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Relatively old post. In such cases, I tend to go with "never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence". Most things that people

Relatively old post. In such cases, I tend to go with "never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence". Most things that people assume are malicious often are usually prioritization issue. FF market is small, engineering resources are scarce (you may think they are vast, it's google after all, but you need to think of the "impact" engineer has to drive for promotion, which FF barely clears if anything).

vezycash 2y ago
They've intentionally broken YouTube for a competitor before - Windows phone. But this time, I'll assume a mistake because the potential anti trust fallout isn't worth it.
- tehlike 2y ago
  Well, yes, but I worked on developing Admob SDK for Windows Phone. So it's not as clear cut as you may have thought of. Breaking youtube might also be a resourcing issue still - like making sure they control the release process without having to allocate resources to make sure what they do work for windows phone too. Note: I no longer work at google.
  - boristsr 2y ago
    There was also claims that Microsoft ended their HTML engine over anticompetitive behavior from Google. https://mspoweruser.com/google-claims-edge-slowing-empty-div-was-just-a-bug/ https://mspoweruser.com/google-claims-edge-slowing-empty-div... These claims aren't isolated. I think it's a bad look for Google to repeatedly make mistakes when they are currently under multiple investigations for monopolistic behavior.
coldpie 2y ago
Yeah. I've also never seen convincing evidence that the alleged deliberate breakage is actually true. There may be legitimate reasons to send different code to different user-agents (feature support; working around bugs in a certain client; bugs or feature support in older versions of a certain client; straight up mistakes; so on). I'm not one to give Google the benefit of the doubt, but surely someone with some web tech chops could actually come up with a smoking gun if this was true. But no one ever does even a base level analysis, it's just gut feelings reddit posts.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  "I'm not one to give Google the benefit of the doubt" but you just did
LegionMammal978 2y ago
Yeah, there are a lot of different things in that thread which have been claimed to fix the problem for the particular user. You'd think if they were nefariously targeting Firefox users, they'd either make the issues very intermittent (even when the user doesn't try any fix), or very incessant (even when the user tries some fix). Of course, there are plenty of complaints to be had about invisible A/B testing, but direct malice seems a bit far-fetched.
mingus88 2y ago
FF has a strong reputation for adhering to open standards. For Google to not dedicate “scarce resources” (what a choice of words when talking about a company with a market cap over Two TRILLION dollars) to those standards, I think it’s fair to call this a deliberate action by leadership to prioritize their browser over any other.
- magicalist 2y ago
  If the fix is disabling and then reenabling ublock origin, the problem isn't properly testing against web standards.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  This would suggest that google never accidentally makes bad experiences because it can throw big money at everything but that's clearly not the case nor how software nor org management work. I think this is a fantasy we have about big companies, esp big tech companies, often until we work at one. "But they have so much money, surely it wasn't just one guy working on this major thing" and "If they wanted to do it right, it would have been done right" and such.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Point is... Maybe it shouldn't be up to Google that the prioritization other browsers get is "one guy in his spare time." Maybe society is allowed to hold the dominant market player to a higher standard? The market itself is, after all, a made-up set of rules people agree on; we could make those rules encourage multiple options over a single winner.
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    so they accidentally not "adhering to open standards"? Thanks for confirming.
- tehlike 2y ago
  You would change your opinion on my "choice words" if you decide to work at a trillion dollar company one day. Trillion dollar company with probably <100K eng, spread over hundreds of products/features/etc, who also have to go through performance reviews and have to show impact. So yes, my choice words are very intentional in this case. leadership to prioritize their browser -> leadership to prioritize the most popular browsers. Yes.
Qem 2y ago
> Most things that people assume are malicious often are usually prioritization issue Monopolists shouldn't have the benefit of doubt. If it acts in a way that seems like dominant market position abuse, the default position should be assume that's the case, and act accordingly.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  It can also be both. At Google's scale, the easiest way to harm Firefox's market share is to simply not test changes on Firefox. Let Mozilla keep their browser implementation-compliant with Google's interpretation of the spec, not the other way around.
- prox 2y ago
  And the experience is on Safari as well. Fair enough, Apple videos playing nice with Android cast devices is also trouble.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Everyone should have the benefit of the doubt. It's simply the right way to act. One doesn't act right towards people because they deserve it in some cosmic sense, but because it's the moral thing to do.
  - Qem 2y ago
    > One doesn't act right towards people because they deserve it in some cosmic sense, but because it's the moral thing to do. Corporations are not people.
- acaloiar 2y ago
  The idea isn't about "benefit of the doubt", it's about having an accurate world view. If you attribute to malice every action of monoploies, you have an inaccurate world view. It's a world view you're of course entitled to, but that doesn't make it a good one to have.
dangoodmanUT 2y ago
Agreed, i think reddit (and even HN) are too quick to jump to malice. Spoiler alert: the world's not out to get you!
- hightrix 2y ago
  Yes, reddit is very quick to jump to malice, but I don't think it's a big jump to think that Google is out to show you ads by any means necessary. They are an ad company, that's their purpose.
  - tehlike 2y ago
    Yes, google wants to get compensated for a service they are providing. They want to show you ads.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  Really? Then why run antivirus? Why have home defense, pepper spray, alarms, doors, locks, personal alarms, police, security guards? Why all the hate against United Health CEO and support for the assassin? Every company is in it for the money and if they can "get you", they will. And from a business competition standpoint, it's been proven time and time again that companies will go to great lengths to curtail their competition. We've seen the numerous lawsuits but what about things we don't see?
rtkwe 2y ago
The problem goes away though by simply switching the user agent so there's something being deliberately done differently for Firefox users that's causing the issue. It's not simply that Firefox does something different in their engine that Google would need to investigate and address, the problem going away when the user agent is set to Chrome proves that.
- tehlike 2y ago
  USer agent is used through out most web stacks for quirks. I doubt anyone has something like "if firefox sleep (100)"
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Not so blatant but the fact remains that just treating FF like their own would eliminate the large bad bugs referenced in the post.
moralestapia 2y ago
Polezniye duraki never fail to show up and stand up for multi-trillion dollar companies. Did you know that the DOJ (in the US) recently ruled Chrome to be separate from Google, due to monopolistic practices? >never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence Really? If only they uttered this phrase during the trial the could have got away with it, dang!
- tehlike 2y ago
  You are mixing many things together. Google is so evil, please do not use anything they build, even things they directly or indirectly contributed to, like open web standards! I am no Google fan, and I left it for a bunch of reasons. There may probably places where they do have monopolistic practices - and I won't comment on them - but my engineering sense is the explanation is much simpler here.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    Do you really think the DOJ forcing Chrome out of Google is out of context for this discussion? >please do not use anything they build I actually try not to.
    - tehlike 2y ago
      > Do you really think the DOJ forcing Chrome out of Google is out of context for this discussion? That's not even related to what I said. I mentioned the issue here is less likely to be due to monopolistic causes. Also see this reply from an eng that did work around firefox regressions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42389526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42389526 It corroborates with what i said.
groos 2y ago
Yes, I also tend to suspect incompetence, or worse, indifference. I have a Sony TV that runs Google TV. When I cast photos from my Pixel device, they show at a grainy 1024x768 resolution. I have been unable to find out why this is the case. When my wife casts the same photos from her iPhone, they show in gorgeous full HDR. I don't know what to make of it except somebody at Google doesn't care enough about my particular combination.
- tehlike 2y ago
  It can be many things really, Sometimes the issue is on Google's end, sometimes it's on Sony - OEMs are also not great at implementing things properly too. So it can be on either end - even if Iphone seems to work.
techwizrd 2y ago
I think what you're describing is not incompetence, but Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system." We should aim to have incentives that produce the behavior we want, which is that YouTube should function the same in Firefox as it does in Chrome.
- tehlike 2y ago
  Good way to explain it - yes, incentives.
db48x 2y ago
There’s a long history of “accidentally” breaking Firefox and other browsers. Can’t explain that by incompetence; it’s clearly quite deliberate.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
When "incompetence" is so conveniently beneficial, and you have no way to prove, then the appearance of impropriety is enough to go ahead and charge impropriety. I'm "incompetent" at doing the laundry. Strangely it's ok because strangely I never get asked to do the laundry. What a totally coincidental benefit that I am not knowingly perpetuating at all.

vezycash 2y ago

They've intentionally broken YouTube for a competitor before - Windows phone. But this time, I'll assume a mistake because the potential anti trust fallout isn't worth it.

tehlike 2y ago
Well, yes, but I worked on developing Admob SDK for Windows Phone. So it's not as clear cut as you may have thought of. Breaking youtube might also be a resourcing issue still - like making sure they control the release process without having to allocate resources to make sure what they do work for windows phone too. Note: I no longer work at google.
- boristsr 2y ago
  There was also claims that Microsoft ended their HTML engine over anticompetitive behavior from Google. https://mspoweruser.com/google-claims-edge-slowing-empty-div-was-just-a-bug/ https://mspoweruser.com/google-claims-edge-slowing-empty-div... These claims aren't isolated. I think it's a bad look for Google to repeatedly make mistakes when they are currently under multiple investigations for monopolistic behavior.

coldpie 2y ago

Yeah. I've also never seen convincing evidence that the alleged deliberate breakage is actually true. There may be legitimate reasons to send different code to different user-agents (feature support; working around bugs in a certain client; bugs or feature support in older versions of a certain client; straight up mistakes; so on). I'm not one to give Google the benefit of the doubt, but surely someone with some web tech chops could actually come up with a smoking gun if this was true. But no one ever does even a base level analysis, it's just gut feelings reddit posts.

knowitnone 2y ago
"I'm not one to give Google the benefit of the doubt" but you just did

LegionMammal978 2y ago

Yeah, there are a lot of different things in that thread which have been claimed to fix the problem for the particular user. You'd think if they were nefariously targeting Firefox users, they'd either make the issues very intermittent (even when the user doesn't try any fix), or very incessant (even when the user tries some fix). Of course, there are plenty of complaints to be had about invisible A/B testing, but direct malice seems a bit far-fetched.

mingus88 2y ago

FF has a strong reputation for adhering to open standards. For Google to not dedicate “scarce resources” (what a choice of words when talking about a company with a market cap over Two TRILLION dollars) to those standards, I think it’s fair to call this a deliberate action by leadership to prioritize their browser over any other.

magicalist 2y ago
If the fix is disabling and then reenabling ublock origin, the problem isn't properly testing against web standards.
hombre_fatal 2y ago
This would suggest that google never accidentally makes bad experiences because it can throw big money at everything but that's clearly not the case nor how software nor org management work. I think this is a fantasy we have about big companies, esp big tech companies, often until we work at one. "But they have so much money, surely it wasn't just one guy working on this major thing" and "If they wanted to do it right, it would have been done right" and such.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Point is... Maybe it shouldn't be up to Google that the prioritization other browsers get is "one guy in his spare time." Maybe society is allowed to hold the dominant market player to a higher standard? The market itself is, after all, a made-up set of rules people agree on; we could make those rules encourage multiple options over a single winner.
- knowitnone 2y ago
  so they accidentally not "adhering to open standards"? Thanks for confirming.
tehlike 2y ago
You would change your opinion on my "choice words" if you decide to work at a trillion dollar company one day. Trillion dollar company with probably <100K eng, spread over hundreds of products/features/etc, who also have to go through performance reviews and have to show impact. So yes, my choice words are very intentional in this case. leadership to prioritize their browser -> leadership to prioritize the most popular browsers. Yes.

Qem 2y ago

> Most things that people assume are malicious often are usually prioritization issue Monopolists shouldn't have the benefit of doubt. If it acts in a way that seems like dominant market position abuse, the default position should be assume that's the case, and act accordingly.

shadowgovt 2y ago
It can also be both. At Google's scale, the easiest way to harm Firefox's market share is to simply not test changes on Firefox. Let Mozilla keep their browser implementation-compliant with Google's interpretation of the spec, not the other way around.
prox 2y ago
And the experience is on Safari as well. Fair enough, Apple videos playing nice with Android cast devices is also trouble.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Everyone should have the benefit of the doubt. It's simply the right way to act. One doesn't act right towards people because they deserve it in some cosmic sense, but because it's the moral thing to do.
- Qem 2y ago
  > One doesn't act right towards people because they deserve it in some cosmic sense, but because it's the moral thing to do. Corporations are not people.
acaloiar 2y ago
The idea isn't about "benefit of the doubt", it's about having an accurate world view. If you attribute to malice every action of monoploies, you have an inaccurate world view. It's a world view you're of course entitled to, but that doesn't make it a good one to have.

dangoodmanUT 2y ago

Agreed, i think reddit (and even HN) are too quick to jump to malice. Spoiler alert: the world's not out to get you!

hightrix 2y ago
Yes, reddit is very quick to jump to malice, but I don't think it's a big jump to think that Google is out to show you ads by any means necessary. They are an ad company, that's their purpose.
- tehlike 2y ago
  Yes, google wants to get compensated for a service they are providing. They want to show you ads.
knowitnone 2y ago
Really? Then why run antivirus? Why have home defense, pepper spray, alarms, doors, locks, personal alarms, police, security guards? Why all the hate against United Health CEO and support for the assassin? Every company is in it for the money and if they can "get you", they will. And from a business competition standpoint, it's been proven time and time again that companies will go to great lengths to curtail their competition. We've seen the numerous lawsuits but what about things we don't see?

rtkwe 2y ago

The problem goes away though by simply switching the user agent so there's something being deliberately done differently for Firefox users that's causing the issue. It's not simply that Firefox does something different in their engine that Google would need to investigate and address, the problem going away when the user agent is set to Chrome proves that.

tehlike 2y ago
USer agent is used through out most web stacks for quirks. I doubt anyone has something like "if firefox sleep (100)"
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Not so blatant but the fact remains that just treating FF like their own would eliminate the large bad bugs referenced in the post.

moralestapia 2y ago

Polezniye duraki never fail to show up and stand up for multi-trillion dollar companies. Did you know that the DOJ (in the US) recently ruled Chrome to be separate from Google, due to monopolistic practices? >never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence Really? If only they uttered this phrase during the trial the could have got away with it, dang!

tehlike 2y ago
You are mixing many things together. Google is so evil, please do not use anything they build, even things they directly or indirectly contributed to, like open web standards! I am no Google fan, and I left it for a bunch of reasons. There may probably places where they do have monopolistic practices - and I won't comment on them - but my engineering sense is the explanation is much simpler here.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  Do you really think the DOJ forcing Chrome out of Google is out of context for this discussion? >please do not use anything they build I actually try not to.
  - tehlike 2y ago
    > Do you really think the DOJ forcing Chrome out of Google is out of context for this discussion? That's not even related to what I said. I mentioned the issue here is less likely to be due to monopolistic causes. Also see this reply from an eng that did work around firefox regressions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42389526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42389526 It corroborates with what i said.

groos 2y ago

Yes, I also tend to suspect incompetence, or worse, indifference. I have a Sony TV that runs Google TV. When I cast photos from my Pixel device, they show at a grainy 1024x768 resolution. I have been unable to find out why this is the case. When my wife casts the same photos from her iPhone, they show in gorgeous full HDR. I don't know what to make of it except somebody at Google doesn't care enough about my particular combination.

tehlike 2y ago
It can be many things really, Sometimes the issue is on Google's end, sometimes it's on Sony - OEMs are also not great at implementing things properly too. So it can be on either end - even if Iphone seems to work.

techwizrd 2y ago

I think what you're describing is not incompetence, but Hubbard's corollary to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system." We should aim to have incentives that produce the behavior we want, which is that YouTube should function the same in Firefox as it does in Chrome.

tehlike 2y ago
Good way to explain it - yes, incentives.

db48x 2y ago

There’s a long history of “accidentally” breaking Firefox and other browsers. Can’t explain that by incompetence; it’s clearly quite deliberate.

Brian_K_White 2y ago

When "incompetence" is so conveniently beneficial, and you have no way to prove, then the appearance of impropriety is enough to go ahead and charge impropriety. I'm "incompetent" at doing the laundry. Strangely it's ok because strangely I never get asked to do the laundry. What a totally coincidental benefit that I am not knowingly perpetuating at all.