrome too, and it does not check for the user agent. One of the responses goes a bit deeper into what the code above could do: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/17ywbjj/whenever_i_open_a_youtube_video_in_a_new_tab_its/ka08uqj/
It is rather clear, that this code is not aimed at firefox users to slow down their loading time.
you spent 20 minutes going through this while i just ran a ping test in 30 seconds
it’s real
I know that you are memeing - but some ppl probably don’t have the background to see the difference.
A ping does not contain a http header containing a user agent. The response to a ping is not a webpage - and even if it was, your console won’t execute the JS.
Here’s the actual source: https://old.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/17z8hsz/youtube_has_started_to_artificially_slow_down/
The link in the post is just recycling the reddit content.
I wonder what would happen if Google manages to destroy itself with increasing shenanigans like this.
I mean, so much of digital based stuff relies on them for some extent.
Google is declared “too big to fail” and get a multi-million dollar bailout
“But you see, capitalists take on a risk…”
This reminds me of Elon Musk when he started artificially slowing down links to websites he doesn’t like… https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/15/twitter-x-links-delayed/
So much for “free speech” lol
Every single word that comes out of Elon’s mouth is a big fat fucking lie. I don’t understand how people can still trust that guy with anything.
Free speech is throttled. You might want to buy premium speech for only $19.99 per month!
Elon Musk was good, but after a failed experiment for the good of mankind he was deviated… now he is misunderstood, like Frankenstein’s Monster
Might be a very dumb financial decision but maybe it’s time to rethink that whole google search contract renewal coming up in a year or so. Feeling like a toxic relationship
Edit: the time frame is just an assumption due to it being a 3 year contract made in 2020. I would try to seek a relationship with bing tbh, it sucks with privacy but would be a kick to google’s balls. Plus the majority of firefox users who start giving a crap about their privacy, change to duckduckgo in the beginning of their journey so it wont be a massive shift from bing imo in terms of searching experience.
The biggest problem is the loss of users that that incurs… it would be long term damage for temporary financial boost. I think they already tried once to switch to yahoo and it was an unmitigated disaster
Yeah I expect that would be the case but I honestly think out of all the other longterm rivals with deep pockets, bing is firefox’s best chance of maintaining most of it’s current userbase and maybe even growing it in the longterm especially if bing ai’s features keep expanding. Else why would bard be a thing if google didn’t feel a bit threatened. Again just my thoughts would like to hear what other opinions are out there.
Edit: would also be a big win for microsoft since a respectable browser is now using it’s search engine and not just a butt of the joke like edge is, so maybe firefox can leveage a good chunk of change from them to keep their browser running for a while unlike the deal they did with google. Think it would ultimately destroy edge though but since edge can now be user uninstalled thats bound to happen in a couple of years anyways and with this deal bing will still get some traffic so still a win for microsoft.
