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Firefox 57's Speed Secret? Delaying Requests from Tracking Domains (zdnet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:
A Mozilla engineer has revealed one of the hidden techniques that Firefox 57 -- known as Quantum -- is using to improve page load times... It delays scripts from tracking domains, such as www.google-analytics.com. The technique was developed by Mozilla engineer Honza Bambas, who calls it "tailing". It works by delaying scripts from tracking domains when a page is actively loading and rendering...
Tailing only briefly prevents the tracking scripts loading, rather than disabling them entirely. Page load performance is improved by saving on network bandwidth and computing resources while loading a page, in a way that prioritizes site requests over tracking requests. "Requests are kept on hold only while there are site sub-resources still loading and only up to about 6 seconds. The delay is engaged only for scripts added dynamically or as async. Tracking images are always delayed. This is legal according all HTML specifications and it's assumed that well built sites will not be affected regarding functionality," explains Bambas.
Tailing only briefly prevents the tracking scripts loading, rather than disabling them entirely. Page load performance is improved by saving on network bandwidth and computing resources while loading a page, in a way that prioritizes site requests over tracking requests. "Requests are kept on hold only while there are site sub-resources still loading and only up to about 6 seconds. The delay is engaged only for scripts added dynamically or as async. Tracking images are always delayed. This is legal according all HTML specifications and it's assumed that well built sites will not be affected regarding functionality," explains Bambas.
Everyone that already runs adblocking won't notice this anyway.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
And why shouldn't we? No one wanted to be tracked. And even more corporatist a-holes like Google have persistently gone out of their way to obscure the end users ability to even know how the system works. Screw them. It's our hardware, and it's our data. If you have a problem with this then Google should release a version of their OS that you can pay and doesn't track us and avoid the situation entirely.