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Ask HN: Why are Google sites so slow on Firefox?

40 points by lab14 ↗ HN
I've been trying to switch from Chrome to Firefox as my primary browser, however I've noticed that Gmail and YouTube are unbearably slow in Firefox (no customizations). Other sites work perfectly fine.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any tips to fix?

20 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 58.3 ms ] thread
PaulHoule
I watch Youtube with Firefox all the time (on both Windows and Mac) and don't perceive any problems.
nicolaslem
And with Firefox having full support for uBlock origin, I am pretty sure the time to actual video content is shorter on Firefox.
NmAmDa
You mean sponsorblock?
nicolaslem
No, I meant the ads injected by Youtube before the video that cannot be skipped. Those are completely removed by uBlock origin.

I'm not too bothered by sponsored segments in the videos themselves. If they annoy me a couple of right arrow presses are enough to skip them.

AA-BA-94-2A-56
Always takes a few seconds to load for me. Firefox on Windows 10, cable internet.
warrenm
I've personally noticed them work faster with Firefox than Chrome (macOS Monterey, Firefox 95)
pwg
This effect has been mentioned many times on HN. Some comments attribute it to Google intentionally slowing Firefox to make Chrome seem faster. Some comments attribute it to Google utilizing API's in Chrome that they have specifically optimized to make gmail faster that are not so "specially optimized" in Firefox.

In the end, only the Google chrome and gmail teams can answer the true why, everything else is guesswork on everyone's part.

As to youtube, as with @PaulHoule) I too have not noticed any slowness, but my use of youtube in firefox is only to obtain the URL to hand off to yt-dlp (youtube-dl successor). Watching videos with my local client player is worlds superior to playing a stream in any browser (Firefox/Chrome/otherwise) that I simply do not play the streams in Firefox from youtube at all.

[dead] stevespang
I stopped watching YouTube in Firefox as YouTube has started blocking my viewing after say 20 minutes - - they place a super long pause on any video I try to view for several minutes - - so I just copy the URL and place it in my Brave browser and it plays immediately.

So YouTube, you have been caught at it - - and now I am trolling you back.

over190bpm
What extensions do you have installed? I've seen adblockers slowing down browsers significantly if anything other than uBlock Origin is used.
mattarm
Yes, I'd audit your installed extensions. I found uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger to be fine. Some others, like Evernote, not so much.
rexfuzzle
I've found uBlockOrigin slows down google meet a lot!
perryizgr8
Google meet is dog slow on chrome too. It kills the battery too.
lab14
Treestyle tab, uBlock origin and 1Password.
wcarron
Google is engaging in anti-competitive practices. E.G. Some nature docs I purchased unfailingly have "licensing issues" on YouTube on FF, but magically work on Chrome.
toast0
If you're experiencing very slow (60 seconds) page loads on POST, this may be a Firefox bug [1] interacting with Google's TLS settings. If the pages are just kind of sluggish, I dunno.

The really short version is go to about:config and disable security.tls.enable_0rtt_data; the pretty short version is if you need a new HTTP/2 connection to make a POST request, and the server supports TLS 1.3 Early Data (aka 0rtt), and Firefox negotiates Early Data, it won't send the POST until an inactivity timeout occurs on the TLS socket. In Firefox 94 (in release channel 2020-11-02), that timeout was about 60 seconds; looks like the same for Firefox 95 (in release channel as of 2020-12-07). Firefox 96 (currently available as Nightly, expected release 2021-01-10) had a shorter timeout of 4 seconds, but also has a bug fix as of 2021-11-26.

Of course, it's difficult to tell which client is which during the TLS handshake, so you can't really offer most clients TLS 1.3 Early Data and not to broken versions of Firefox; not that Chrome uses TLS 1.3 Early Data.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1740856

zaphod4prez
Google Meet is unusable on Firefox... about 1/3 of the time, 30-50min into a meeting, my whole computer starts to freeze up. Using Chrome fixes it. So now I have Chrome on my computer and use it exclusively for Google Meet (I have to use Google Meet for work).

This happens even with all my browser extensions turned off.

I find it very frustrating.

vgeek
Meet video randomly stops working (typically excessive freezing) for me in FF, too. I also resort to using Chromium, since it is de-googled to a degree.

Youtube also takes ~30 seconds to fully load, too, versus <3 in Chromium.

IshKebab
Maybe because YouTube uses Polymer. Firefox didn't used to support web components so Polymer had to use polyfills. I'm not sure they ever updated it and now it seems like Polymer has been abandoned? My best guess anyway. Should be fairly easy to verify.
jxramos
This has been my experience too, may possibly be from an old Android version. I never dug in deeper but one of these old beater phones I keep around for random around the house use is where I experience this Chrome : Firefox discrepancy.