Why everyone accept Google's anticompetitive behavior?

[Peter Karvai]

Did you ever tried to open Google.com in Android phone in chrome and then in Firefox?

 

Difference is outrageous in my opinion. 

 

My question is: why no one sue Google for clearly anticompetitive behavior. Google is actively trying to make other browsers look outdated.

 

[Guest]

Like any good monopolist, they pay the right people not to interfere.

[RONOTHAN##]

13 minutes ago, Peter Karvai said:

Difference is outrageous in my opinion. 

The difference is mostly just dark mode...

 

I'm not saying there's no examples of anticompetitive behavior from Google, there most certainly is, this just isn't the example you should be using. 

[porina]

There are legal definitions to what anti-competitive behaviour is. That is the true test, not what some random person thinks is ok or not. 

[Middcore]

Firefox is in light mode and renders the Google logo smaller? What is the huge outrageous thing I am missing here?

[TetraSky]

Looks the same on both Vivaldi and Chrome on desktop. Then again, I'm on Google.ca, not .com.

 

Oh but... did you know? Dark mode is a setting that exist. Just click Settings at the bottom right to enable it.

Seems to me your Chrome is set to Dark Mode, likely because you are logged in. If you log out and clear your browser history, it might just revert back to light mode

 

 

[Senzelian]

I think what most people are missing here, is that Google Lens and speech-to-text aren't available on Firefox.

Whether that's anticompetitive or not is not something I will get into.

[TetraSky]

31 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

I think what most people are missing here, is that Google Lens and speech-to-text aren't available on Firefox.

Whether that's anticompetitive or not is not something I will get into.

Google Lens can be had as an app by itself.

If Google integrated it into Chrome for android (I wouldn't know, I don't use it), it is not anti competitive, that's integrating their own product stacks into one package. It would need dependencies and permissions to work, which other browsers obviously won't have. They don't prevent anyone from downloading it by itself and using whatever other browsers they want.

[Lunar River]

41 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

I think what most people are missing here, is that Google Lens and speech-to-text aren't available on Firefox.

probably because OP didn't tell us what he was complaining about, he posted 2 images and a vague "Difference is outrageous"

[cooky560]

The most obvious difference I can see is that the OP isn't signed in in the second screenshot, which is probably why it looks different, as it's using some defaults based on the browser it's in.

[Razercake]

since we are talking about looking outdated, is it the square vs more rounded corners? google just looks like it matches the Firefox topbar, or would you like to clarify so we can stop guessing what the exact problem is here?

[kenkku]

Vague differences aside, I generally agree that Google has too much of a say in my general day-to-day. Personally I have made some steps to move away from Google services last year (like using skiff for e-mail and Firefox as my main browser) and I hope to continue so in 2024.

[LAwLz]

OP, what difference is it that you think makes Firefox look outdated? 

[Godlygamer23]

This is what Google's homepage looks like on my iPhone XR using Safari.

Spoiler

Looks the same as your Chrome screenshot other than the 'trending searches'.

[Lurking]

I only see Firefox looks dated ... All other browsers seem to render similar to Chrome rendering.

 

What are we supposed to be outraged about?

 

Making a better product isn't illegal (yet). And whoever calls Google a monopoly should look up what the word means. Especially the "Mono" part. Look it up on one of the dozen available search sites 

[Erioch]

[Mark Kaine]

6 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The difference is mostly just dark mode...

 

I'm not saying there's no examples of anticompetitive behavior from Google, there most certainly is, this just isn't the example you should be using. 

what's really funny their chrome looks like my Firefox and their Firefox looks like my Samsung browser...  (i never use chrome on my phone so i wouldn't even know how that looks lol)

 

I'll file this under "user error"... (again)

[Peter Karvai]

I'm sorry, I should have been more should have been more accurate and less lazy when I was doing screenshots. 

 

Fist of all, I know what is dark mode and how to enable it, but this is irrelevant

 

In my opinion, Google looks and feels much worse on chromium-based browsers (like Vivaldi). 

 

Differences when using Firefox are:

• Tree lines points in up-left corner point to separate website labeled " Helpful products. Built with you in mind" instead of opened side bar with setting, dark mode option, advanced search and "saved" shortcut.
• In up right corner, instead of profile picture icon with account selection function shows only logout button
• 9 dot button in up-right "Google apps" has been removed and top bar was added with only "pictures"shortcut
• In page footage, there is only "google.com" instead of settings (including separate dark mods button), privacy and terms shortcut 

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Peter Karvai said:

I'm sorry, I should have been more should have been more accurate and less lazy when I was doing screenshots. 

 

Fist of all, I know what is dark mode and how to enable it, but this is irrelevant

 

In my opinion, Google looks and feels much worse on chromium-based browsers (like Vivaldi). 

 

Differences when using Firefox are:

• Tree lines points in up-left corner point to separate website labeled " Helpful products. Built with you in mind" instead of opened side bar with setting, dark mode option, advanced search and "saved" shortcut.
• In up right corner, instead of profile picture icon with account selection function shows only logout button
• 9 dot button in up-right "Google apps" has been removed and top bar was added with only "pictures"shortcut
• In page footage, there is only "google.com" instead of settings (including separate dark mods button), privacy and terms shortcut 

I see.

 

I looked into this and apparently, Firefox gets served an old version of the Google homepage which contains some minor differences compared to the new one.

There is an addon which fixes this by telling Google's servers to send the same website to Firefox. However, it seems like mobile Firefox currently does not support all of the features necessary to display the new Google website and as a result, according to the developer of the addon there are "some issues which should hopefully all be cosmetic".

 

One of the Firefox developers also said "It's google who doesn't send us the tier1 page for a variety of web-compatibility issues, it seems."

 

I also managed to find a blog post from 2018 which mentions "a number of platform interop bugs" that Mozilla and the Blink team (developers of the engine used by Chrome) were working on fixing. There seem to only be a few bugs left to fix, one to be precise if the webcompat Github page is the complete list, but there have been up to 41 different issues in the past. 

 

 

So it seems like Firefox gets the old website design served to it. Why does it get the old website design? Because it used to have a ton of issues displaying the new design. It still has some issues, but it seems to be mostly solved now.

If you want the new page design then it seems like your best bet is either:

1) Install the addon that makes it so that your Firefox browser appears to be Chrome when visiting google.com, but be warned that some things might break.

2) Ask Mozilla to fix the issues that cause the new page to not render correctly, so that Google will start serving the new website design to Firefox too.

 

 

 

I am not sure I think this is "anticompetitive behavior". From what I can tell, this does not seem to be anything done nefarious by Google to try and sabotage for Firefox users. At most I guess you could say Google designed their website without taking the limitations of the Firefox mobile browser into consideration, and can you really blame them for that? The Firefox mobile browser has a minuscule user base, which is probably even smaller than the Firefox desktop user base which is already small by itself.

On the other hand, I guess there is an argument to be made that a large company like Google should put some resources towards trying to prevent a browser engine monoculture and should consider these things when designing their websites. Since Mozilla has said that they are getting help to fix these issues it seems like Google at least does some things to help. Determining if they are doing enough or not is hard to do without knowing more details, and it seems hard to find more than what I gathered right now.

 

Anyway, I think we should be careful with making accusations and negative assumptions. It's very easy to see something and go "this is probably because X is doing something bad", especially if it's about a company you perceive as doing a lot of bad things. But it's very important to actually verify if our suspicions are true, because otherwise we might end up in a situation where our assumptions create a negative feedback loop which causes us to justify even more assumptions that might be wrong. If we make 10 assumptions about "Google did this to sabotage for Firefox", then it is very easy to make an 11th assumption even if it turned out that the other 10 times were incorrect (and we never fact-checked).

I see this happening with a lot of brands on this forum. People always assume the worst, which in turn makes them hate a company, which then they use to justify assuming the worst. 

 

[Lurking]

4 hours ago, Peter Karvai said:

I'm sorry, I should have been more should have been more accurate and less lazy when I was doing screenshots. 

 

Fist of all, I know what is dark mode and how to enable it, but this is irrelevant

 

In my opinion, Google looks and feels much worse on chromium-based browsers (like Vivaldi). 

 

Differences when using Firefox are:

• Tree lines points in up-left corner point to separate website labeled " Helpful products. Built with you in mind" instead of opened side bar with setting, dark mode option, advanced search and "saved" shortcut.
• In up right corner, instead of profile picture icon with account selection function shows only logout button
• 9 dot button in up-right "Google apps" has been removed and top bar was added with only "pictures"shortcut
• In page footage, there is only "google.com" instead of settings (including separate dark mods button), privacy and terms shortcut 

Thanks for clarifying. Still not relevant supporting your claim.

 

No one is forcing you to choose the browser or search site you seem to like less. 

 

Different browsers or sites will just have some differences. That isn't necessarily Google's fault. 

[LAwLz]

47 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

Is it Firefox not properly handling standards or is it Google not following standards?

It feels a little bit like a Déjà vu. Microsoft's Internet Explorer was in the very same position Chrome(ium) is in today. They had a giant market share and could do what they want. IE didn't give two cents about standards making the net worse for everyone. It took the mobile phone revolution to break IE's monopoly and turn the web into something accessible by any device.

That's very hard to say, and might also be a bit of a mix since, as I said earlier, there might have been over 40 different issues Mozilla has identified and fixed.

 

I looked into some of those issues and found things like:

float pushed down one line with white-space: nowrap;

Link child's ::before and :active::after content can prevent part of the link from reacting to taps (but clicks work).

Giving a div overflow:hidden can chop off its text's descenders in cases where other browsers do not do so.

 

I've looked through about 10 or so of the things Mozilla has fixed, and it seems like all of them so far have been bugs related to how Firefox handles web standards. I have not been able to find any indication of this being Google breaking web standards.

A lot of these bugs seen to be specifically related to Firefox on Mobile. So from what I can tell, it's more likely that Firefox just hasn't been tested that much with mobile-focused standards and page layouts. 

 

 

Edit: Looked through a few more and managed to find two fixes that seem related to Google not following standards. Or well, they might be following the standards but they are making some assumptions that they don't really need to make, and that causes issues with Firefox.

Here are the github pages for the two issues. Both are related to elements on the Google page being aligned based on text. The problem was that the font Firefox used was not the same as the font used in Chrome, so the alignment became incorrect in some cases because the fonts used in Firefox and Chrome were quite different. Google didn't really break any standards, but it's kind of like wanting to put something in the center of the screen and doing so by setting "set the position of this element 960 pixels from the left side and 540 pixels down from the top". It will be in the middle, but only if your screen is exactly 1920x1080 in resolution. At any other resolution, it will not be in the middle. Of course, in this case it's more nuanced and complex than my example, but it's just an analogy.

 

What Google should have done differently is:

1) Test their website on multiple browsers with some different fonts to see if it works correctly.

2) Used a different method to align things.

 

Two things to keep in mind though.

1) Google did fix this when it was reported to them.

2) Google isn't the only site that does this. Other examples are:

• Zalando
• Microsoft.com
• Amazon
• Reddit
• Merriam-Webster.com
• bet365
• Telegram.org
• Vogue.com
• Aftonbladet.se (largest newspaper website in Sweden)
• Bing.com
• nbcnews.com

Usually this is just done for some minor thing in the site, but it's still annoying and might look weird. 

On Bing the X button was misaligned:

 

On nbcnews the sign up button was misaligned:

 

On Telegram text like the bottom of the g would get cut off in the preview:

 

On wetteronline the X in the close button was drooping:

[Stahlmann]

The reality is that most end-users don't care about competition, monopolies, etc. First and foremost they care about the best user experience. That's why companies like Apple and Google still exist and are accepted by consumers.

[cooky560]

Certain things kind of adapt well to being a monopoly. It's of benefit to most people if water and power are provided and maintained across an area in a consistent way for example.

 

When it comes to technology, a consistent UI makes things easier for user training, and a good overall experience. So even if we were to  break up the idea of "every phone is either google or apple" we'd have to insert some sort of standardisation process so that deployment isn't even more of a nightmare than it currently is, facing the various different configurations that can exist.

 

That said "The big 3" of Microsoft, Google and Apple (in no particular order) are essentially gateway services at the moment, and some sort of regulation to prevent abuse of position (for example data protection directives) would be useful given how none of these companies are exactly well behaved