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Mull (Firefox Fork) doesn't load Google.com. Switching useragent to Chrome "solves the issue" (streamable.com)

submitted 10 months ago by VicentAdultman@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Today, I noticed that Google wasn't loading on Mull (Firefox Fork). Switching useragent with the extension Chameleon makes the page load again.

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[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (9 children)

Is this still true? I just tested and it works for me on LibreWolf, both for google.com and google.com.br.

Honestly, Google doing this as a deliberate anti-Firefox measure seems so wildly stupid and counterproductive on their part that I'd assume it was some failure (serving a slightly different version of the page to Chrome as for other browsers, and the non-Chrome side breaks for some reason) before thinking it was malicious.

[–] itmosi@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Yep, with Mull 121.0.0 i got a blank page.

[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (4 children)

What's the user-agent? I'm curious now.

[–] itmosi@sh.itjust.works 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nothing special, Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:121.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/121.0. I checked the network tab, they literally return nothing.

[–] mo_ztt@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:121.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/121.0.

I just did a bunch of testing. The issue is that final version number, "Firefox/121.0". Google returns very different versions of the page based on what browser you claim to be, and if you're on mobile Firefox, it gives you different mobile versions depending on your version:

% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/41.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:54:29 URL:https://www.google.com/ [1985] -> "-" [1]
    1985
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/62.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:54:36 URL:https://www.google.com/ [211455] -> "-" [1]
  211455
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/80.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:52:24 URL:https://www.google.com/ [15] -> "-" [1]
      15
% wget -O - -nv -U 'Mozilla/5.0 (Android 10; Mobile; rv:62.0) Gecko/121.0 Firefox/121.0' https://www.google.com/ | wc -c
2024-01-08 15:52:04 URL:https://www.google.com/ [15] -> "-" [1]
      15

If you're an early version of Firefox, it gives you a simple page. If you're a later version of Firefox, it gives you a lot more complete version of the page. If you're claiming to be a specific version of mobile Firefox, but the version you're claiming (edit: oopsie ~~doesn't exist or even really make sense~~ didn't exist when they set this logic up or something), it gets confused and gives you nothing. You could argue that it should default to some sensible mobile version in this case, and they should definitely fix it, but it seems to me like it's clearly not malicious.

Edit: Wait, I am wrong. I didn't realize Firefox's version numbers went up so high. It looks like the cutoff for where the blank pages start coming is at version 65, which is like 2012 era, so not real old at all. I still maintain that it's probably accidental but it looks like it affects basically all modern mobile Firefoxes, yes.

[–] stepanzak@iusearchlinux.fyi 14 points 10 months ago

Given that it's like third accidental bug in google services that affects only Firefox in the last month I hear about, I'm starting to get suspicious.

[–] VicentAdultman@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks for the tests. They make the information more reliable since I had extensions turned on.

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