The image says “visiting websites”, not “YouTube”. And Google does this for several years already, not just since 2023. The new 5 second delay is also happening in Chromium based browsers if you use an adblocker, it just isn’t immediately rolling out to everyone yet. See A/B testing methodology.
There’s no problem with Firefox. The problem is with managers of websites. Because Chromium-based browsers combined account for something like over 90% of global browser market share currently (source: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share), many sites decide to just throw any non-Chromium browser users overboard. The whole thing is quite ridiculous. It makes no sense that Firefox has such a low market share either.
Firefox is better, but it’s no surprise it isn’t mainstream.
1- A lot of businesses default to Chrome or Edge on their machines. Even if individual employees want to change it’s not like they have the ability to do it. Thats a huge amount of locked in Chromium traffic.
2- The vast majority of personal users are not tech conscious. Consider that only about 1/4 of people use ad-blockers. If the majority of people don’t bother installing ad-blockers why would people think they would install a new browser that has fewer immediately obvious benefits?
Online tech discussions have a tendency to vastly over estimate the tech savvy, and the expectations of most users. Just because you or I configure our computer experience, and think it’s a simple exercise doesn’t reflect most people who leave everything on default settings and simply live with whatever is thrown at them. This is just like the discussion on Netflix cracking down on account sharing, techies predicted a massive wave of piracy without understanding that most people don’t know how to, and are unwilling to learn how to pirate.
What’s the problem with Firefox? Certainly can’t be the speed or ram usage.
YouTube intentionally slows down on non-chrome browsers
The image says “visiting websites”, not “YouTube”. And Google does this for several years already, not just since 2023. The new 5 second delay is also happening in Chromium based browsers if you use an adblocker, it just isn’t immediately rolling out to everyone yet. See A/B testing methodology.
Are they doing this for everyone? I’ve seen all the posts about it but haven’t had any issues myself. I’m using Firefox and uBlock
A/B testing rn
I did some testing last night and again this morning. Still no difference between Chrome and Firefox for me.
There’s no problem with Firefox. The problem is with managers of websites. Because Chromium-based browsers combined account for something like over 90% of global browser market share currently (source: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share), many sites decide to just throw any non-Chromium browser users overboard. The whole thing is quite ridiculous. It makes no sense that Firefox has such a low market share either.
Firefox is better, but it’s no surprise it isn’t mainstream.
1- A lot of businesses default to Chrome or Edge on their machines. Even if individual employees want to change it’s not like they have the ability to do it. Thats a huge amount of locked in Chromium traffic.
2- The vast majority of personal users are not tech conscious. Consider that only about 1/4 of people use ad-blockers. If the majority of people don’t bother installing ad-blockers why would people think they would install a new browser that has fewer immediately obvious benefits?
Online tech discussions have a tendency to vastly over estimate the tech savvy, and the expectations of most users. Just because you or I configure our computer experience, and think it’s a simple exercise doesn’t reflect most people who leave everything on default settings and simply live with whatever is thrown at them. This is just like the discussion on Netflix cracking down on account sharing, techies predicted a massive wave of piracy without understanding that most people don’t know how to, and are unwilling to learn how to pirate.
it’s too privacy focused, independent, and earnest at the moment
I find some sites just don’t work properly with Firefox. Drives me bonkers.