Google breaks search for Firefox users because of bad UA string sniffing

Re:Google breaks search for Firefox users because of bad UA ... by shadowgovt on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @09:45AM (#38926735)

Is it "sabotage" when you don't intentionally devote resources to making some random third party's browser work? What obligation do they have?

Mozilla has cachet with nerds like us because of its history. Not because it's particularly better than alternatives or because it has enough of a user base to throw its weight around.

In contrast, they do test on Safari. They'd lose double-digit percentages of users if they didn't.

The ecosystem, unfortunately, generally has room for three top browsers. I'm not even sure Firefox is number four these days.

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Re:Google breaks search for Firefox users because of bad UA ... by autoexec on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @03:28PM (#38931651)

Except that firefox is particularly better than alternatives. It isn't sending my browsing history to Google, and actually lets me block ads. Firefox provides a level of customization and options to protect your privacy that chrome will never match.

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Re:Google breaks search for Firefox users because of bad UA ... by shadowgovt on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @03:42PM (#38931816)

> It isn't sending my browsing history to Google

For obvious reasons, I don't think Google is devoting any resources to optimizing the experience of navigating to google.com for people who don't want any history generated on their use of google.com.

I agree with you that the other features listed are positives, but they don't appear to be positive enough to push use of Firefox psst Safari, Chrome, or Edge numbers.

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