It does seem unlikely, but playing with the example UA in curl (as noted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925015) seems to show it's the combination of "Android" and "Firefox" that causes this behaviour. I wonder if any other mobile browsers are broken?

A far more likely explanation is simply that two features or workarounds are enabled, maybe "Android" triggers a prompt to install Chrome or something and "Firefox" triggers some workaround code. However these interact poorly and cause a crash.

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).

Some middle manager out there was making this decision. Not strategy heads

Strategy heads come up with the strategy - friction. Enough friction against Firefox will let the browser still exist (essential for the claim that there is competition) but without actually being able to compete.

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.

> Enough friction against Firefox will let the browser still exist (essential for the claim that there is competition) but without actually being able to compete.

Interesting theory, but that's exactly what M$ got dinged for in the antitrust suit re: Netscape.

Google doesn't care, they knowingly implemented the mother of all illegal antipattern cookie banners and only changed it after getting fined over $100M.

If the risk is a lawsuit after years of anticompetitive behaviour - if they're unlucky - that's absolutely worth it for Google. Chrome is now THE web browser platform with the only two remaining notable exceptions being competitors in name only, and no single lawsuit can just reverse that.

MS waged a lot more open war against Netscape, and documented their desire to "extinguish", "smother", and "cut off Netscape's air supply".

Google is doing more "eternal irritation by 1000 papercuts". Never one big blow, never aiming to kill Firefox, they're financing it after all. Firefox needs to exist but never be attractive to users, especially on the phone where tracking is next level.

I think plausible deniability does a lot of the heavy lifting here. But statistically speaking Firefox being the one browser hit constantly by a stream of random Google issues can't be random.

The legal and regulatory landscape changed a lot since then too, with Big Tech slowly but constantly lobbying and pushing a lot more than just these tactics into normalcy. A lot of what's normal today was outrageous in the '90s.

Sometimes! And sometimes a middle manager just does what he thinks clears the ticket quickly enough and then someone yells at him.

Assuming competence and intention is foolish.

> 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.

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.

The aim was to lay out at which level each stage happens. It's not middle management taking a random decision. The fish rots from the head but the tail certainly doesn't smell rosy either. Dieselgate was also just a random deprioritized code bug until it wasn't.

Repeated incompetence from one level is actual maliciousness from the level above, all the way to the top.

They want two things: 1) Firefox needs to exists as a hypothetical option 2) People shouldn't really use Firefox. Intermittent oopsies breaking key services are doing wonders towards goal #2

Google is currently facing an antitrust suit where their payment to Firefox is a crucial part of the evidence against them. And it's over their search engine, which is far more important to them than Chrome.

They pay Firefox as they're buying a valuable product. Which is why they also pay Safari.

Are you certain that search is more important than chrome?

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.

Nope, search ads are still where they make at least 2/3rds of their money. The rest of their ad inventory has substitutes, search really doesn't (because they basically invented the category (grumble grumble something Overture)).

Chrome is okish for collecting data. But they have Android which probably provides 100x the data.

Only on poor people! (I mostly jest, but having talked to a bunch of former Google ad people, it was a real concern for them that most of their high revenue users were moving to iPhone).

And indeed, we are talking about Firefox on android here.