[the_duke]

Have you tried using the new Gmail interface on Firefox?

It's ridiculously slow, to the point of being completely unusable.

A Google engineer claimed here on HN the reason was that the UI framework uses some deprecated API that is polyfilled in Firefox but available on Chrome.

Something like that should never have launched, but may have been a somewhat acceptable reason months ago. Now, after being in production for months, not fixing this is either saying "we don't care about those <10% Firefox users" or straight up intentional to force FF users to switch to Chrome.

Either of those amount to the same thing and classify as malicious to me.

[HenryBemis]

I don't buy the "oops we dropped the ball on UAT". I was working in a bank once and we were making sure that our web-banking would work properly with EVERY POSSIBLE browser. And I don't mean IE, FF, Opera, Chrome.. I mean some end-of-corridor browsers that you could get from tucows. I don't buy that Google made mistakes like that with one of the top5 browsers. Did they ever pull a trick like that with Microsoft's IE?

[devoply]

According to an M$ intern they did which eventually caused Edge to fail and for M$ to say hey we'll just be a wrapper around Chrome and then they can't screw us.

[j16sdiz]

This is "Shadow DOM v0" API and have been removed in latest Chrome:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18701765

https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdom

[zamadatix]

Gmail never used Shadow DOM v0.

[amelius]

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

But since Google's engineers are far from stupid, you may have a point.

[chansiky]

This whole article makes me question that statement. I hear it all the time, but passive aggression is a very real tactic in a bloodless war.

[kruczek]

For me it works fine. Whole page reloads in maybe 3 seconds, while browsing mails is pretty much instant.

[Vinnl]

You're both saying the same thing, but drawing different conclusions:

> Google simply stopped caring about non-Chrome browsers

> we don't care about those <10% Firefox users

Except that GP attributed that to incompetence and you to malice. I guess it's still hard to guess intent :)

[adam-a]

Even if it can be rationalised as them not caring, or even just not prioritising support for Firefox, the point of TFA is you have to treat it as malice if you are on the other end. Maybe it's better characterised as neglect, but you have to actively call it out and fight it if you don't want to lose out.

It may be like being crushed by an elephant that's rolling over in it's sleep, but you need to wake the elephant up and tell it to sleep somewhere else.

[nautical]

I have completely shifted away from web UI to native application for the same reason.