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Google Has Made YouTube Slower on Edge and Firefox, Mozilla Alleges (neowin.net)

Posted by msmash on from the interesting-insights dept.

Usama Jawad, writing for Neowin: Early last year, YouTube received a design refresh with Google's own Polymer library which enabled "quicker feature development" for the platform. Now, a Mozilla executive is claiming that Google has made YouTube slower on Edge and Firefox by using this framework. In a thread on Twitter, Mozilla's Technical Program Manager has stated that YouTube's Polymer redesign relies heavily on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API, which is only available in Chrome. This in turn makes the site around five times slower on competing browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox. Further reading: Safari Users Unable to Play Newer 4K Video On YouTube in Native Resolution.

18 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Chrome is the new IE 6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Long live IE6

    1. Re: Chrome is the new IE 6 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      But it sure made it easy to install some for you!

    2. Re:Chrome is the new IE 6 by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, one thing IE6 wasn't: Spyware.

      IE was wide open to spyware, but technology marches on: Chrome has it integrated!

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:Chrome is the new IE 6 by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Please read the summary: YouTube uses something that has never been a standard, it was merely a basis for a prepared standard. Think of Microsoft Office vs what they submitted as OOXML.

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      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  2. Just part of their war on... everyone by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is what happens when any corporation gets into too many supporting markets. That situation rewards anticompetitive behavior. Google has every incentive to use Youtube to prop up Chrome, and vice versa. They have become Microsoft.

    Remember when Google declared that Amazon Fire TV users would no longer be able to use an app to access their site, because rea$ons? Well, that's still the state of affairs. You have to use a browser instead of an App because Amazon won't carry Google's devices in their web store. Well, Google doesn't carry Amazon's devices in their web store, either. How on earth is this not anticompetitive?

    While I'd like to see Google held accountable for their anticompetitive behavior, the best solution is still for someone else to spin up a video streaming site. There's enough people who want an alternative to Youtube for it to work out. But it has to be at least as friendly to uploaders as Youtube...

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Shadow DOM is a W3C standard. I don't know why they throw in "v0" there, as far as I know, the version of the Shadow DOM that Chrome supports is the released standard. Firefox flat-out doesn't support it yet.

    The Shadow DOM makes various repeated elements load much faster because it allows the same snippet of HTML be reused without being reparsed. It's a very useful feature if you're writing a web UI library where you have effectively the same HTML chunk over and over again. The lack of support in Firefox and Edge is annoying and results in effectively having to manually add the elements to the DOM, which is, not surprisingly, slower than just being able to copy them.

    This isn't Google being evil. This is Google using web standards that Firefox is too lazy to adapt.

    1. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by GeLeTo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The parent post is moderated into oblivion but it is 100% correct. The statement that Shadow DOM is deprecated is factually wrong. If Shadow DOM did not exist - Polymer apps would have been equally slow on all browsers. Firefox currently has experimental support for Shadow DOM, you can enable it with the dom.webcomponents.shadowdom.enabled flag.

    2. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This appears to be correct. Mozilla are in the middle of implementing Shadow DOM and there's an about:config flag you can flip to turn it on (although whether that means Youtube will automatically start using it is another question, most websites go by browser ID rather than probing for features alas.)

      The notion this is tied to "version 0" is the bit that I don't get about the summary. It doesn't matter what version of Shadow DOM is targeted by Youtube, none of the major browsers except Chrome supports it right now.

      On that basis, I'd say "Google making use of a good new standard that they happen to support but other browser makers haven't gotten around to yet, with a safe workaround for browsers that don't support it" is hardly the anticompetitive act the summary makes it out to be. I'd expect websites, be they Google or anyone else, to do the same thing.

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      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    3. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by ichimunki · · Score: 3, Informative

      No one said Shadow DOM is deprecated. The point is that Polymer 1.0, which is being used on YouTube uses on Shadow DOM v0, which is deprecated. They could update their version of Polymer to 2.0 or higher and rely instead on Shadow DOM v1, which is not deprecated. https://www.chromestatus.com/f...

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      I do not have a signature
    4. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by ichimunki · · Score: 4, Informative

      They throw "v1" in there because "v0" is deprecated and the version of Polymer that Google is using on YouTube uses v0. https://www.chromestatus.com/f...

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      I do not have a signature
    5. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      They could, but that wouldn't fix the problem here, the version number is a red herring. Mozilla, IE, et al, do not support Shadow DOM at all, not any version. They have plans, there's an about:config flag in Firefox you can flip to test their current implementation, but it's not enabled by default.

      So, what people are saying Google should have done, in order to be "fair" to competitive free browsers including the one Google has funded for most of its lifetime, is to upgrade one of the most highly traffic'd websites on Earth to the "latest version" (not revision, we're talking major version number, so the one with API changes) of the framework they're using in order to achieve literally nothing at all.

      There is no urgency for Google to do any of this until Firefox has Shadow DOM support, and it's absolutely the wrong thing for Google to do to try to rush an upgrade just to satisfy some competition checklist that has nothing to do with the real world.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    6. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by POWRSURG · · Score: 4, Informative

      The point of mentioning version 0 is because every major browser that is working on Shadow DOM is developing towards version 1. The v0 implementation was more experimental that made its way out there because Google doesn't always go through the proper standards practice. Version 1 is actually going through the normal standardization process. Firefox and Safari have the version 1 code in development, while Edge has it marked as a high priority consideration.

      To be clear, Chrome deprecated v0 in April 2018 and will remove in 2019. If Google does nothing than Chrome will slow down on YouTube as it will have the same issues Firefox and Edge currently are feeling.

    7. Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard by ichimunki · · Score: 3

      I never said it would fix the problem. I am simply attempting to clarify the situation regarding statements about what is and is not deprecated. If Google were to switch to a library using v1, then at least Firefox users could turn on Shadow DOM support, which is available as an experimental feature. And as it stands, Firefox has Shadow DOM enabled in the nightly build, so I would assume "it's coming soon". As it stands, I'm not sure how one tests FF + YouTube with the experimental Shadow DOM enabled since YouTube is using a deprecated version of Shadow DOM.

      Given that Google have had Polymer 2.0 in general release since March 15, 2017, and they're currently on Polymer 3.0... perhaps they should feel some sense of urgency in getting one of their flagship web properties up to date? That's an awful long time to sit on a library that relies on an API that was deprecated back in April of this year.

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      I do not have a signature
  4. Pornhub vs Youtube by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pornhub wins every time.

    Loading speed, Video smoothness, lack of interruption.

    Every time Youtube content gets the spinning circle, I check Pornhub...Yep, smooth as silk, or a freshly shaven...

    Then YouTube tries to blame my provider.

    Pornhub is the Future of the Internet!

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:Pornhub vs Youtube by Kokuyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's a reason gun enthusiasts have started using pornhub instead of youtube ;).

  5. Fight back - make your site slow too by raymorris · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm going to give Google a taste of their own medicine and make my site slow too. CNN is leading the fight in this; their site is super slow in all the major browsers.

  6. We neec to get Chrome away from Google by xack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Development of Chrome should be sent off to an independent organization (perhaps forced to by anti trust courts). Chrome now has more market share than internet explorer used to and also owns phones and schools with chromebooks. We also need to force Google to code to standards and work on all of the competition’s browsers under interoperability laws. this includes minority browers like waterfox and falkon.

  7. I am APK the LORD of HOSTS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am APK the great "LORD of HOSTS", a.k.a. AlecStaar or Alexander Peter Kowalski.

    See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / I . a m . a . f u c k i n g / a s s h o l e . r e t a r d . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).

    I am the godlike creator of various GUI front-ends for other people's configuration files.

    Calling people ne'er-do-wells or Jealous JOWIEs is how I think I win every argument

    When people state the truth about me I get really mad and accuse them of projecting which is something I do all the time.

    Don't call me out on anything unless you are willing to prove you too can write some strings to a file programmatically

    Spamming and being a general pain in the ass is what I do

    Listen as I relive my glory days of being a college athlete in the early 80s

    You must be conspiring with the Jews and Soros if you disagree with me

    Bask in my greatness as I can do a ping as a non root user.

    Watch as I whine about my work being flagged as malware by anti-virus software.

    Witness my descent into madness

    APK