The controversy surrounding Google and Firefox is alive and kicking. Several users have expressed their discontent through social media, directly accusing Google of slowing down video playback by up to 5 seconds if YouTube detects you’re using their website with the Mozilla Firefox browser instead of Google Chrome.
Apparently, this alleged boycott by Google seems to be active exclusively through the Mozilla browser, as other browsers like Microsoft Edge or Safari don’t experience this 5-second delay after loading any video. This discrepancy has irked many Firefox users who frequently use YouTube’s services.
5 second handicap
Through platforms like Twitter or Reddit, users have vehemently shown that YouTube loading times are artificially extended by up to 5 seconds, thus creating a less satisfactory and more bothersome user experience. In fact, as can be seen below, despite the page being fully loaded, the video playback doesn’t commence immediately.
Other users, in fact, have found the command within the website’s code that would intentionally cause this delay. It’s seen as an unfair competitive move, as Google would be deliberately harming a browser that isn’t part of its ecosystem and, under equal conditions, would have a similar performance.
The battle between browsers
Lately, Firefox has made numerous strides in its system to continue attracting a larger audience to its browsing service. For instance, they are enhancing their active support for extensions and have created a spam filter for your email that streamlines your registration on various websites without needing to receive uncomfortable newsletters in your actual inbox. With these improvements, Mozilla aims to keep competing against Chrome’s strong dominance.
However, if the users’ accusations are true, Mozilla wouldn’t be competing on equal terms against other browsers. That’s why a part of its community, eager to stay firmly within Firefox’s browsing ecosystem, has rallied to criticize what would be an anti-competitive action by Google, one of today’s most powerful tech companies.
