Google sheets used to be broken `BASED ON USER AGENT`.

https://support.google.com/docs/thread/18235069/google-sheet...

After i found that spoof browser agent fixed it. They locked the thread coincidentally and the bug is also fixed coincidentally a few days after.

I don't know if it is really a coincident, but I definitely have 0 trust of them after it.

It's common to work around browser bugs like this.

I wouldn't blame some possible hack a tired dev implemented on a busy Thursday on a grand scheme to strip you of your freedom - in the end it's just people working there. Especially seeing that the bug was fixed after someone complained/made them aware.

If you are Google, a multi billion company, pushing your own browser with a marketing budget in the hundreds of millions range (seriously, this was important to them, the only ad important enough to reach the front page of Google AFAIK)

- then you better make sure you make it work everwhere instead of this constant "ooops"-thing that shows that Google doesn't even do the smallest amount of testing in Firefox, or they do it deliberately.

If you can save a million or two in salaries for testers for all Docs products, for software that in most cases just works as well as in Chrome, why waste the money? Google is a company.

Automated tests can help with this, but you also need to maintain and write those in the first place.

Just trying to follow the thought process as an economist. It's likely hard to justify, especially with admins being quick at noticing these things and employees on docs products usually being receptive on bug trackers since it is a business offering.

This thread from a former Mozilla exec: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686?s=20

Very instructive, thanks for sharing.

Have you used Firefox with Google Docs Calendar or YouTube over the last ten years?

(Multiple more examples exist for those willing to dig: at one point the search results page would peg one processor core briefly every 30 seconds as long as you stayed on that page - and used Firefox)

Edit: and as you mention, the situation with Chrome on mobile is basically a 1-1 of IE on Windows.

I never have any problems with YouTube; it works well for me. What problems are there? I use Google Docs only sporadically (mostly to read .doc(x) files sent to me), and it's kinda slow, but that's not necessarily Google's fault. Slack is (was? Haven't used it in year) unusably slow on Firefox too, and don't get me started on the "new" Reddit that couldn't even scroll right last time I tried it.

Not OP, but I have. I'm currently typing this answer on Firefox, have been using google Docs, Calendar and Youtube for years, never had major problems.

(Of course this is all anecdotal.)

Even if just mobile I'm still not sure how they get away with it. They have 71% of the global mobile marketshare, my phone came preinstalled with chrome, I cannot remove it, only disable it.

How is that any different at all to what Microsoft was doing with IE in the 90's?

Youtube on iOS is deliberately changed in a way that it breaks playing video/audio in the background. iOS is capable of that by default with HTML5, but Youtube sells background play as a paid feature.

I remember when gmail outright crippled itself when I used it some 5 years ago. I also remember other Google services disabling some features only on Firefox.

Google Ads is practically unusable with Firefox

Feature, not a bug.