Google Denies Altering YouTube Code To Break Microsoft Edge (theverge.com)

Earlier this week, a former Microsoft Edge intern alleged that Google deliberately introduced bogus changes to YouTube to break the functionality of the video portal when users on Edge and other browsers tried to access the website. Google today denied the allegation. From a report: Google disputes Bakita's claims, and says the YouTube blank div was merely a bug that was fixed after it was reported. "YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when they're discovered," says a YouTube spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies, the Web Platform Tests project, the open-source Chromium project and more to improve browser interoperability." In a statement, Microsoft said, "Google has been a helpful partner and we look forward to the journey as we work on the future of Microsoft Edge."

Comments

And so did Microsioft

[DarkRookie2]

Or at least I think they did.
Wasn't that old when all that Navigator mess.

Re:And so did Microsioft

[neilo_1701D]

Or at least I think they did.

Wasn't that old when all that Navigator mess.

"YouTube ain't done 'til Edge can't run"?

Re:And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

He did work at Google as an entry-level janitor.

Re:And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

He only apprenticed as an entry-janitor, and that was on the condition that he stop harassing employees at the entrance for their leftover turds.

Re:And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

There you go! Then, he sure had an opportunity to spread his spores all over the company.

Re: And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh I forgot to say aluminum

Re:And so did Microsioft

[jellomizer]

While Netscape wasn't Mr. Standard Complaint. IE, with Active X combined with being installed and integrated in the OS so it couldn't be removed. Is what really got it, more then any coding fault in Netscape.
Being integrated in the OS, meant the browsers components started up when you booted the OS, and took less foot print, because it was used for other components, (such as the file browser). Active X was faster then Java Applets, because they only ran on Windows so it was just running the application, with the browser replacing window frame.

Back when PCs were just breaching 200mhz, and 16megabytes of RAM was considered a common amount. Waiting about a minute to load up a browser was common. To have it pop up after a double click was a big deal. And for the Web-Applications to have it run snappy was a big deal too. As on these old system, Running Java Byte Code was a big process.

Now granted Active-X combined with high level browser OS integration was a long term Stupid idea, because it turned your computer into a pile of goo. Because a bad Active-X control can take over your computer, and via the browser you have access all areas of your OS outside your normal permissions. But at the time, people didn't care about it, because "Why would anyone want to hack me? My computer isn't special"

Re:And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

Creimer went to a Shake Shack and only had a strawberry milkshake.

Re: And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

Been spamming that link for 3 days and only 14 views. LUL.

Re:And so did Microsioft

[fizzer06]

MS made sure Windows 3.1 wouldn't run on DR DOS.

Re:And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I remember that. It made 98's explorer work much worse than 95's explorer.

Re: And so did Microsioft

[Anonymous Coward]

It's still shit now. Try deleting a folder with 10000 files in subfolders. Even with the recycle bin turned off it takes a excruciatingly long time to do, while the dos prompt does it almost instantaneously.

we believe

[zlives]

1. we believe google when they say that they didn't blank microsoft
2. we believe microsoft that the blank div is the only reason edge was a massive fuckin piece of crap and failed.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe Microsoft suspected Google of playing dirty, because that's exactly what Microsoft would have done.

Re: we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose if they do not figure it out there will be a long pain in the ass public civil litigation with a lot of talking

Re:we believe

[DarkRookie2]

I believe neither of them
Google can't make a webpage properly, and Microsoft can't make a browser.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is this 'we' you speak of? You mean 'you.' And why would you ever believe the word of a corporation?

Re:we believe

[Oswald McWeany]

I believe Microsoft suspected Google of playing dirty, because that's exactly what Microsoft would have done.

I wouldn't put it past any of the big tech firms to play dirty. I'd be shocked if anyone could name a major tech firm that HASN'T played dirty.

Re:we believe

[Desler]

But Google said they would "Do no evil"! How dare you claim they are no different from any other money-grubbing corporation!

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw, Google just published a spec and then followed it, instead of allowing all sorts of haphazard kludges that break security... ...and that is what broke Edge

Re:we believe

[Oswald McWeany]

But Google said they would "Do no evil"!

That was in their mission statement once upon a time- but didn't they take it out several years ago? They're allowed to do evil now.

Re:we believe

[Desler]

I was being sarcastic, aspie.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

They currently do this with AdWords help pages. I had to load Chrome to use them. So somehow simplistic web pages are failing on their main competitor's website. I have doubled up my resolve to not use Chrome on the regular.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it certainly was either incompetence or malice. Google were (actually are) using a non-standard "Shadow DOM v0" model that was only implemented in the Google Chrome browser. On non-chrome, a "polyfill" or pure javascript implementation of that DOM engine was used instead.

And it's not just Microsoft that are complaining here.

That's right, all you anti-microsoft blinkered people out there, Mozilla has the same complaint about Google.

YouTube basically uses an experimental version ("v0") of the shadow DOM API that is officially oboslete before it really got any traction (it's been superceeded by other versions). It was so obsolete that only Chrome implements. it is officially "depcreated" by Google, but we'll see what happens in April 2019.

Re:we believe

[bobbied]

But Google said they would "Do no evil"! How dare you claim they are no different from any other money-grubbing corporation!

The official statement was "Don't be evil" which generally allows money grabbing, assuming you are grabbing it fairly with good motives.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, dude doesn't get sarcasm over text and your response is to assume he has autism? You are a sack of shit.

Re:we believe

[squiggleslash]

Nobody's accusing them of blanking Microsoft Edge. The conspiracy theory the former Edge engineer spouted is that Google defeated an Edge optimization by inserting a hidden HTML element on their YouTube pages.

The problem with the theory is that to accept this, you have to pretty much accept that Microsoft optimized Edge to render YouTube really well, which means almost any changes would have broken the optimization, and moreover the intent of those optimizations was probably to cheat on benchmarks. If adding a DIV is enough to break an optimization, then that suggests Edge's performance on YouTube was out of whack with its normal performance and you'd expect slower performance on normal websites.

So, it's kinda like Microsoft and Google running an race, Microsoft sneaking into a car and driving half way, only for the car to break down, and then complaining Google must have poured sugar in the gas tank.

Re:we believe

[Desler]

Cool story, aspie #2

Re:we believe

[pak9rabid]

I wouldn't put it past any of the big tech firms to play dirty. I'd be shocked if anyone could name a major tech firm that HASN'T played dirty.

Red Hat?

Re:we believe

[Dan667]

The problem is microsoft has a very very long history of playing dirty. I kind of dismissed their edge optimization complaint when I found out they made it due to their history.

Re:we believe

[F.Ultra]

Also we have to accept that Google somehow knew that adding a blank DIV would throw a spanner in the works for Edge. We also would have to accept that Google never thought that Microsoft would be able to code around it with an update either.

Re: we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Rate this loser up! Change your UA to chrome and try to load YouTube.

Google are making chrome ie6 and chromium et al are being screwed

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a really special kind of blank div. It was a transparent div that actually was on top of the video output area. I suspect that if there were text on it, the text would appear on top of the video. I can see exactly why that would drive the video fast path bonkers.

Re: we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Systemd? Disqualified.

Re:we believe

[hairyfeet]

If you believe either company isn't running on maximum nastiness setting these days? I have a bridge you might be interested in. From GOOG locking more and more of Android behind the Playwall and making what SHOULD be bog standard X86 laptops that are so locked down you have to jailbreak them (and still can't run any OS you want like on a standard X86 lappy) to MSFT using the poor Windows Home peasants as beta testers for their Enterprise customers? Frankly both companies have become so damn douchey they give Massengill a run for their money.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, they should have broken up MSFT in 00 and they should break up GOOG now, you have too much power in too small a space and nothing good will come of it. We saw what it was like during the "Requires IE 6" days and its looking like its gonna get that way again with Chrome and it wasn't good then but will be even worse now with the push for SaaS.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Insensitive clod, much?

Talk to the hand, then.

Re:we believe

[epine]

Yeah, Microsoft used to pack lead foil into their hockey gloves. Best case, you get a concussion; worst case, you shuffle off this mortal coil.

Google raps the unprotected part of your arm above the glove with their stick, when they think the referee is looking away. You get a bruise, and continue to play with your head up.

Brought to you by the Encyclopedia of False Equivalency (and a stick tap from a butter-soft fast path that might very nearly trip over its own skates if they so much as repainted the blue lines—in fairness, though, that can actually change the texture of the ice for a few hours afterwards, and speed daemons are finely tuned).

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not difficult to believe that a browser would have an optimization for videos that are not obscured by any page elements. You can just play the video on top of the page content in that case. And it's a lot cheaper to determine if there is anything on top of the video than to determine if there is any non-blank pixel rendered on top of it.

Re:we believe

[sheramil]

I'd have to check, but I think google said "Do no evil" as an imperative, not as a description of how they operate.

"I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to."

- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs

Re:we believe

[sheramil]

Yeah, Microsoft used to pack lead foil into their hockey gloves. Best case, you get a concussion; worst case, you shuffle off this mortal coil.

Google raps the unprotected part of your arm above the glove with their stick, when they think the referee is looking away. You get a bruise, and continue to play with your head up.

OGELT'ORPE!

Re:we believe

[bob4u2c]

Your right. . . only IE isn't supporting shadow dom (v0 was experimental, v1 is used now):
Shadow Dom Support

Now it is being included in the standard Dom/Html/CSS/Event W3C specs.
W3C


So yes, YouTube (ie Google) provided a hacked "pollyfill" and/or javascript version to emulate what was spec by W3C but not implemented by IE.

Re:we believe

[yodleboy]

wahhhh. and MS has improved, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes due to legal action. What MS has never done, at least not close to the scale of Google, is sell every bit of data they get about you to damn near anyone who asks. Some telemetry back home is a far cry from direct access to your emails, contacts, personal interests, shopping habits etc.
 
America, where no one is ever forgiven for wrongdoing. Corporation or petty criminal, no amount of atonement or punishment is ever enough. Yeah, MS did some unethical crap, the most egregious of it 25 years ago (and yes, I was there and in IT at that time) but at what point are people going to let it go? Plenty of modern companies make using MS as the benchmark for "bad" pretty silly.

Re:we believe

[Gavagai80]

Microsoft made no allegations against google whatsoever. A former intern of no importance out of their hundreds of thousands of current and former employees made an off-hand frustrated remark that was probably a joke, and of course the media ran with it to invent newsworthy controversy.

Re: we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

They could still do a lot better. I'm glad I don't work there.

Re:we believe

[angel'o'sphere]

And what has that to do with an *empty* DIV disabling hardware acceleration of video decoding on Edge?

A video is simply a byte stream, I put it through the decoding API and get frames to display. How the funk can an HTML element have any influence on the decoding happening behind the API? The API does not even know if it is called by a web browser, browser extension or VLC.

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the theory is that to accept this, you have to pretty much accept that Microsoft optimized Edge to render YouTube really well, which means almost any changes would have broken the optimization

Render video websites using the GPU accelerated 'fast path' rather than the in CPU version - totally accept that MS would have optimised Edge's video playback for arguably one of the larger video playback websites out there...

and moreover the intent of those optimizations was probably to cheat on benchmark
Occam's Razor: At the time, Microsoft were demonstrating dramatically better battery life with Edge over Chrome. It's very very likely to me that the fast-path optimisation results in singificantly less power consumption as it can exile that out to the GPU instead of the CPU doing it. So, no, cheating on benchmark? No. They highlighed the battery life benchmark which everyone else was ignoring. Look at the references in this article.

I suspect someone at Google accidentally discovered this. But I don't know if it was delibrate by Google (taht's the million dollar quesiton). Yes, MS would eventually patch around it, but unfortunately MS are caught between those that say "stablity at all costs" and complain when Microsoft updates things -- and those that wish MS updated things more often. And, of course, MS isn't a monolithic organisation!

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah, I did confound this with a different issue--which does still stand though.

However, to address your point, a transparent div over the video that might be used for text and thus require a different video decoding code path to combine both HTML and Video? Absoultely could because it could be the difference between 'render via GPU into the screen directly' and 'render via CPU into memory for further processing'.

"The API does not even know if it is called by a web browser, browser extension or VLC."
Ah, the API does need to know its render target. This is for videos inside a web browser so obviously coordination with the host process is required. (That's what it sounds like happened here - the transparent div forcing the slow decoding path presumably because it was a corner case to allow blending with HTML elements, triggering fallback to a CPU-based rendering engine.)

Re:we believe

[drinkypoo]

Google is claiming they didn't act willfully, you are ascribing incompetence to them, sounds like you believe them. Me too. Any time Google does something dumb, I have no trouble believing that who ever did it was incompetent given Google's past record with web applications. Most of the ones they have now have problems, and most of the ones they've canned did too.

The time when we can believe the myth of the superior Google employee has passed, much like the days when we could believe Google wasn't evil.

Re:we believe

[drinkypoo]

Not just that, but this revelation implies that edge's acceleration features have to be special-cased EVERY TIME. Why? Because this is a trivial case. There is clearly nothing going on that needs to be accelerated in a div that requires no drawing. There is zero defense for the browser choosing to accelerate undrawn elements. Frankly, if the engineer is not a total moron then his only meaningful goal would have been exposing just how poorly this browser is designed. Even if Google did it intentionally, there's no defense for falling there.

Re:we believe

[drinkypoo]

" What MS has never done, at least not close to the scale of Google, is sell every bit of data they get about you to damn near anyone who asks. Some telemetry back home is a far cry from direct access to your emails, contacts, personal interests, shopping habits etc. "

No, they only hand it to those we most fear having it. Not corporations, but governments. And telemetry can spy on literally everything you do on your PC, and the EULA gives them the right to do most anything with your data. Trusting Microsoft while distrusting Google is like trusting the mob while fearing... The mob

Re:we believe

[thegarbz]

If you believe either company isn't running on maximum nastiness setting these days?

I believe a company that has spent the past 2 years endlessly fucking with their UI every other day is covered by Occam's Razor when it comes to some other company's browser not being able to handle a crapy div element.

Re:we believe

[thegarbz]

Google can't make a webpage properly

So you just did believe Google, because that was ultimately their excuse.

Mind you that's also quite a believable excuse given in the past 2 years the Youtube website probably went a grand total of 7 days in a row without some kind of another busybody UI change. "Oh noes a div element that does nothing but broke our browser, it must be because they hate us and we are perfect at coding in every way! Just don't ask us why we can't handle a div."

Re:we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

wahhhh. and MS has improved, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes due to legal action. What MS has never done, at least not close to the scale of Google, is sell every bit of data they get about you to damn near anyone who asks. Some telemetry back home is a far cry from direct access to your emails, contacts, personal interests, shopping habits etc.

I think you have confused Google and Facebook. Facebook has certainly sold your data. Google does not sell your data. Instead they sell ads and the promise that they will use your data to maximize the impact of the ads based on who the ad-buyer is trying to reach. The data stays in-house.

Of course, there is no reason Google couldn't change their business model and start selling the data too if they decide that's a better way to make money. And you can decide for yourself if it is the selling of the data or the collecting of the data is the root of the problem.

In other words, I'm not trying to imply one thing (Google) is better than another (Facebook, Microsoft). Just giving the facts so you can decide for yourself.

Re:we believe

[Bite The Pillow]

Your conspiracy bullshit falls apart when you realize it was not an optimization just for YouTube.

Re:we believe

[Oswald McWeany]

I was being sarcastic, aspie.

Rather an ironic post considering you completely missed the joke in mine.

Re: we believe

[Anonymous Coward]

You are both fucking aspie and need to stfu. Dumbasses.

Re:Baghdad Bob now works at Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, he's long since retired. I think you're thinking of Sean Spicer.

What else are they going to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are legally obligated to their shareholders to deny abusing their virtual monopoly.

Re:What else are they going to do?

[fuzznutz]

They are legally obligated to their shareholders to deny abusing their virtual monopoly.

Virtual monopoly. Parker Brothers on an Oculus Rift.

A-Ha! Gotcha!

[Cowardly Lurker]

That's exactly what a saboteur would say!

yeah, no shit

[ChoGGi]

This whole thing came from a single hacker news post, and where does it say he's an intern?
https://news.ycombinator.com/i...

Re:yeah, no shit

[Desler]

It comes from his LinkedIn page:

Software Engineering Intern
Company NameMicrosoft
Dates EmployedMay 2018 – Aug 2018
Employment Duration4 mos
LocationGreater Seattle Area
  Implemented the background-blend-mode and mix-blend-mode CSS properties in the Edge browser and Windows (C++).
  Wrote web platform standardization tests in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to verify Edge interoperability. Found bugs in both Chrome and Firefox during this process.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jo...

Re:yeah, no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical M$

" Wrote web platform standardization tests in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to verify Edge interoperability. Found bugs in both Chrome and Firefox during this process."

Which means, "I implemented some interoperability BS in Edge, that didn't work, decided that the other two major browsers, which did work, had bugs"

Re:yeah, no shit

[Luckyo]

It doesn't. Firefox and Chrome like all other browsers have problems with buggy implementation of standards. And it's often rival product developers that find them.

Re:yeah, no shit

[Kulahan]

Typical M$

Careful on that 1995-era edge

Re: yeah, no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Edge want released until 2015, so all angst towards Microsoft before that should be referred to as "childish IE"

Seems plausible to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at what they did with the Youtube app on Windows Phone. Just because microsoft had made a better app than them, they decided to outright block the app from working. Resulting in microsoft having to pull it out of their store.
So Google screwing with the code just to annoy users of competing products, is 100% plausible to me.

Re:Seems plausible to me

[darkain]

Google would never screw with YouTube on competing platforms!!

https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

https://news.slashdot.org/stor...

Congressional hearing!

[BosstonesOwn]

We need a congressional hearing to prove that it wasn't intentional.

Re: Congressional hearing!

[Anonymous Coward]

And while you're at it, check her emails!

Re:Congressional hearing!

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I think this was intended as a joke, but yes. We need government at least paying attention to why the number of browsers continues to shrink. We have anti-trust laws, and should enforce them.

It's possible Google didn't intentionally do this. It seems more likely to me that they did. But we should find out, because monopolies* are bad. And even if they didn't do so intentionally, it probably is worth splitting up Google (and Amazon, and probably MS although that seems less important now.)

* And so are close-to-monopolies.

Re: Congressional hearing!

[Anonymous Coward]

âwhy the number of browsers continues to shrink"

What are you going on about? The number of browsers is insanely higher than it used to be. A short list:
Firefox, chromium, safari, edge, palemoon, basilisk, k-meleon, sogou, blink, avant, lunascape, konqueror, internet channel (old opera base), dooble, falkon, abaku, Charon, dillo, gazelle, ibrowse, mothra, net positive, netsurf, phoenix, links, lynx, webbie, and emacs.

Unlike the old days, when all the internet browsers just reused the internet explorer engine, or grabbed gecko, these generally have their own engine code, some borrow from other projects, but they're all independent, not just same engine clones (which would have an enormously longer list).

When Asking Google ..

[corezz]

... does this reporter seriously think Google was ever going to say: "We sure did try to cripple Edge! Guilty as charged! Oh and bring on the anti-trust lawsuits because we don't give a fook."

Re:When Asking Google ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo!!!!

Re: When Asking Google ..

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually expected Google to respond with "bitch please! Your laughably worthless excuse for a browser that nobody wanted and next to nobody uses isn't worth our time or effort to bother intentionally messing with. The fact that Edge optimization was even assigned to a fucking intern should itself reflect Microsoft's level of commitment."

Re:When Asking Google ..

[angel'o'sphere]

because we don't give a fook.
Oh, did you want to say: we don't give a fork? Hm, hm ... that sounds martial somehow!

Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[xack]

They intentionally disable full screen on youtube videos embedded on web pages in iOS, trying to make the aple experience worse.

Re:Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[mea2214]

They also have full screen disabled in Chrome on my Android tablet. They want us to use their youtube app.

Re:Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah they do this on all mobile devices. They want you to use the app because you can't block the ads and they can get more information out of you.

Re:Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[Anonymous Coward]

On my iphone, iOS runs youtube videos on web pages fullscreen exclusively. It's annoying that you can't leave the web page, or even browse the web page and continue to listen to the video. You used to be able to, but obviously what is possible and business decisions are two separate things.

Re:Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically they want to eliminate the possibility of you running it in an environment where their ad scripts would be blocked, since on youtube you will have a hard time blocking them with just pi hole.

Re: Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[Anonymous Coward]

On android I use OGYoutube and AdAway (root required). Youtube app, no ads (well save for some preroll ones) and can background vids.

Re:Google intentionally breaks youtube in iOS

[thegarbz]

They intentionally disable full screen on youtube videos embedded on web pages in iOS

Err no. They disable videos fullscreen embedded on webpages in all browsers, on all platforms where the ebedded iframe doesn't expressly implement allowfullscreen. The fact that Apple's locked down only rendering engine allowed on their platform doesn't implement it properly has nothing to do with the reason they added the option in the first place which was done at the request of the media so they could control the behaviour.

It's a loving embrace and a helpful extension.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shhh, Microsoft, it'll all be over soon.

Re:It's a loving embrace and a helpful extension.

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm, over soon? Didn't Microsoft just pass Apple in market cap?

Re: It's a loving embrace and a helpful extension.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of amazon.

Not there now

[Anonymous Coward]

Just checked the source - I don't see a blank div anywhere around the video. I mean there are a crapton of divs, but it looks like they are all used to apply various styles.

Re:Not there now

[Desler]

No shit Sherlock?

and says the YouTube blank div was merely a bug that was fixed after it was reported.

Straight from the summary...

Re:Not there now

[Anonymous Coward]

Please fondle my buttocks.

Re:Not there now

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, with forks!

Alligation from Intern.

[jellomizer]

Did anyone seem to get this was from a Microsoft Intern who was complaining about this?
Unless Intern now means something different today. But usually the Intern is the college student who is doing work that the Jr. Developers pawn off on them because the work is too humdrum for them.

I expect what was happening was Google You Tube service supported a feature, that wasn't in Edge. So someone task the Intern to put that fix into the code to make it work, probably due to it being a simple fix and most likely from an oversight or a misinterpretation on how the implementation of the standard suppose to work. However being an Intern, it probably took him more work and effort then he expected because it was more complex then most college programming assignments, and to hear that Google has it working fine for Chome, came up with perception that Google Did this feature to break Edge.

As I stated in the earlier post on this topic, Microsoft IE/Edge team isn't use having to fix their browser due to its past dominance in the field, where they implement the standards their own way, and the developers had to write their code to work on the browser despite what the standards were. Being that Microsoft lost so much ground in the Browser dominance they are probably a bit bitter that they are playing second fiddle to Google and under pressure that they are no longer #1

Except..

[Anonymous Coward]

Except Edge was already broken.

How long before "bug" was fixed and distributed?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long from when 'bug' was 1st distributed till a distribution eliminated the so-called 'bug'?

How long from when 'bug' was specifically reported by anyone till it was eliminated in an official release? If more than 7 days, then it wasn't accidental.

How many instances of the 'bug' distribution are still being used? !!!!!! Google should have to notify every instance and user that they still have the bug and the specific version where the bug is 'eliminated'? And that version should have NO other changes to it....because that is how unwanted changes are forced on users.

Re:Baghdad Bob now works at Google?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking of Mr. "it wasn't me" Shaggy for a musical keynote, but James "least untruthful" Clapper would do, too. Such job opportunity, wow.

Anyway, a single empty div is just noise, compared to the utter bullshit you see to, say, embed a single movie in a page. That somehow needs easily a dozen nested tags for no discernible reason. And then there's the js-overload of a "player" that doesn't work in my browser though the browser can play the format just fine. Or the inability to gracefully degrade, like first showing a still but just when you're about to look at it, that gets replaced by a gray screen with a slightly darker gray message blaming my browser for the webmonkeys fucking it up again. How edge could possibly have such trouble with something so minor... hard to blame google for that. For all both companies are utterly evil.

Everyone did the same thing!!!

[sentiblue]

Correct me if I'm wrong. Long time ago Apple and Microsoft did the same thing to each other. IE couldn't open the apple front page and vice versa. A simple [A]Link name href=something[/A] tag didn't work. So don't go and cry about why others do the same thing.

Re:Everyone did the same thing!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, Faggo Magoo.

Re:Everyone did the same thing!!!

[squiggleslash]

You're wrong, Apple and Microsoft never blocked each other's websites, and this isn't about blocking websites, it's about Microsoft optimizing Edge to render YouTube really, really, fast, and then finding it stopped being optimal and rendered at the same speed as normal websites when Google inserted a hidden div, upending all the assumptions Microsoft's engineers had made about how YouTube works.

In other words, if the allegations of said intern are correct, Google sneakily made Edge treat YouTube as a normal website. Oh the horror.

Microsoft says Google is helpful

[SocietyoftheFist]

Sorry Intern, they didn't have your back...

A bug.

[QuietLagoon]

Yup, that's the ticket, a bug. Funny how the bug just happened to affect the performance of a competitor's browser.

Re: A bug.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Competitor" is being generous. Microsoft got so slapped with that anti-trust lawsuit they must have said "fine, we'll make the crappiest browser possible to compensate for integrating the os and the browser. See what tou made us do?"

Re:A bug.

[thegarbz]

Nothing funny at all. When someone designs a browser to an artifical benchmark rather than to a webstandard, expect that benchmark to break.

Or do you somehow doubt that a company that seemingly changes their interface in some way every other fucking weekend (OMG Youtube is black today!) is capable of writing bugs? What do you expect? Regression testing a competitor's browser?

TBH, Edge never impressed me

[sn0wflake]

TBH, Edge never impressed me. I am saying that as an Edge user for the past 1½ years. To even get to the point of where Edge was "good enough(TM)" took two years of fixing from 2015 to 2017. The number of addons compared to Chrome was ridiculous. I went from Chrome, with thousands of addons, to Edge with a two-digit amount of addons, many of them completely pointless "services" that could be found elsewhere, and many of them duplicates of each others. I still use Edge because it has certain traits that I find good, but I am in no way impressed and look forward to Edge switching to the Chromium engine ASAP.

Re:TBH, Edge never impressed me

[sn0wflake]

These Microsoft engineers complain a lot about Google websites... Meanwhile a sure way to give Edge a heatstroke on my PC would be to open the emoticon window in a Twitter message. Typically 3-5 icons would be displayed (probably from harddisk cache), and then the CPU went nuts for 30 seconds until I had to recover the webpage, thrashing my message because I wanted to add an emoji. That bug has been there for years now, and Twitter isn't owned by Google. Another example is streaming for a long time on Twitch. At some random time the browser starts performing really sluggish for some reason... Twitch isn't owned by Google. Basically anywhere where there is a lot of dynamic content, Edge seems to have some leaking problem. I have learned to circumvent YouTube "leaking" chat boxes by opening streaming links using the "/embed/" YouTube URL option. So Microsoft engineers... I am not impressed by your browser to be honest.

Re:TBH, Edge never impressed me

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop trying to give yourself head. You won't succeed.

Standards

[PPH]

We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies,

That's a pretty low blow. Google is really going after Microsoft's Achilles Heel with that strategy.

I don't know all the details

[rsilvergun]

but from what I can tell Microsoft put some hacks in place to post better in benchmarks. Google made some minor changes to Youtube.com (as they're wont to do) and it broke Microsoft's hacks and revealed their actual performance numbers.

I'm inclined to side with Google on this one, not because I hate Microsoft (I do, but that's besides the point) but because IE and Edge always felt way, way slower than their benchmark numbers would leave you to believe. Like buying one of those $100 GTX 1070s from Alibaba and finding out it's a bios flashed 2GB GTX 1050 kinda slow...

Re: I don't know all the details

[Anonymous Coward]

So then why was Youtube broke on Firefox earlier this week too?
I couldn't get that sidebar with all my subs and history to show up for days.

Re:I don't know all the details

[mrfaithful]

but from what I can tell Microsoft put some hacks in place to post better in benchmarks.

Probably not. It's a common thing for hardware accelerated video playback to be a problem if you need to overlay stuff on top of the video. This basically comes down to: if the video is obscured in any way, neither Google nor Microsoft can use the super optimised hardware path and have to use the hardware decode and compositor rendering path. The difference is Google's browser appears to optimise away empty elements resulting in a non-obscured video where Microsoft's doesn't.

It happens that optimisations occur purely because of someone noticing and saying "that's weird." So someone notices an obscure edge case and puts in a fix, and the relationship between both halves of the business make it look like collusion.

Yeah...

[The MAZZTer]

YouTube shows a lot of stuff on top of the video. Ads, the controls, recommended videos (at the end or when paused), annotations, and so forth. So it's not surprising to see an empty div over the video, since such a div was probably related to one of those items.

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was thinking that youtube breaks all the "youtube downloader" applications from time to time, so there's no intended target; Edge was merely affected by a DIV this time around. If they want to be a snowflake about it, better get in line, then.

Google would never cop to it

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Google ever admit anti-competitive behavior? Even if Google did it, they would never admit it, there is nothing to gain from admitting it.

On the flip side, yes it another mole to whack but there is no special reason that this particular YouTube issue is the straw that broke Edge's back. MS could have just kept on improving Edge, just fixed the issue and moved on.

Google is so not trustworthy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just had to go back to Chrome because of Firefox not working on a simple Adwords help page. After a few minutes, I gave up and loaded Chrome where the scrollbar magically appeared making the page usable. Not even a complicated page.

More info

[Anonymous Coward]

A post on another forum regarding this article from an ex-Google engineer who said he didn't work on YouTube infrastructure said Microsoft's Edge browser's optimizations were very fragile and making small changes to the HTML would slow down page load considerably.

Another post on the same forum said that unexplainable HTML sequences were used to thwart fraud (e.g. automated scripts) and that invisible divs over video content were a common tactic.

Oops!

[Lost Race]

"Oops! It was an accident! We never meant to get caught!"

grabs the rant ball away from the moderator

[Thud457]

ooohhhhh don't get me started on Parker Brothers' monopoly on the Monopoly game![1]
If I want to sell my own version of "Monopoly" with blackjack and hookers, I should damn well be able to sell my own version of "Monopoly" with blackjack and hookers!


[1] GEEZUS XRIST, that's a lot of versions of Monopoly!

Re:grabs the rant ball away from the moderator

[molarmass192]

TIL there is a Rick and Morty Monopoly game. Too late for Santa delivery by the 25th?

Re:grabs the rant ball away from the moderator

[Anonymous Coward]

do yourself a favor and buy something else Rick & Morty related. Because at the end of the day, you'll just have another copy of Monopoly.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

code's not done until Edge won't run

[jsepeta]

good for the goose, good for the gander

Re:code's not done until Edge won't run

[OrangeTide]

Every goose I've met has a bad attitude. A brick to the head is what's good for the gander.

New app in Google Play, just announced - Install?

[Provocateur]

Google Denies, out now!

Must be 18 or older.

Google denies

[Livius]

I know I should assess the assertion based on its merits, but "Google denies" really lends it an undeserved credibility.

Microsoft Edge

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Microsoft Edge, AKA "The Little Browser That Couldn't".

Be reasonable people!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

We surely can't expect Google to tailor Youtube's behavior to some Edge case; can we?

Re:Be reasonable people!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not unless it helps shine their own Chrome.

Microsoft's cheating bit them back

[Vapula]

From this story, it looks like Microsoft tooks some "shortcuts" while displaying Youtube video in order to get "better performances"...

Shortcuts like not actually parsing the whole page but grabbing some specific parts, less to process = running "better"...

And then google changed youtube page... the parts that Edge used to grab directly were not at the same place anymore and the optimization were lost...

What could have been the result is Edge showing it's true speed... The speed that could be expected on web sites not taken in account in Edge...

And they blame google for exposing the whole thing...

You ever notice

[nehumanuscrede]

Anytime a company gets caught doing something stupid these days that it's always a bug, glitch or software error ?
" Oh, it was a bug. "

It's like a perfect digital scapegoat where no one has to face any consequences.

Oh the algorithm accidentally sold all of our stock at .1 instead of 100 dollars a share ?
" Not our fault, the computer did it ! "

Oh we accidentally shared all of your personal info online.
" Bug "

No matter how epic a problem that gets created, they always go to the same excuse.
" Bug "

Re:You ever notice

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why E.W. Dijkstra advocated to let go of the term "bug" and talk about "defect" instead. Yes, sure the computer did it, but someone told it to do that and that was wrong.

Similarly, "hacker" is used to blame some unknowable bogeyman elsewhere. Another term to let go of entirely.

Re:You ever notice

[thegarbz]

Anytime a company gets caught doing something stupid these days that it's always a bug, glitch or software error ?

The claim: A div tag that was invisible broke our super tuned browser.
The defense: It was a bug and was removed when reported.
The context: We are talking about a site that has seen a shitton of UI changes over the past year.

Occam's Razor: It was a bug, and there's no way Google is regression testing their website on Edge.
Tinfoil hatter: Google is Teh Evil (TM).

Why would Google try to break Edge?

[SpaceCracker]

Nowadays most people know how to download Chrome to their fresh copy of Windows. For those who don't, the YouTube video "How to download Chrome to your new Windows installation" is actually expected to work properly without a bug.