Google is Firefox' primary source of income, and Firefox is strategically crucial token competition that stands between Google and an antitrust lawsuit of the sort Microsoft faced in the early 2000s (where Microsoft were basically a technicality away from being broken up).
If they wanted to sabotage Firefox I doubt they would choose to send a blank page. They would probably send infinite captchas or just disable most features (which they already do).
304 points by hashhar 49 days ago | 122 comments
They pay Firefox as they're buying a valuable product. Which is why they also pay Safari.
Sure search was their first product, but they have long since pivoted to being an ad company. And while yes, they can show ads along side search, the real cash cow is all the juicy data they can exclusively hoover up through Chrome to better target ads all across the web not just search.
Middle management finds a tactic that implements the friction strategy - small "random" breaks and persistent performance issues.
An engineer would find the precise measure to implement - break the UA string sniffing targeting a specific browser.
Interesting theory, but that's exactly what M$ got dinged for in the antitrust suit re: Netscape.
Assuming competence and intention is foolish.
> An engineer would find the precise measure to implement - break the UA string sniffing targeting a specific browser.
You got the strategy right but the implementation is laughable, sorry :-)))
The implementation is: "We have a budget of N story points this sprint to resolve bugs, let's prioritize them. Let's prioritize by impacted audience size."
The audience size will make 99% of Firefox specific bugs be deprioritized out of the current sprint. And the next one. And the one after that.
And unless a senior engineer stands up to update the prioritization criteria, plausible deniability forever.
