After repeated discussions with Google, Mozilla still did not convince search giants to treat Firefox Mobile as equal to other WebKit browsers. A Google spokesperson said in a statement that Firefox uses the Gecko engine, which requires additional testing to ensure functional compatibility. It did further testing on the Firefox desktop, but the mobile version did not reach the same level as the desktop version. This situation forced Mozilla developers to adopt a policy of modifying user agent strings, tricking Google into treating Firefox Mobile as Chrome. The strategy of the era of IE’s reign was recreated in the period of Google Chrome’s dominance.
“It has been over five years since Firefox really turned a corner and started to morph from its bloated memory-munching ways into the lightning-quick browser it is today. Buried in Mozilla’s issue tracker is a bug that kicked off in February 2014, and is yet to be resolved: Have Google treat Firefox for Android as a first-class citizen and serve up comparable content to what the search giant hands Chrome and Safari. After years of requests, meetings, and to and fro, it has hit a point where the developers of Firefox are experimenting by manipulating the user agent string in its nightly development builds to trick Google into thinking that Firefox Mobile is a Chrome browser. Not only does Google’s search page degrade for Firefox on Android, but some new properties like Google Flights have occasionally taken to outright blocking of the browser.“
Source: ZDNet
