Google allegedly crippling Firefox's YouTube performance — company's response to five-second video delay for non-Chrome users misses the point
YouTube framed the issue as being related to ad-blockers.
On Monday, a Redditor demonstrated that a recently observed five-second video loading delay, seen when using YouTube in Firefox, could be eliminated by changing the user agent to Chrome. Today, YouTube responded with a statement received by Android Authority conflating non-Chrome video loading delay issues with the use of ad blockers.
“To support a diverse ecosystem of creators globally and allow billions to access their favorite content on YouTube, we’ve launched an effort to urge viewers with ad blockers enabled to allow ads on YouTube or try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience. Users who have ad blockers installed may experience suboptimal viewing, regardless of the browser they are using.”
YouTube statement via Android Authority
If you check out the Reddit post by vk6_ you will see a succinct video capture of YouTube being tested in Mozilla Firefox. It is hard to explain why a plain vanilla Firefox install would suffer an “artificial five-second delay,” but you can see that there is one. Miraculously, the YouTube video loading delay disappears when the browser self-identifies as Chrome via an extension which facilitates these kinds of adjustments.
In an extensions-free Firefox session we tried, the video delay wasn’t observed. However, in the over 800 comments on the Reddit thread and from the YouTube statement, something is surely going on here. Perhaps, like with the ad block warnings, this Firefox throttling behavior targets a set or subset of users with a certain profile, location, or usage pattern.
If this is Google making pro-Chrome tweaks to how YouTube runs, you would also perhaps expect delays in Edge. Indeed, some Redditors have reported similar delays in Edge.
One of the most useful Reddit responses highlights another thread that was started by the uBlock Origin (ad blocking extension) team. Apparently, Firefox users can stamp on the video delay issue by adding a filter to the uBlock Origin configuration as follows:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)
The above code seems to adjust the observed artificial delay of 5,000 ms (five seconds) to a measly 0.001 ms, which is a negligible amount of anyone’s time, even for a mayfly.
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History Repeats
This isn’t the first reported slowing of YouTube in non-Chrome browsers. About five years ago, there was also some controversy when YouTube adopted the Polymer design, making the video site much faster in Chrome than Firefox or Edge.
Moreover, in 2019, ZDNet talked to a former Mozilla exec who bemoaned intentional sabotage from the Google camp over several years. Johnathan Nightingale, who worked as a GM & VP on Firefox, saw relations between Google and Firefox sour as the former grew more ambitious for browser market share. Not only did YouTube suffer, he saw "oopses" hitting functionality and performance in other popular Google properties like Gmail and Google Docs.
Similarly, in 2017, ex-Microsoft Edge developer Joshua Bakita asserted that “Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up.” This cat-and-mouse game was claimed to be one of the reasons Edge moved from its own renderer to Chromium.
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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usertests ReplyMiraculously, the YouTube video loading delay disappears when the browser self-identifies as Chrome via an extension which facilitates these kinds of adjustments.
Call it what it is, a "user agent switcher". -
BX4096 If the video delay disappears with a simple user agent switch, it definitively proves that Google's "ad blocker" response is utter BS.Reply
Personally, I don't care if it's a 30-second delay. I'm still not switching to Chrome as my default PC browser. Firefox's countless addons and better privacy make it an infinitely superior browser regardless of minor speed differences. My larger concern is I've seen several other high-profile websites starting to have compatibility issues – mostly minor, but still – with Firefox in the past year, so this kind of scummy tactics may force more casual users to switch. -
atomicWAR This war on adblockers, which is certainly part of why this happened, will backfire as they always do... They'd be better off adding more (affordable) tiers for subs than pissing off a large portion of their user base. People need to support the services they use but this is not the wayReply -
atomicWAR Reply
Ditto...I typically only use firefox. This changes nothing and wouldn't change even if they outright broke YT on firefox.BX4096 said:If the video delay disappears with a simple user agent switch, it definitively proves that Google's "ad blocker" response is utter BS.
Personally, I don't care if it's a 30-second delay. I'm still not switching to Chrome as my default PC browser. Firefox's countless addons and better privacy make it an infinitely superior browser regardless of minor speed differences. My larger concern is I've seen several other high-profile websites starting to have compatibility issues – mostly minor, but still – with Firefox in the past year, so this kind of scummy tactics may force more casual users to switch. -
PEnns There is a reason many people choose FireFox over Chrome.Reply
I am not switching to that miserable data harvester no matter how many dirty tricks Chrome and its ghoulish parent dish out. -
bigdragon The same delay exists on Samsung's mobile browser. I'd rather sit through 5 blank seconds than 2 annoying ads.Reply -
hotaru.hino Instructions aren't clear on how to add the uBlock filter. So from https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17tm9rp/comment/k9i62zu/Reply
Click on uBO icon > ⚙ Dashboard button > Add the filter(s) in "My filters" pane > ✓ Apply changes > Open new tab and test again.
No. HDR support was added for the macOS version: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/03/firefox-100-hdr-video-mac/peachpuff said:Hdr is also missing from YouTube on Firefox, is that googles doing also?
I can't find the post, but the excuse I found from the dev team was processing an HDR video is complicated and there are bigger fish to fry. -
hotaru251 Reply
yup.atomicWAR said:This war on adblockers, which is certainly part of why this happened, will backfire as they always do..
last yr Twitch went rabid to try and fight em and kept makign uopdates every few hrs to break blocker fixes.
They realized that it wasn't winnable and now they basically gave up.
Google will learn that too.
& if they purposefully do harm other web browsers (and its provable in a court) they will not like outcome.
I have never liked Chrome (yes early on it was good but still disliked interface then)
now-a-days its not soemthign special as other browsers have caught up.
Firefox until I die & if someday YT block it? well guess I will have to touch grass more? (not like i havent done it when I cut off FB) -
atomicWAR Reply
I missed that. Hopefully it will come to other FF platforms soon.hotaru.hino said:No. HDR support was added for the macOS version: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/03/firefox-100-hdr-video-mac/
I can't find the post, but the excuse I found from the dev team was processing an HDR video is complicated and there are bigger fish to fry.