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0 pointsjefftk2y ago0 comments

> Google only focusing QA on Chrome and Safari

FWIW, over my time at Google (2012-2022) we had massively better testing on Firefox than Safari, because you can run Firefox on Linux on arbitrary hardware while Safari requires MacOS which requires Apple hardware and is automation-hostile. We did eventually get some tests on Safari, but they were slower and flakier.

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acdha2y ago

So I guess my question would be where things were breaking down - Meet was almost unusable in Firefox for 2019-2021 (Slack, Teams, Zoom, Chime, and WebEx were all fine), and the GCP console login would periodically get into a login redirect loop only in Firefox on a regular basis for months. Our GCP rep never could get an answer on whether anyone was even aware of that problem.

jefftkOP2y ago

My guess is those paths didn't have automated tests, or the automated tests missed some important aspect of real-world usage? Issues engineers working on the product ran into were way more likely to get fixed (among other things because reproducing the issue was easier) and almost all engineers primarily used Chrome.

(Not defending; trying to give background.)

acdha2y ago

> Not defending; trying to give background

I appreciate that - it’s been really frustrating knowing how many good technical staff Google has and seeing things just not get fixed. Our GCP reps seemed resigned to this happening but didn’t feel they had leverage to get attention on the product side, which made me feel bad for them.

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acdha2y ago

jefftkOP2y ago

(Not defending; trying to give background.)

acdha2y ago

> Not defending; trying to give background

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