1575809 - Bookmarked Google Maps's favicon uses Google's default one instead

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect, P5)

Description

[Fanolian]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:70.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/70.0
Build ID: 20190821215524

It is original reported at Reddit which I quote here:

Not exactly a critical problem, but Firefox uses the favicon for Google.com for the bookmark icon for Google Maps.

What's weird, is that it displays the correct icon in the tab. It displays the correct icon if I go to bookmark properties. It displays the correct icon if I export the bookmarks in html and look at the icon url. It ONLY displays the wrong icon in the bookmark menu (and the bookmark toolbar).

Any ideas?

Steps to reproduce

1. Use a new profile. Make sure this profile has never visited https://www.google.com/.
2. Visit https://www.google.com/maps.
3. Bookmark the page. (It does not matter if coordinates are appended to the URL.)
4. Open Library. Confirm the page is bookmarked with the correct favicon, which should like look https://www.google.com/images/branding/product/ico/maps_32dp.ico.
5. Restart Nightly. Open Library again and confirm bookmarked Maps's favicon is still correct at this point.
6. Visit https://www.google.com.
7. Reopen Library and check the bookmark's favicon.

Actual result

Bookmarked Google Map's favicon has changed to Google's default icon, which look like https://www.google.com/favicon.ico.

I tried several ways to get back the correct favicon but in vain:
i. Re-visit Google Maps again.
ii. Delete bookmark (and restart browser) and re-add it.
iii. Clear Cookies and Site Data for Google Maps from URL bar's lock icon.
iv. Clear all sites' data and cache from about:preferences#privacy > Cookies and data > Clear data.
v. Forget about this site for Google Maps and Google (main page) at Library > History.

The only way to get back the correct favicon is to:

1. Delete the bookmark.
2. Go to Clear Recent History.
3. Select Browsing and Download History.
4. Click Clear Now.
5. Reload, skipping the cache, Google Maps.
6. Re-bookmark it.

But of course, the favicon will change to Google's default one again if I happen to visit https://www.google.com.

Comment 1

[Fanolian]

Here's another similar case I personally encounter:

https://www.map.gov.hk/gm/map/ uses favicon at https://www.map.gov.hk/gm/res/images/favicon.png but still has an old favicon at https://www.map.gov.hk/favicon.ico.
Unlike the case of Google Maps, visiting https://www.map.gov.hk/ does not change bookmark's favicon immediately. But it changes to https://www.map.gov.hk/favicon.ico after some days eventually.

Comment 2

[Fanolian]

There are other places that use the wrong favicon for Google Maps after visiting google.com similar to the STR at comment 0:

1. Suggestions (from History?) in URL bar.
2. History sidebar and Library > History.

Comment 3

[Fanolian]

Last good Nightly: 2017-10-19
First bad Nightly: 2017-10-20
pushlog: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=b6ba3e919f561bfabbf4bec7f0f53a23c360adee&tochange=a9131757dfdd4f2820c397523b54386f9675d607

Mozregression cannot bisect any further to narrow down the range.

Marking Firefox 68 and 69 as WONTFIX as it is a longstanding issue.

Comment 4

[Cristian Fogel [:cfogel]]

Updating status.
Confirmed issue with 70.0a1 (2019-08-27) on Windows 10/Ubuntu 16.04.
Did not reproduce while trying to confirm on macOS 10.13.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

The maps ico image only contains a 32px icon, if your dpi settings are at 100%, we'll ask for a 16px icon, and since downsampling produces a worse image we'll probably prefer a 16px favicon from the root domain to a blurry resampled icon. In my db I see both 16px and 32px icons for google.com.
The tab in general uses the favicon from the page as it is loaded, while other UI parts load the favicon from a cache, the cache prefers a perfectly sized favicon than a resampled one. This also explains why Christian couldn't reproduce on MacOS, it's a retina display so it will request a 32px icon, and the maps icon covers that need. Same thing if you would set Windows DPI settings to 125% or more.

In general, Google Maps should provide a broader choice of favicon resolutions.

We could evaluate a solution similar to bug 1494016, where, if the resampling is not huge, we may still pick the original icon. though that's a low priority, the websites should really update their favicon to usable ones.

Comment 6

[Rodrigo]

Update:
Google Flights (https://www.google.com/flights) now has the exact same behavior, after Google updated its favicon recently. Its bookmark favicon will always displays Google's default one.

Comment 7

[ben.merryman]

Attachment: 1_IcoIssueWithGoogleMaps.png

Issue persists on 2021-02-06, use case of ico only for clean bookmark bar

Comment 8

[KarlHosking]

I've had this issue forever - Googlemaps favicon is still wrong in one of my Win 10 desktop browsers, but not the other - both using Firefox.

Comment 9

[ethan]

Confirmed issue still with FF 111.0.1 on macOS 13.2.1.

Was able to work around the issue by modifying the favicons.sqlite file. In the moz_icons table, I duplicated the existing row containing https://www.google.com/images/branding/product/ico/maps_32dp.ico. On the new copy, I changed the id to match the new row number, then changed the width to 16. I also changed the expiration timestamp to be a long time from now to prevent the issue from reoccurring. So far this seems to force FF to use the correct icon.