5 ms·

Is Google crippling Firefox?

165 points by fivre 13y ago

largehotcoffee 13y ago
Honestly this is probably just a bug, if this post gets seen by the right people I'm sure it will be fixed.
- josteink 13y ago
  While that might be true, Google is now becoming big, aggressive and "evil" enough for people to start asking these questions. That was unthinkable only a few years ago.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    That was unthinkable only a few years ago. No it wasn't. People have been publicly accusing Google of malice for years.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  The bug, which is in Firefox, not Youtube, has been open for nearly a year. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512
dz0ny 13y ago
I think is Media Source Extensions support which is "not working" for Firefox see http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014/03/media-source-extensions http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014/03/media-source-extensions
rplnt 13y ago
Would it be so surprising? Google has been doing this for years to other browsers. Blocking based on UA, using features not supported by other browsers (and showing those features to those browsers), manipulating users to downlaod Chrome... Firefox was just way too big piece of the income to poke it.
- dz0ny 13y ago
  Or IE11 in this case :>
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  This is just FUD. Google has typically provided full functionality to all modern browsers — fallback versions being served to older UAs only. Typical advanced features Google uses are things like SPDY — this differs from the old-fashioned Microsoft embrace-extend-extinguish in that they are almost all standardised features, in a variety of stages of implementation among different browsers. And users aren't "manipulated" into downloading Chrome - that's a weasel word.
  - fetbaffe 13y ago
    cough Opera cough
  - geppetto 13y ago
    What about www.google.com on Firefox for Android? It has been crippled for quite some time.
    - matthewmacleod 13y ago
      In what way has it been crippled?
      - geppetto 13y ago
        Well, uglier featurephone-like webpage, no swiping menu from left, no card-like results display, etc. Now it's better than months ago but still quite a different experience than stock android browser or chrome. Maybe it's me being naive and not tech-savvy but I used to think one page should look the same on different browsers.
  - FreezerburnV 13y ago
    Actually, it isn't. There is at least one case where Google deliberately blocked a (mobile) browser from accessing its maps service: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking-wp8-maps-2013-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking... There is also a debatably bad faith block on Microsoft's well-designed Youtube app on Windows Phone that it put out a while ago. This app failed to live up to some rather unreasonable demands from Google, so they banned the entire thing wholesale. (note that there are other Youtube apps on the Windows Phone store, such as Metrotube, which are not blocked) Google isn't the "do not evil" white knight in shining armor it used to be. It is much closer to the old Microsoft these days.
grrowl 13y ago
The author makes a massive leap of faith between "I downloaded the pages with Chrome and Firefox user agents, and there was differences" and "can't understand the differences, therefore there's obviously malicious intent". Cross-browser development, especially for cutting-edge, novel features on a massive codebase is hard. Not insurmountably, but it doesn't allow one to automatically attribute it to malice.
- Bahamut 13y ago
  That was my first thought as well - the author makes an extremely poor leap in logic.
- noselasd 13y ago
  Indeed. With this claim, you really need to figure out why and what. It's http and text, so figuring out what triggers the different behavior is feasible and needs to be done before throwing out allegations.
- wreegab 13y ago
  Yes, he lost me completely there. I was expecting he would at least provide his data (the diff'ed portion) so more knowledgeable people could pitch in. Instead I got no data and a sweeping conclusion.
  - fivre 13y ago
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7ghhhq1ys3l5am/firefox_youtube.tar.gz https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7ghhhq1ys3l5am/firefox_youtube.ta... for what it's worth, several different copies of the same video across different browsers/browsers pretending to be other browsers
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
crayola 13y ago
My guess is that it is probably not overtly malicious, but that people at Google are just responding to incentives. There are simply more incentives for Google to get things working 100% right in Chrome. It is not to say that it is ok, though, as it could result in more people switching away from Firefox -- which is not a good thing for the web. I, an enthusiast Firefox user, had to stop using Hangouts in Firefox because it could get excruciatingly slow (while fine in Chrome). Again, not saying it's Google's fault; it may be the case that with my configuration, Firefox is just generally slower than Chrome for the kind of fancy code that powers Hangouts. But they certainly did not try to make it run well for me, for lack of incentives. Many people (especially lay) would have responded by switching to Chrome. I responded by deactivating gmail chat and switching to Skype.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  This is true about incentives, but it's also how pretty much all bad stuff in the real world actually happens, rather than black hatted evil-doers twirling their mustaches (though there's a bit of that too). Some consider "incentives matter" to be a good two word summary of economics, it would be great if people bore that in mind when dealing with corporations, rather than treating them like local sports teams. Though I think in this case, Firefox and Google actually have their incentives pretty well aligned, with each other and the general public (generally "make web video better"), it's just a matter of timing.
_Simon 13y ago
No. Mozilla are doing a perfectly good job of that on their own.
sheepdestroyer 13y ago
I can confirm same behaviour on fedora 20. No HTML5 with flash installed, have to remove it to get Firefox to access the HTML5 player
- wreegab 13y ago
  Well, I had to test this. Using Firefox 28. Went to Youtube front page. Click top video available. Got served Flash-based video. Went to http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 to request HTML5 to be served. Went back to front page, clicked on top video. I was served a HTML5 video. Linux Mint 16/Cinnamon here.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- crayola 13y ago
  Am I missing something? I think that "I observe the same problem in Windows as in Linux" DOES allow rejection of the hypothesis "The problem is with Linux only".
  - taspeotis 13y ago
    No, I missed something. Reading fail on my behalf.
- valarauca1 13y ago
  S/He did in a way. S/He tested if the problem existed on other operating systems which makes a lot more sense then debugging your kernel at the first sign of trouble. The best case here for example is a faulty signal from a control/logic board. Best to grab a second multi-meter before you start probing all over the board.
Infinitesimus 13y ago
While I respect what the author is trying to do, it is a pretty huge leap to make such conclusions. This is the kind of thing you file a bug report for and get a response from a Google dev about the issue.... not start a potential browser flamewar without enough fact.... [especially if you say you saw a JS error but don't say what it was....]
doublec 13y ago
Google's HTML 5 media player uses Media Source Extensions (MSE) now [1]. This enables them to use adaptive streaming implemented in JavaScript using DASH JS libraries. Unfortunately MSE support is not complete in Firefox so the MSE using HTML5 YouTube player doesn't work. This will be why Google would be serving Flash. I don't know if they continue to serve the non-MSE HTML 5 player. MSE support in Firefox is in progress. Nightly builds can enable it by changing the 'media.mediasource.enabled' about:config setting. Don't do this though because it will definitely degrade your YouTube playing. Due to an incomplete feature it waits for the entire video to download before playing. There's a patch for this that gets playback working but there are still issues with the adaptive streaming itself (because the implementation is incomplete). Follow bug 881512 [2] if you want to track support in Firefox for the "Get YouTube working with MSE" issue. I wrote a bit about this [3] a while back and will do an updated post, if someone else doesn't first, once YouTube support is stable. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 [3] http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/08/20/progress-towards-media-source-extensions-in-firefox.html http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/08/20/progress-towards-media-s...
- timendum 13y ago
  So Google pushed a new code/technology, supported only by Chrome. This is not far from the "Google crippling Firefox" point of view.
  - coldpie 13y ago
    MSE is actually really cool and makes streaming media over HTTP much more pleasant. I'm not surprised they want to keep the number of codepaths they have to support low. As the GP mentioned, MSE is coming to Firefox soon anyway.
    - Piskvorrr 13y ago
      ActiveX is actually really cool and makes [whatever new feature] much more pleasant. I'm not surprised they want to keep the number of codepaths they have to support low. Have we been here before?
wreegab 13y ago
Re. author's "I noticed that Youtube would not provide the HTML5 player to Firefox even if requested"... Tried to repro, Linux Mint 16, Firefox 28: 1) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 2) Flash-based video served 3) Go to http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 4) Click "Request the HTML5 player" 5) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 6) HTML5-based video served Edit: using a less annoying video as test case.
- doublec 13y ago
  For me following these steps using Ubuntu I get the Flash player both times. Did you get a preroll ad both times you tried it? They use flash (except for the MSE player). If you didn't get a preroll you may have got the HTML 5 player.
  - wreegab 13y ago
    I got the pre-roll ad, yes, which was also served as HTML5. I tried clicking more videos from the front page, so far all HTML5.
    - doublec 13y ago
      Interesting! I wonder what the difference is.
      - wreegab 13y ago
        I just noticed that if I switch to "https://" https://", Flash-based videos are now served. Back to "http://" http://", same video served HTML5. So this is it, "https" is the culprit (for whatever reason)? Edit: On Chromium, "https://" https://" or "http://" http://" I get served HTML5. So, could it be that Firefox somehow doesn't provide the proper cookie value telling the site to use HTML5 when using "https://" https://" (I did set HTML5 pref with "https://" https://")? Edit: A cookie named "GED_PLAYLIST_ACTIVITY", used for "[e]ncrypted connections only", is used on Firefox only. I don't see this cookie on Chromium on an encrypted connection. So, there might be a link with the presence of this cookie and the serving of Flash-based videos.
eXpl0it3r 13y ago
So two features of a site run by Google are not working as expected on "third-party" software and the conclusion is, that Google is doing it with malicious intend? Thus could I conclude that if something at medium.com is not work properly on all browsers, they are trying to cripple that one browser? To the author: Next time think a bit more critical about the topics you're writing.
- crayola 13y ago
  Where can I download medium.com's web browser?
3rd3 13y ago
To fix this problem for now there is an add-on that forces HTML5 playback in Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...
- dublinben 13y ago
  I can confirm that this extension works perfectly. I haven't had any issues watching YT videos in Firefox (without flash) ever since installing this.
Grue3 13y ago
Chrome is the new IE. Javascript is the new Flash. History repeating itself again.
outside1234 13y ago
Google is really the new monopoly. They've bundled a new non-standardized technology into the platform and then brow beat everyone else into implementing it by having the rest of the "planned economy" (aka Google Apps) use it.
abruzzi 13y ago
Consistency in video support is almost non existent. So serving variations for every platform is frequently better simplified. Rather than come up with every possible test we simply broke it up into two categories, those that need flash (HDS) and those that don't (HLS). I'm sure there are some browsers that would work for HLS that are getting served HDS and flash, but they still work, and we got fairly wide compatibility without having to spend too much time maintaining compatibility lists. This might not be the best way to run a video specific site like youtube, but being a moving target, I wouldn't be surprised.
tsherif 13y ago
Although I disagree with a lot of Google's policies (with respect to privacy, etc.), the claims made by the author here don't make much sense. It's pretty clear that the author and many of the people commenting don't understand how web development for multiple platforms works. Using a new web standard technology (http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/ http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/) that isn't implemented by all browsers and providing a polyfill for non-compliant browsers isn't "crippling" the other browsers. It's considered best practice. If websites only used technologies that are available in all browsers, the web would never move forward.
dzhiurgis 13y ago
I am having troubles with Safari. Here's interesting insight: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35817/youtube-why-are-some-videos-html5-and-some-flash-and-how-do-i-force-html5 http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35817/youtube-why...
sirdogealot 13y ago
I can't quite put my finger on it, but whenever I access maps.google.com from Firefox running on my Arch Linux... I am unable to zoom or search or do anything. It just shows me the world. When I open the same URL in chromium however, everything works perfectly. Just my 2 cents.
bsder 13y ago
I suspect something got broken for ads. You can call that "crippling" if you wish, I do, but other opinions differ. I've noticed YouTube doing a lot of work to try to run ads even when blockers and stuff are trying to stop them from running. I loathe watching YouTube videos on iPads nowadays.

165 points by fivre 13y ago

largehotcoffee 13y ago

Honestly this is probably just a bug, if this post gets seen by the right people I'm sure it will be fixed.

josteink 13y ago
While that might be true, Google is now becoming big, aggressive and "evil" enough for people to start asking these questions. That was unthinkable only a few years ago.
- matthewmacleod 13y ago
  That was unthinkable only a few years ago. No it wasn't. People have been publicly accusing Google of malice for years.
thrownaway2424 13y ago
The bug, which is in Firefox, not Youtube, has been open for nearly a year. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512

dz0ny 13y ago

I think is Media Source Extensions support which is "not working" for Firefox see http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014/03/media-source-extensions http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2014/03/media-source-extensions

rplnt 13y ago

Would it be so surprising? Google has been doing this for years to other browsers. Blocking based on UA, using features not supported by other browsers (and showing those features to those browsers), manipulating users to downlaod Chrome... Firefox was just way too big piece of the income to poke it.

dz0ny 13y ago
Or IE11 in this case :>
matthewmacleod 13y ago
This is just FUD. Google has typically provided full functionality to all modern browsers — fallback versions being served to older UAs only. Typical advanced features Google uses are things like SPDY — this differs from the old-fashioned Microsoft embrace-extend-extinguish in that they are almost all standardised features, in a variety of stages of implementation among different browsers. And users aren't "manipulated" into downloading Chrome - that's a weasel word.
- fetbaffe 13y ago
  cough Opera cough
- geppetto 13y ago
  What about www.google.com on Firefox for Android? It has been crippled for quite some time.
  - matthewmacleod 13y ago
    In what way has it been crippled?
    - geppetto 13y ago
      Well, uglier featurephone-like webpage, no swiping menu from left, no card-like results display, etc. Now it's better than months ago but still quite a different experience than stock android browser or chrome. Maybe it's me being naive and not tech-savvy but I used to think one page should look the same on different browsers.
- FreezerburnV 13y ago
  Actually, it isn't. There is at least one case where Google deliberately blocked a (mobile) browser from accessing its maps service: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking-wp8-maps-2013-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-admits-it-was-blocking... There is also a debatably bad faith block on Microsoft's well-designed Youtube app on Windows Phone that it put out a while ago. This app failed to live up to some rather unreasonable demands from Google, so they banned the entire thing wholesale. (note that there are other Youtube apps on the Windows Phone store, such as Metrotube, which are not blocked) Google isn't the "do not evil" white knight in shining armor it used to be. It is much closer to the old Microsoft these days.

grrowl 13y ago

The author makes a massive leap of faith between "I downloaded the pages with Chrome and Firefox user agents, and there was differences" and "can't understand the differences, therefore there's obviously malicious intent". Cross-browser development, especially for cutting-edge, novel features on a massive codebase is hard. Not insurmountably, but it doesn't allow one to automatically attribute it to malice.

Bahamut 13y ago
That was my first thought as well - the author makes an extremely poor leap in logic.
noselasd 13y ago
Indeed. With this claim, you really need to figure out why and what. It's http and text, so figuring out what triggers the different behavior is feasible and needs to be done before throwing out allegations.
wreegab 13y ago
Yes, he lost me completely there. I was expecting he would at least provide his data (the diff'ed portion) so more knowledgeable people could pitch in. Instead I got no data and a sweeping conclusion.
- fivre 13y ago
  https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7ghhhq1ys3l5am/firefox_youtube.tar.gz https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7ghhhq1ys3l5am/firefox_youtube.ta... for what it's worth, several different copies of the same video across different browsers/browsers pretending to be other browsers

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

crayola 13y ago

My guess is that it is probably not overtly malicious, but that people at Google are just responding to incentives. There are simply more incentives for Google to get things working 100% right in Chrome. It is not to say that it is ok, though, as it could result in more people switching away from Firefox -- which is not a good thing for the web. I, an enthusiast Firefox user, had to stop using Hangouts in Firefox because it could get excruciatingly slow (while fine in Chrome). Again, not saying it's Google's fault; it may be the case that with my configuration, Firefox is just generally slower than Chrome for the kind of fancy code that powers Hangouts. But they certainly did not try to make it run well for me, for lack of incentives. Many people (especially lay) would have responded by switching to Chrome. I responded by deactivating gmail chat and switching to Skype.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
This is true about incentives, but it's also how pretty much all bad stuff in the real world actually happens, rather than black hatted evil-doers twirling their mustaches (though there's a bit of that too). Some consider "incentives matter" to be a good two word summary of economics, it would be great if people bore that in mind when dealing with corporations, rather than treating them like local sports teams. Though I think in this case, Firefox and Google actually have their incentives pretty well aligned, with each other and the general public (generally "make web video better"), it's just a matter of timing.

_Simon 13y ago

No. Mozilla are doing a perfectly good job of that on their own.

sheepdestroyer 13y ago

I can confirm same behaviour on fedora 20. No HTML5 with flash installed, have to remove it to get Firefox to access the HTML5 player

wreegab 13y ago
Well, I had to test this. Using Firefox 28. Went to Youtube front page. Click top video available. Got served Flash-based video. Went to http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 to request HTML5 to be served. Went back to front page, clicked on top video. I was served a HTML5 video. Linux Mint 16/Cinnamon here.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

crayola 13y ago
Am I missing something? I think that "I observe the same problem in Windows as in Linux" DOES allow rejection of the hypothesis "The problem is with Linux only".
- taspeotis 13y ago
  No, I missed something. Reading fail on my behalf.
valarauca1 13y ago
S/He did in a way. S/He tested if the problem existed on other operating systems which makes a lot more sense then debugging your kernel at the first sign of trouble. The best case here for example is a faulty signal from a control/logic board. Best to grab a second multi-meter before you start probing all over the board.

Infinitesimus 13y ago

While I respect what the author is trying to do, it is a pretty huge leap to make such conclusions. This is the kind of thing you file a bug report for and get a response from a Google dev about the issue.... not start a potential browser flamewar without enough fact.... [especially if you say you saw a JS error but don't say what it was....]

doublec 13y ago

Google's HTML 5 media player uses Media Source Extensions (MSE) now [1]. This enables them to use adaptive streaming implemented in JavaScript using DASH JS libraries. Unfortunately MSE support is not complete in Firefox so the MSE using HTML5 YouTube player doesn't work. This will be why Google would be serving Flash. I don't know if they continue to serve the non-MSE HTML 5 player. MSE support in Firefox is in progress. Nightly builds can enable it by changing the 'media.mediasource.enabled' about:config setting. Don't do this though because it will definitely degrade your YouTube playing. Due to an incomplete feature it waits for the entire video to download before playing. There's a patch for this that gets playback working but there are still issues with the adaptive streaming itself (because the implementation is incomplete). Follow bug 881512 [2] if you want to track support in Firefox for the "Get YouTube working with MSE" issue. I wrote a bit about this [3] a while back and will do an updated post, if someone else doesn't first, once YouTube support is stable. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=881512 [3] http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/08/20/progress-towards-media-source-extensions-in-firefox.html http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/08/20/progress-towards-media-s...

timendum 13y ago
So Google pushed a new code/technology, supported only by Chrome. This is not far from the "Google crippling Firefox" point of view.
- coldpie 13y ago
  MSE is actually really cool and makes streaming media over HTTP much more pleasant. I'm not surprised they want to keep the number of codepaths they have to support low. As the GP mentioned, MSE is coming to Firefox soon anyway.
  - Piskvorrr 13y ago
    ActiveX is actually really cool and makes [whatever new feature] much more pleasant. I'm not surprised they want to keep the number of codepaths they have to support low. Have we been here before?

wreegab 13y ago

Re. author's "I noticed that Youtube would not provide the HTML5 player to Firefox even if requested"... Tried to repro, Linux Mint 16, Firefox 28: 1) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 2) Flash-based video served 3) Go to http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5 4) Click "Request the HTML5 player" 5) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UloBiVGtAP4 6) HTML5-based video served Edit: using a less annoying video as test case.

doublec 13y ago
For me following these steps using Ubuntu I get the Flash player both times. Did you get a preroll ad both times you tried it? They use flash (except for the MSE player). If you didn't get a preroll you may have got the HTML 5 player.
- wreegab 13y ago
  I got the pre-roll ad, yes, which was also served as HTML5. I tried clicking more videos from the front page, so far all HTML5.
  - doublec 13y ago
    Interesting! I wonder what the difference is.
    - wreegab 13y ago
      I just noticed that if I switch to "https://" https://", Flash-based videos are now served. Back to "http://" http://", same video served HTML5. So this is it, "https" is the culprit (for whatever reason)? Edit: On Chromium, "https://" https://" or "http://" http://" I get served HTML5. So, could it be that Firefox somehow doesn't provide the proper cookie value telling the site to use HTML5 when using "https://" https://" (I did set HTML5 pref with "https://" https://")? Edit: A cookie named "GED_PLAYLIST_ACTIVITY", used for "[e]ncrypted connections only", is used on Firefox only. I don't see this cookie on Chromium on an encrypted connection. So, there might be a link with the presence of this cookie and the serving of Flash-based videos.

eXpl0it3r 13y ago

So two features of a site run by Google are not working as expected on "third-party" software and the conclusion is, that Google is doing it with malicious intend? Thus could I conclude that if something at medium.com is not work properly on all browsers, they are trying to cripple that one browser? To the author: Next time think a bit more critical about the topics you're writing.

crayola 13y ago
Where can I download medium.com's web browser?

3rd3 13y ago

To fix this problem for now there is an add-on that forces HTML5 playback in Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-html5/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...

dublinben 13y ago
I can confirm that this extension works perfectly. I haven't had any issues watching YT videos in Firefox (without flash) ever since installing this.

Grue3 13y ago

Chrome is the new IE. Javascript is the new Flash. History repeating itself again.

outside1234 13y ago

Google is really the new monopoly. They've bundled a new non-standardized technology into the platform and then brow beat everyone else into implementing it by having the rest of the "planned economy" (aka Google Apps) use it.

abruzzi 13y ago

Consistency in video support is almost non existent. So serving variations for every platform is frequently better simplified. Rather than come up with every possible test we simply broke it up into two categories, those that need flash (HDS) and those that don't (HLS). I'm sure there are some browsers that would work for HLS that are getting served HDS and flash, but they still work, and we got fairly wide compatibility without having to spend too much time maintaining compatibility lists. This might not be the best way to run a video specific site like youtube, but being a moving target, I wouldn't be surprised.

tsherif 13y ago

Although I disagree with a lot of Google's policies (with respect to privacy, etc.), the claims made by the author here don't make much sense. It's pretty clear that the author and many of the people commenting don't understand how web development for multiple platforms works. Using a new web standard technology (http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/ http://www.w3.org/TR/media-source/) that isn't implemented by all browsers and providing a polyfill for non-compliant browsers isn't "crippling" the other browsers. It's considered best practice. If websites only used technologies that are available in all browsers, the web would never move forward.

dzhiurgis 13y ago

I am having troubles with Safari. Here's interesting insight: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35817/youtube-why-are-some-videos-html5-and-some-flash-and-how-do-i-force-html5 http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/35817/youtube-why...

sirdogealot 13y ago

I can't quite put my finger on it, but whenever I access maps.google.com from Firefox running on my Arch Linux... I am unable to zoom or search or do anything. It just shows me the world. When I open the same URL in chromium however, everything works perfectly. Just my 2 cents.

bsder 13y ago

I suspect something got broken for ads. You can call that "crippling" if you wish, I do, but other opinions differ. I've noticed YouTube doing a lot of work to try to run ads even when blockers and stuff are trying to stop them from running. I loathe watching YouTube videos on iPads nowadays.