5 ms·

- Implementing the newest Google Earth through pNaCl, basically ActiveX by Google - Play Store website threw you out if you were using Firefox on Android | htt

• sqeaky 9y ago
  That is a list of bugs and one has an apology and a fix from Google. Most are even fixed. Even what you consider anti-competive "Youtube refused to serve webm to Firefox for a while", shows bias because the first comment of the ticket explains that it served videos. It probably worked for a ton of people. Even with the NaCL thing I was able to find and implementation [1] of it that was under a open source license when I was trying to find a NaCl spec. NaCl existed because webassembly didn't, Google wanted other browsers to implement it. Bugs happens, Technologies don't get adopted; Google is made of people and mistakes happen. Your disingenuous crying of anti-competitive wolf dilutes real claims of anti-competition. [1] - https://chromium.googlesource.com/native_client/src/native_client.git/+/master https://chromium.googlesource.com/native_client/src/native_c...
  • pcwalton 9y ago
    As I explained elsewhere in this thread, (P)NaCl is only open source in the sense that Chromium is. Because of the dependency on Pepper, Google's implementation is Chrome only. The problem with this is that Google solicited feedback on Pepper on the plugin-futures mailing list early on. The other browser vendors correctly pointed out that Pepper was unnecessary. Google completely ignored the feedback and did it anyway. Years later, it is obvious that the unanimous consensus of the other browser vendors was right. PNaCl is dead, and Web Assembly uses the Web APIs instead of Pepper, which is precisely what everyone else had advocated early on. The lack of adoption of PNaCl is Google's problem. As is obvious with Web Assembly, nobody has any problem with adding a portable low-level IR to the browser. The biggest problem was the insistence on Pepper. If they had listened to feedback, maybe we would have had Web Assembly much sooner.
    • sqeaky 9y ago
      I am taking what you say about historical events as you say it, but It still doesn't seem like the move is "anti-competitive". At worst its bad engineering. Its not like there is some new killer feature in the new google maps that makes it not work on Firefox, I have used it from Firefox in the past week and it worked fine. Even if there were some killer feature, they are free to release it in such a way that it only works with their software. I hate microsoft but I still don't give them flak for not releasing Linux versions of office and excel. They are allowed to not do that. Where it steps into anti-competitive is when they start breaking other's people things or maliciously manipulating standards. Google has demonstrated a willingness to go out of their way and fix things for most things not NaCl related. Even per your recounting of history they weren't trying to coerce the standards body, they just asked for comments and then unilaterally did something else. They didn't force it on anyone else.
      • pcwalton 9y ago
        > I am taking what you say about historical events as you say it, but It still doesn't seem like the move is "anti-competitive". It sure is when combined with Google releasing NaCl-based software, such as Google Earth. > Google has demonstrated a willingness to go out of their way and fix things for most things not NaCl related. Not with Dart, which followed a very similar trajectory (see my other comments). Not with -webkit prefixes. Etc. etc. > Even per your recounting of history they weren't trying to coerce the standards body, they just asked for comments and then unilaterally did something else. They didn't force it on anyone else. When you release software that only works on your platform that you aren't open to outside comments on, then you are forcing others to implement it, warts and all, or lose users.
        • sqeaky 9y ago
          I had a misunderstanding with Google earth vs maps. I used Google maps in Firefox just fine, and that is what I meant earlier. I was unaware even of the existence of a web based version of Earth. The last time I used Google earth was as a desktop client. That was back when I worked in the Air Force Weather Wing almost a year ago. Have they done away with the desktop client? Starting over with whether or not this is anticompetitive; who are they repressing by giving away free software that runs on other free software? Does this software need to be used? This all seems to hinge around this part of what you are saying: > When you release software that only works on your platform that you aren't open to outside comments on, then you are forcing others to implement it, warts and all, or lose users. The option to lose users here is huge. How is this different than microsoft making excel and only supporting it on windows? I choose not to use excel at least in part because it doesn't run on any platform I care to use. I feel I should clarify here, I don't condone this obnoxious behavior from microsoft or Google. I think it is wrong from the stance that all software should inter-operate smoothly and be open source, but it doesn't seem illegal or even unethical. The answer for a users to both Earth and excel seems to be to use some other competing software. For mapping software something like openstreetmap or even some other Google software like Google maps (or even a pay for solution). For spreadsheets I use libreoffice. Even if this is anti-competitive it seems so minor that it dilutes the meaning of the term. Lumping this in with things like the Dr DOS fiasco just doesn't seem right. For reference in the Dr DOS times there was a DOS competitor to microsoft's DOS. Dr DOS was a relatively bug free DOS and it worked fine with windows until the 3.0 release (I think). Until this specific version/patch started intermittently causing windows to not run if Dr DOS was detected even though it was advertised as working. The end result was Dr DOS being run out of business because it looked like a bug in Dr DOS and sometime ms even claimed such. The Dr DOS team was very overtly fucked by ms. Nothing about most of the things brought up in this thread seems overt. No money is being paid for web browsers or this mapping software. Having users takes significant effort to monetize. It seems detached from web standards in any direct way (I agree it indirectly relates to webassembly, but not in a way that seems legally relevant). Most of it seems like engineers being engineers and fixing their own little slice of the world and hoping everyone works with their stuff because they don't want to change. Shortsighted and imperfect just like most humans. Thank you for taking the time to explain (and listen) to me in a rational and level headed way. I won't be checking my messages here again until I start another build or boring process tomorrow. Have an upvote.