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Google Has Made YouTube Slower on Edge and Firefox, Mozilla Alleges (neowin.net) 145

Posted by msmash 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.
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Google Has Made YouTube Slower on Edge and Firefox, Mozilla Alleges More

Google Has Made YouTube Slower on Edge and Firefox, Mozilla Alleges

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  • Chrome is the new IE 6 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:01AM (#57006218)

    Long live IE6

    • No kidding. My company's IT department is supporting Chrome for a cloud-based help desk system AND Internet Explorer for everything else.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 )
      Nope, don't think so. IE6 was an arrogant and conceited browser implementation from Microsoft that totally disregarded any standard and overlooked whatever critic. Chrome has some extra internals that might be used by a web site [detecting Chrome] but it respects the CSS standards, meaning you can still make a page using only the standard CSS that will load nicely in Chrome. In IE6 that was not possible.

      • Re:Chrome is the new IE 6 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:37AM (#57007226)

        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.

        • Again, any CSS standard page runs fine on Chrome, not on IE6 (even with the standard at the time). This is the difference. Now, again, Chrome offers some API that are not standard, and sites may or may not use them. Youtube does.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bert64 ( 520050 )

            Which is exactly what IE6 did... It encouraged you to use the non standard APIs, thus rendering sites incompatible with other browsers.

            • Which is exactly what IE6 did...

              No, ie6 gave the user no choice. Devs had to develop specific (i.e. not standard) otherwise their pages would look bad. At least Chrome renders standard code pages OK.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Bert64 ( 520050 )

                It implemented standards around at the time just as badly as competing browsers (ie netscape 4.x) did...

    • When they start being as obnoxious to support, watch me drop support for Chrome.

    • Good analogy, but there are two critical differences:
      1. Google continues to develop Chrome (IE6 stayed stagnant for a long time)
      2. New versions of Chrome don't break your Web site like new versions of IE.

  • Just part of their war on... everyone (Score:5, Informative)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:06AM (#57006236) Homepage Journal

    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...

    • Fight back - make your site slow too (Score:5, Funny)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:23AM (#57006332) Journal

      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.

    • 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...

      They're steadily working on making that an easier hurdle to clear.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swilver ( 617741 )

      Brilliant idea. I'll get some servers and spin up a YouTube replacement, give me a couple.

      • Brilliant idea. I'll get some servers and spin up a YouTube replacement, give me a couple.

        When I say "someone" above, I obviously mean "some corporation". To me, the obvious candidate is Amazon. Youtube was viable for Google because they were already sitting on a gigantic cluster, and already had massive brand recognition. Ditto Amazon.

        • And given the whole demonetization-bullshit flying low on YouTube right now, this just might be the right time to do it. Quite a few content creators are desperately looking for alternative places that let them get a cut of the ad money, if Amazon played its cards well, now is the right moment to do so.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )

      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.

      That is an interesting retcon, Amazon decided they didn't need to follow the Youtube API's licensing agreement when they implemented their Fire TV application. Amazon's anti-competitive store behaviour certainly didn't engender them to Google but Google has similarly kicked off other companies, see also Microsoft when they violated the Youtube terms.

      • Amazon decided they didn't need to follow the Youtube API's licensing agreement

        That licensing agreement was created specifically for anticompetitive purposes. Amazon wasn't interfering with Youtube's revenue-generating abilities in any way, since they were showing the ad content.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luthair ( 847766 )
          The agreement is so that Google maintains direction of their service instead of a different experience on every device based on the priorities of the manufacturers.
          • A fact which also means that it is difficult, maybe even impossible, for a manufacturer to add value and differentiate themselves in the set top appliance market. Why bother making yet another Android based streaming content appliance when the only way you can compete is on price? Since Google has its own digital media appliance line, handicapping other manufacturers ability to differentiate themselves is arguably a clear case of anti-competitive behaviour. Both Amazon and Google have vast amounts of cash r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

      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?

      The "rea$ons" being Amazon's anti-competitve behavior?

      Well, Google doesn't carry Amazon's devices in their web store, either. How on earth is this not anticompetitive?

      Because the Google Store only carries products made by Google, (or Nest, a subsidiary of its parent company, or at one point hardware that was made by other OEMs, but than ran a Google OS such as Android or ChromeOS). Amazon, however, makes it a point to try and carry everything and they even did carry the Chromecast when it first appeared.

      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...

      Yeah Amazon should be held accountable too, I mean, how hard is it to make an ecommerce at the same scale???

    • How on earth is this not anticompetitive?

      Both parties had devices and in each others' stores, putting them on equal footing. That means that, when Amazon removed Google's devices, Google had a matching competitive move (which they took): remove Amazon's devices from their marketplace.

      Absent that equal footing, it absolutely would by anti-competitive; but, given the similar posture of the two competitors, this is simply them mutually agreeing not to help each other compete.

    • There might be a few corner cases of users who would like a YouTube alternative, but what really matters are the advertisers. And good luck getting the record industry to let a new startup site host the vast amount of copyright content that makes up a huge chunk of YouTube's traffic...

      • There might be a few corner cases of users who would like a YouTube alternative, but what really matters are the advertisers.

        Starfucks, Home Despot, and Dodge+Apple (comarketing) all interrupted me watching Mighty Car Mods this morning. And I will not forget, and I will shop somewhere else. Not, to be fair, that I would have given any of those companies money in the first place except for possibly HD. I will also have to remember to install my Youtube downloader on the tablet so I can use it next time. Or, I guess, I can just install Kodi.

        I laud companies for sponsoring content I want to watch, but not for interrupting it with ad

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ...{snip}... 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...

      First I should preface with the fact I owned and operated a UGC video sharing site pre-YouTube, We reached 42M users with a Billion streams before YouTube outpaced us and all other other UGC video sharing site out there. That service I started had it's hay day and was turned off by the new owners last year, as are most video hosts (it's a Strategic Content business, not a profit business).

      Trying to create a Streaming site now to out compete with YouTube is folly best explained by the Red Queen effect
      https

  • Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:15AM (#57006296)

    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.

    • Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:5, Interesting)

      by GeLeTo ( 527660 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:34AM (#57006408)
      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.

      • Re: Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        More fully,

        Shadow DOM supported by default in Chrome and Opera. Firefox is very close; they are currently available if you set the preferences dom.webcomponents.enabled and dom.webcomponents.shadowdom.enabled to true. Firefox's implementation is planned to be enabled by default in version 63. Safari supports shadow DOM already, and Edge is working on an implementation as well.

        https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Using_shadow_DOM [mozilla.org]

      • Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:4, Informative)

        by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:56AM (#57006552)
        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... [chromestatus.com]

        • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @10:02AM (#57006600)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:4)

            by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:38AM (#57007238)

            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.

        • No one said Shadow DOM is deprecated.

          TFS:
          "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."
          Which is almost verbatim from Twitter which came right from the fingertips of Chris Peterson of Mozilla.

          I know, reading is hard.

          • I can see where you think reading is hard. Because the summary is clearly referring to v0, which is deprecated, not v1 which is not.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GeLeTo ( 527660 )
        Looking further, there's a more recent version - Shadow DOM v1. Chrome is still the only browser that has support for Shadow DOM, so whether YouTube uses v0 or v1 is irrelevant for Firefox.
    • From the linked article Another rather interesting aspect to note is that Polymer's latest versions support both Shadow DOM v0 and v1 APIs, but for some reason, Google still uses Polymer 1.0 with the deprecated API. I read this as Google continuing to use the old ( probably draft) API instead of the actual released version.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:55AM (#57006550)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:5, Informative)

        by POWRSURG ( 755318 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:08AM (#57007030) Homepage

        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 [chromestatus.com]. If Google does nothing than Chrome will slow down on YouTube as it will have the same issues Firefox and Edge currently are feeling.

      • If it looks like anti-competition, smells like anti-competition, and involves Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon or similar... guess what?

    • Re:Shadow DOM is a W3C standard (Score:5, Informative)

      by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:58AM (#57006572)
      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... [chromestatus.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by UPi ( 137083 )
      W3C standards can be deprecated. In this case, the "Shadow DOM v0" is just that. The new version, supported by 10% more of current browsers, is "Shadow DOM v1". v1 was released in 2016, so rolling out a new feature in 2018 against a deprecated and less supported API seems like a bad move from Google.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        Chrome already deprecated support for v0, with support being entirely removed from Chrome around 9 months from now. So yes, it was a bad decision for them to use v0, but that particular decision is hardly anti-competitive. Their own browser is going to break the framework in a few months.

        • Their own browser is going to break the framework in a few months.

          So you're saying YouTube is going to break and Chrome users will be out of luck in a few months?

          I mean, the only alternative is that YouTube engineers are working on getting shadowdomv1 working now so it's ready for newer Chrome and newer Firefox soon, but then what could the MoFo guy complain about if the solution to his problem is already in the works?

    • I was discussing an upcoming change to Google Sheets - something that violated W3C standards... the Google employee's response was "we'll just change the standard".

    • This is a non-story. They wanted to move Youtube onto Polymer sooner so they did it before Polymer supported a higher version of Shadow DOM than the v0. A good move to be ready for the next version. Chances are good a new version of Polymer will be out before 2019, since it relies on an API that is going away.

      Firefox is blowing it out of proportion simply to get people to ignore the "v0" in the equation. Firefox has been working [mozilla.org] on adding Shadow DOM support for 3 years and still aren't there yet.

      • A version of Polymer that supports the current version of the API already exists. Google chose not to use it.

        • Or, they chose to eventually use it and Youtube doesn't work well with it yet. Seems a lot more likely.

          • When they chose to use Polymer v1 YouTube didn't work with it at all; they had to rewrite parts of the site to use Polymer at all. At that time, they could have chosen Polymer v2, which uses the Shadow DOM v1 API.

            • And they must have run into some problems with that, right? Problems that apparently were quicker to solve with an older version of Polymer on a temporary basis.

              • Let's see... YouTube worked before Polymer was brought into the fold, no new features were added in doing so, and they felt the need to use an older version just to push it out faster? No, the entire feature was the addition of Polymer, which could have been put off while issues were solved. Using a deprecated version to get it out the door sooner might be an acceptable choice (it's arguable) for an initial release or an experimental new feature, but when they use of the library in the first place is the fe
  • Add more CPU, RAM and GPU to a desktop computer.
    See if that can outpace the software of an ad company.
  • So, let me get this right. YouTube uses Shadow DOM v0, which while currently supported by Firefox has slow load-times. Wouldn't the best solution be to have Polymer use Shadow DOM v1, and for Firefox to load this at competitive speeds?
  • Chrome, one and done with recaptcha. Firefox/Waterfox, it forces you to do 3-4 proper captchas and takes the sweet time to load new tiles by fading them out and in...

  • We neec to get Chrome away from Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @10:24AM (#57006734)
    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.

    • ShadowDOM is a W3C standard. Firefox and Edge have not implemented it yet.

      The complaint in the article is that Firefox is behind Chrome in implementing a W3C standard, and somehow that's Chrome's fault.

      • I thought firefox supported this behind the "dom.webcomponents.shadowdom.enabled" flag but the bigger question is why Youtube chose v0 rather than v1 that everyone is working to support. Chrome itself has deprecated v0: https://www.chromestatus.com/f... [chromestatus.com]

        • but the bigger question is why Youtube chose v0 rather than v1 that everyone is working to support.

          My guess is Youtube probably started on the project when v0 was the active standard.

          Also, AFAIK they didn't do anything that is v0-specific. So v1 support in Firefox should give it the same "higher speed" as Chrome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arkham ( 10779 )

      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.

      So I'm not fan of Google, but this is 100% crap. Some actual facts:

      • Chromium [chromium.org] is open source -- -- the only parts that aren't included are the the commercial codecs like H.264, and those will never be open-source because Google pays the licensing costs and gives away the results for free
      • Google does code to standards. Shadow DOM [github.io] v0 API is a standard. It's just an old one (relatively speaking)

      Google does a lot of things that I don't like, but Chrome on the whole is a net positive contribution to the

  • Chrome is IE all over again (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Users were dumb enough to be drawn into Chrome and now its come back to haunt everyone just as IE did when it completely dominated the web. Even other browsers like Opera and Brave along with other have all just become more Chrome clone's. You either use Chrome or a clone or face issues with some web sites. Its just that simple and frankly I don't see any light at the end for any other browser including Firefox and Edge. Chrome like IE is it and everything else is a second class browser.

  • ... and if they're not there polyfills them. ... That means it lazy-loads JS libs that emulate those features. This may make some browsers slower if those features need polyfilling.

    The goal of Polymer is to offer the cutting edge of web features today and wither away as these features become native in all browsers everywhere.
    It's that simple. No rucus required. Move along.

    • That's great, but what is fine in some library can become anticompetitive when a massive monopoly does it.

      If you make Qbert's own video site slow on Firefox, nothing much changes. If you make your own browser (with a high usage share) and make one of the largest websites in the world much worse on a competing browser when you've already been levering other monopolistic advantages to squeeze out the browser then yes there is a problem.

      Google are behaving like the bad old Microsoft.

  • Because Chrome plays videos in VP9 format and it is slower to decode, older hardware has no acceleration either.

  • It won't even load on my edge or IE browsers, but man it loads on Chrome.

  • Google becomes Microsoft (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    More and more I look at Google, more it looks like Microsoft from 2000. What a pity that the once not evil company took this path.

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