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Former Edge Browser Intern Alleges Google Sabotaged Microsoft's Browser (ycombinator.com)
Joshua Bakita, a former software engineering intern on the Edge team at Microsoft, says one of the reasons why Microsoft had to ditch EdgeHTML rendering engine in Edge browser and switch to Chromium was to keep up with the changes (some of which were notorious) that Google pushed to its sites. These changes were designed to ensure that Edge and other browsers could not properly run Google's sites, he alleged. Responding to a comment, he wrote: "For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up.
For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower.
Now while I'm not sure I'm convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced -- and they're the ones who looked into it personally. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further. And this is only one case.
For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower.
Now while I'm not sure I'm convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced -- and they're the ones who looked into it personally. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further. And this is only one case.
I believe this 100%. Google Docs has basically become unusable unless you're using Chrome.
We may be seeing Microsoft getting a taste of its own medicine.
I guess Microsoft does't require interns to sign an NDA...
Yes, it sounds very much like Microsoft's "hardware acceleration fast-path" was a hack that relied on very specific HTML layout of the YouTube site, and when Google changed it (by adding an empty hidden div no less - something that should have absolutely no effect on a standards compliant layout engine not to mention the video hardware acceleration) it broke their precious benchmark cheat.
"YouTube ain't done till Firefox won't run". There's no way they'd stop at Edge.
The bizarre thing is Google isn't even doing this for money; this is evil for evil's sake.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So Google embraced some new piece of technology, extended it and then used that to extinguish the competition.
Where have I heard of a company doing that?!?
I love it when Microsoft gets to eat the same shit sandwich they've feed to so many others.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
It's not fair!
Refrain of bullies everywhere when they're on the receiving end of the abuse.
The ironing is delicious.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Google already downgrades search functionality for firefox mobile. Once I changed the user agent to chrome, all the missing features suddenly appeared and were working with no issues.
Make no mistake, Google is just as evil as Microsoft was in its day.
I remember a few months ago when suddenly my nightly Firefox builds were getting the same mobile Google search as Chrome. And it was because Firefox devs decided to force the issue and just say Firefox was Chrome with a user-agent hack. Google quickly shat out some new slightly better inferior web search for Firefox, and in the spirit of cooperation, Mozilla took away their hack. Since then, that new Firefox experience is barely being paid lip service, while Google is busy pushing more crap onto their Chrome specific version.
It really makes you wonder why Firefox even bothers playing nice anymore. They might as well not renew their contract next time, and reveal all of this horrible behavior to the world. Maybe then other business interests will actually have the mental fortitude to fund Firefox instead, rather than them having to grasp at search engine deals from companies that just want them around to not have to answer for their monopolistic behavior on the web.