Is Google hobbling YouTube on rival browsers?

[HEXUS]

YouTube loads "5x slower in Firefox and Edge than in Chrome," due to API choice.

Read more.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I kind of noticed a YT video taking much longer to load in Firefox this morning than Chrome and was wondering why!!

[Corky34]

Chrome, the new IE6.

[scaryjim]

If this went beyond "Oh noes, I had to wait an extra 4 seconds for youtube to load!!" I'd be more upset.

The thing with deprecated APIs is that they used to be active. If non-Chrome browsers don't support it natively it's because they never bothered implementing it even when it was active.

So, a company that created a native implementation of an API, when their competitors didn't, is now using that native implementation to gain a competitive advantage on popular services that they own and run. I mean, that's just shocking. No, really. I'm horrified. </sarcasm>

If YouTube served a polyfill to competing browsers regardless of native support for an API, that'd be shady. If YouTube used an undocumented API that competing browsers simply couldn't run or implement, making it non-functional on browsers other than Chrome, that'd be extremely shady (and, in fact, genuinely IE6 all over again). But using an open-source, well-known API that they know is faster on their own browser because of work they've done implementing it natively; using an API that Chrome is known to have a native implementation for ... I'm sorry, but I just can't get worked up over it.

[Ozaron]

Think the issue here is that it's unnecessary and petty. Seems to me if there is a Polymer 2.0 or 3.0 which all browsers support they would move to it if they were being mature. This isn't an incentive to install Chrome, for me, and it won't be for the vast majority of Firefox/ Edge / Opera type people who used those browsers because they already object to Chrome. It may, however, be minor incentive to leave behind the slowly disintegrating Youtube platform.

[LSG501]

Been noticing youtube be 'slower' for a while in all honesty and I use firefox.

The issue with using a 'native api' is that in this case the api is deprecated due to newer versions and it's likely going to cause the same situation we had with internet explorer where people will require optimisations for specific browsers rather than the 'standardised' way it had been going before Google started leveraging it's 'position'.

This could be seen as anti competitive as well imo because this will drive users to chrome and because it tracks you (is it still there, I try not to use chrome) it's more 'advertising data' for google etc.

[cheesemp]

Could just be a simple case of a lazy/busy developer who just didn't bother checking for a newer library? It does happen (even more so when I bet they just did a quick check that it does load in other browsers). "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Hanlon's razor...

[Valantar]

Do I smell yet another antitrust case coming down the pipeline? I don't quite see how underhandedly improving performance for frequent users of the world's biggest video-sharing service in the browser owned by the same company is radically different from MS bundling IE and not suggesting alternatives way back when ...

[Friesiansam]

I'm using Opera Developer 56, no apparent loss of speed here. YouTube loaded fast and so did an Autocar video.

[LSG501]

Could just be a simple case of a lazy/busy developer who just didn't bother checking for a newer library? It does happen (even more so when I bet they just did a quick check that it does load in other browsers). "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Hanlon's razor...

Of course, it just so happens this lazy/busy developer has given performance improvements to chrome at the expense of other browsers by using a 'native api'....

[Ttaskmaster]

Benefits of cack internet - A half hour vid taks so long to load anyway that you wouldn't notice a few more microseconds of lag!!

[TheAnimus]

If this went beyond "Oh noes, I had to wait an extra 4 seconds for youtube to load!!" I'd be more upset.

The thing with deprecated APIs is that they used to be active. If non-Chrome browsers don't support it natively it's because they never bothered implementing it even when it was active.

So, a company that created a native implementation of an API, when their competitors didn't, is now using that native implementation to gain a competitive advantage on popular services that they own and run. I mean, that's just shocking. No, really. I'm horrified. </sarcasm>

If YouTube served a polyfill to competing browsers regardless of native support for an API, that'd be shady. If YouTube used an undocumented API that competing browsers simply couldn't run or implement, making it non-functional on browsers other than Chrome, that'd be extremely shady (and, in fact, genuinely IE6 all over again). But using an open-source, well-known API that they know is faster on their own browser because of work they've done implementing it natively; using an API that Chrome is known to have a native implementation for ... I'm sorry, but I just can't get worked up over it.

The thing is this is their own API, that they published the spec for whilst saying it's dead, don't use it.

That's a bit 90s microsoft.

The question is, what replaces shadow dom? Is there a better cross platform alternative? I'd say yes.

[virtuo]

This could be seen as anti competitive as well i

Do I smell yet another antitrust case coming down the pipeline?

I don't think there's anything specifically anti-competitive here, if YouTube was actively throttling users not using Chrome, then yeah that's going to be a problem, but there's nothing preventing other software vendors implementing support for the APIs and enjoying the benefits.

[Corky34]

The thing with deprecated APIs is that they used to be active. If non-Chrome browsers don't support it natively it's because they never bothered implementing it even when it was active.

It's more an API that never left development than a deprecated API, V0 of polymer was an in development web standard that was still being defined but YouTube implemented it anyway, V1 of polymer was the end result of the development and was released around a year ago, it's now being implemented by other browsers, in essence YouTube used a beta version of a web standard that only their browser supported.

[acewing905]

The thing with deprecated APIs is that they used to be active. If non-Chrome browsers don't support it natively it's because they never bothered implementing it even when it was active.

Support for deprecated tech gets dropped from browsers on a regular basis. What are you talking about?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So Polymer got unstuck?? Appropriate given the current weather!!