Former Google engineer reveals the secret YouTube plot to kill Internet Explorer 6
Nearly 10 years ago, YouTube started displaying a banner to Internet Explorer 6 users, warning that support for Microsoft's browser would be "phasing out" soon. It was a message that appeared on all YouTube pages, at a time when IE6 users represented around 18 percent of all YouTube traffic. Frustrated by supporting the aging browser, a group of YouTube engineers had hatched a plan to kill Internet Explorer 6.
"We began collectively fantasizing about how we could exact our revenge on IE6," reveals Chris Zacharias, a former Google and YouTube engineer. "The plan was very simple. We would put a small banner above the video player that would only show up for IE6 users." A group of engineers implemented this banner, knowing that most YouTube employees using the company's staging environment wouldn't even see it. At the time, Google had acquired YouTube a few years prior to the IE6 banner and the video sharing site hadn't really fully adapted to Google's infrastructure and policies.
YouTube engineers had created a special set of permissions called "OldTuber," so they could bypass Google's code enforcement policies and make changes directly to the YouTube codebase with limited code reviews. Zacharias and some other engineers were granted OldTuber permissions, allowing them to put the banner in place with very little oversight. "We saw an opportunity in front of us to permanently cripple IE6 that we might never get again," admits Zacharias.
[...] YouTube engineering management eventually realized what had happened, but it was too late and they "begrudgingly arrived at the conclusion that the ends had justified the means." The rebel YouTube engineers succeeded with their secret plan to kill Internet Explorer 6, and by April 2012 IE6 usage had dropped below one percent in the US. Even Microsoft was celebrating IE6's death.
Related: Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
Related Stories
Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to
Back in 2009, Google introduced SPDY, a proprietary replacement for HTTP that addressed what Google saw as certain performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1. Google wasn't exactly wrong in its assessments, but SPDY was something of a unilateral act, with Google responsible for the design and functionality. SPDY was adopted by other browsers and Web servers over the next few years, and Google's protocol became widespread.
[...] The same story is repeating with HTTP/3. In 2012, Google announced a new experimental protocol, QUIC, intended again to address performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Google deployed QUIC, and Chrome would use QUIC when communicating with Google properties. Again, QUIC became the basis for IETF's HTTP development, and HTTP/3 uses a derivative of QUIC that's modified from and incompatible with Google's initial work.
It's not just HTTP that Google has repeatedly worked to replace. Google AMP ("Accelerated Mobile Pages") is a cut-down HTML combined with Google-supplied JavaScript designed to make mobile Web content load faster. This year, Google said that it would try to build AMP with Web standards and introduced a new governance model that gave the project much wider industry oversight.
A person claiming to be a former Microsoft Edge developer has written about a tactic Google supposedly used to harm the competing browser's performance:
A person claiming to be a former Edge developer has today described one such action. For no obvious reason, Google changed YouTube to add a hidden, empty HTML element that overlaid each video. This element disabled Edge's fastest, most efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. It hurt Edge's battery-life performance and took it below Chrome's. The change didn't improve Chrome's performance and didn't appear to serve any real purpose; it just hurt Edge, allowing Google to claim that Chrome's battery life was actually superior to Edge's. Microsoft asked Google if the company could remove the element, to no avail.
The latest version of Edge addresses the YouTube issue and reinstated Edge's performance. But when the company talks of having to do extra work to ensure EdgeHTML is compatible with the Web, this is the kind of thing that Microsoft has been forced to do.
See also: Ex Edge developer blames Google tricks in part for move to Chromium
Related: HTTP/2 on its Way In, SPDY on its Way Out
Google Touts QUIC Protocol
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
The Next Version of HTTP Won't be Using TCP
HTTP/3 Explained: A Work in Progress
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Google denies altering YouTube code to break Microsoft Edge
A former Microsoft intern has revealed details of a YouTube incident that has convinced some Edge browser engineers that Google added code to purposely break compatibility. In a post on Hacker News, Joshua Bakita, a former software engineering intern at Microsoft, lays out details and claims about an incident earlier this year. Microsoft has since announced the company is moving from the EdgeHTML rendering engine to the open source Chromium project for its Edge browser.
[...] The claims are surprising if they're genuine, and they come months after a Mozilla program manager claimed a separate YouTube redesign made the site "5x slower in Firefox and Edge." That incident led Edge, Safari, and Firefox users to revert to scripts to improve the YouTube experience. Google was also at the center of claims it intentionally blocked access to Google Maps for Windows Phone users years ago.
[...] Google disputes Bakita's claims, and says the YouTube blank div was merely a bug that was fixed after it was reported. "YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when they're discovered," says a YouTube spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies, the Web Platform Tests project, the open-source Chromium project and more to improve browser interoperability."
Previously: Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Monday May 06 2019, @05:31PM (15 children)
To be fair, IE6 needed to be put down with fire and nuked from orbit just to be sure.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday May 06 2019, @05:53PM (8 children)
But also to be fair, that's textbook anti-competitive monopoly behavior, even if the monopoly happens to be serving public interest of all web developers everywhere.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 06 2019, @05:58PM (2 children)
*cough*
Near the end of it's life, even Microsoft was actively trying to kill IE6. Or, maybe even in it's midlife. The screenshot in TFA does link to three newer browsers, one of which is IE8.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday May 06 2019, @06:03PM (1 child)
Yeah, but see, I've gotta hate the Google that exists now, so every action in the past has to be recast as secretly malevolent, and any narrative showing them to be anything but an evil monster must be wrong. It must!
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 06 2019, @06:15PM
/me backs away from the frothing patient, slowly, while signaling the guard to let me out . . .
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @06:29PM (2 children)
If I have the chronology correct, it was before Google had their own browser. I assume it is not required by law for a site to be functional in all browsers.
I think this is a funny story and it is being made into more of a vigilante story than it really is, but again I'm the guy who liked the Devuan April fools joke.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday May 06 2019, @06:36PM (1 child)
"nearly 10 years ago" is at earliest, 2009, chrome beta was 2008.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @06:45PM
Damn, I'm getting old. I would have thought it closer to a week ago than 11 years. Wait then it's even longer since we all donated to that Firefox advertising to kill Internet Explorer!?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday May 06 2019, @07:08PM
> that's textbook anti-competitive monopoly behavior
No.
They rejected one browser which was causing compatibility issues and had been superseded by newer version from its own editor. Those newer versions were not hindered in any way.
That is nowhere near "textbook anti-competitive monopoly behavior". Not the same ballpark, not even the same state, and the continent is questionable.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday May 06 2019, @11:25PM
Bullshit. "textbook anti-competitive monopoly behavior" is what gave us IE6 in the first place. A web browser made by people who don't really give a shit about working well with others.
They didn't put up a banner saying "Internet Explorer isn't supported", but instead, "Your version of Internet Explorer needs to be upgraded". IE7 is still supported by the devs. We all know IE6 sucked major, major, MAJOR ass and needed to be replaced. Those guys are fucking heroes if they reduced IE6 to single digit usage. They're the reason why I could justify NOT supporting IE6 for a few development projects (yet still support Microsoft web browsers).
I think you're slightly confused here.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @07:29PM (5 children)
Say what you will about IE6, but by getting rid of it the cancerous Web 2.0 floodgates were opened fully. And now no day goes by where one doesn't get to bask in said cancer online.
(Score: 2) by sshelton76 on Monday May 06 2019, @07:34PM (3 children)
Yeah but no more activeX, so I'd call it a win!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @07:37PM (2 children)
Instead we get all the former activeX cancer seeping into standards via HTML5 and DRM and whatnot thanks to the corporate co-opted W3C.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sshelton76 on Monday May 06 2019, @07:53PM (1 child)
Perhaps, but there is a huge difference between a closed source activex plugin that is windows only and not even the creators know what all security holes they've opened up for "reasons".
That vs a web standard in an open source browser where you can audit the code.
I'll take the standardized security hole, thanks!
https://strongvpn.blog/webrtc-security-flaw/ [strongvpn.blog]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @08:16PM
The W3C permitted DRM is just that though, closed source binary code that does not have to abide any standard --- only the delivery vector is covered by the standard. It's like activeX in every respect other than scale (right now it covers only video AFAIK, but enough whining from big-donor-corp will get that caveat worked out in no time).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @11:10PM
The alternative was Opera which worked like crap on most sites or Netscape which crashed if you looked at it funny. IE6 rocked compared to pretty much everything else from the same time. Then MS let it rot (dipshits). The should have owned the net. For awhile they did. Then they just did not care anymore.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @05:39PM (4 children)
As far as I can remember, M$'s own website wouldn't even open in IE 6. When I checked, Palemoon's website seemed to work, which allowed a download of an older version of the browser. Most other browsers fail to work on 32-bit and especially on WinXP.
What is wrong with these people?
Someone looking for a way to read text on web pages should not be the enemy.
But the latest and greatest must be used, just to read text, which updates itself every 33 minutes!?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @07:34PM (3 children)
There're actually sites out there right now that actively block Lynx (because reasons ???).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @09:45PM
Nice try, you l33t hacker
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 07 2019, @04:17AM (1 child)
To be fair unless there is a plugin for VLC ascii mode I have no idea how you would handle youtube in lynx.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @03:24PM
with lynx you go there for the comments
(Score: 1, Disagree) by nitehawk214 on Monday May 06 2019, @06:05PM
This is more of Youtube's coders working around Google's stupid policy of trying to support a shit browser than anything else. If they were reasonable, Google would have been on board with dropping support for the turd sandwich that was IE6.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday May 06 2019, @06:45PM
Couldn't have happened to a nicer piece of zombie software.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shortscreen on Monday May 06 2019, @07:33PM (1 child)
So they are exactly as derranged as I imagine. Good to know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06 2019, @09:48PM
The weekend Mozilla cock up with plugins is just the latest example of this truism.