News

YouTube Playback Sucks On Non-Chrome Browsers

Is Google Stifling Competition?

According to Chris Peterson, Technical Program Manager at Mozilla, Chrome has an unfair performance advantage over other browsers when it comes to YouTube performance. Both the video sharing platform and Chrome web browser of course, being owned by the same parent company Google.

Peterson claims that YouTube is 5x slower on Firefox and Edge than in Chrome. He explains that this is because YouTube’s Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API. Which is only in the Chrome browser.

“YouTube serves a Shadow DOM polyfill to Firefox and Edge that is, unsurprisingly, slower than Chrome’s native implementation,” says Peterson.  “On my laptop, initial page load takes 5 seconds with the polyfill vs 1 without,” he adds.  Subsequent page navigation performance is comparable.

What Evidence Points to This Being Sabotage?

While this move seems suspicious, this is hardly evidence of sabotage. However, the fact that Internet Explorer 11 is served the old design by default is a clue. Google could easily serve the same non-Polymer based design on non-Chrome browsers. Instead, they opt to default both Firefox and Edge on the slower version.

Google’s Chrome currently holds the largest market share among browsers with 61.2%. Internet Explorer is a distant second at 12.14%, with Firefox at 11.27% close by. Lastly, Microsoft’s Edge web browser has a 4% market share.

Ron Perillo

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Helldivers II Adds Killzone 2 Collaboration

Despite Helldivers II's popularity, fans have long felt the game lacked collaborations. Nearly a year…

3 hours ago

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Anti-Cheat System Didn’t Perform Well, TeamRICOCHET Admits

The anti-cheat system in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone has not met…

3 hours ago

NVIDIA’s New App Causes Game Slowdowns: Here’s How to Fix

The NVIDIA app, which recently replaced GeForce Experience, has gained popularity for its revamped interface…

3 hours ago

AMD May Launch Ryzen 5 9600 Non-X Variant in Late January 2025

AMD is gearing up to expand its CPU lineup in early 2025, with recent leaks…

3 hours ago

AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 from Upcoming Kraken Point Series Spotted on PassMark

Following the leak of AMD's flagship laptop CPU, another processor from the AMD Kraken Point…

3 hours ago

DeepCool Launches ASSASSIN IV VC VISION CPU Cooler

DeepCool has just announced the ASSASSIN IV VC VISION CPU cooler, the latest in its…

7 hours ago