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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.

7 of 145 comments (clear)

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

    Long live IE6

  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.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  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 ;).