We treat third parties like little helpers—hiring external tools and services to help us perform tasks for which we shouldn’t create custom solutions. But that help isn’t free (on many fronts).

Have you ever waited several seconds for a page to load because of a lengthy request to a font provider? Tried buying an item, but the button was unresponsive because the advertising scripts blocked the main thread? Me too.

We need to audit third parties to mitigate their negative impact—not many services are built with performance in mind.