4 ms·

There's zero lock-in unless you want to use Hangouts. Or Google Earth. Or Inbox. Not everything is standardized, sadly. Even the things that are ... well, h

There's zero lock-in unless you want to use Hangouts. Or Google Earth. Or Inbox. Not everything is standardized, sadly. Even the things that are ... well, https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=690195 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=690195 is an example from just earlier today where Chrome went to implement a spec, decided what the spec said was not convenient, and just implemented something else without bothering to raise a spec issue or anything. See https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/2568 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/2568 for the resulting lack of interop that the standards now have to sort out. This doesn't always happen, of course, but it happens often enough. Anyway, the Chrome team itself is, by and large, pretty good to work with (some exceptions like their "let's force-install this on unwitting users' computers" marketing deals notwithstanding). Other parts of Google are very much less great. Getting Gmail to work with your browser unless you spoof the UA string of some other existing browser is an exercise in futility.

sangnoir 10y ago
> There's zero lock-in unless you want to use Hangouts. Or Google Earth. Or Inbox. That's not really Chrome's fault - it's the fault of the respective (Hangouts, Earth, Inbox) product teams. We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days, I think it would be fair to give Google that latitude unless you are ascribing nefarious motives above and beyond what lazy/resource-constrained web devs used to do with IE6-only web sites/apps.
- yesbabyyes 10y ago
  wat
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days Yes, we did. Very loudly and very frequently. So loudly and frequently that the company was charged with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. The expression "embrace, extend, extinguish"[1] was first used to describe Microsoft's attempt to "lock-in" the WWW. Introducing incompatibilities into IE and proprietary extensions (ActiveX, which Google is copying with NaCL) allowed make a show of embracing open standards as bait for the lock-in. This isn't theoretical - in Bill Gates's own words[2]: >> "One thing we have got to change in our strategy--allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples [sic] browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish [2] (pdf) http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02991.pdf http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    >> We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days >Yes, we did. My phrasing wasn't as clear as I thought - what I meant to say "We didn't blame Microsoft for 'lock-in' due to 3rd parties creating IE-only websites, we blamed the 3rd parties." Implementing non-standard extensions was par for the course during the browser wars (Netscape did the same), and I doubt there was a real expectation of achieving lock-in via the browser by either party: Windows achieved lock-in via Windows, Office and legal threats. Not IE.
    - bzbarsky 10y ago
      In South Korea, Windows achieved lock-in via legislation requiring IE (or more precisely ActiveX). See https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-security-law-south-korea-is-stuck-with-internet-explorer-for-online-shopping/2013/11/03/ffd2528a-3eff-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-sec... for a decent summary. And yes, there was very much expectation of achieving lock-in via ActiveX. And it worked in some cases.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- bzbarsky 10y ago
  > That's not really Chrome's fault It's Chrome's fault that it's shipping non-standard things. Not like any browser is blameless here, but let's not pretend they're innocent either. It's _Google's_ fault that it's shipping non-standard things in its browser and then using them in its other products to lock out other browsers. > We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days We sure did. And it wasn't even Microsoft creating the IE-only websites!
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    > It's Chrome's fault that it's shipping non-standard things. I challenge you to name one non-niche browser that didn't ship "non-standard things"
    - pcwalton 10y ago
      The norms have been different in the past few years than during the first browser war. All browser manufacturers have effectively pledged to not ship things without consensus. In the case of NaCl, Google got around their own pledge by declaring NaCl "not part of Blink" and therefore not subject to the Blink rules, which was a cop-out if I've ever seen one.
    - bzbarsky 10y ago
      I explicitly said other browsers have done it too. Chrome has done a lot more promotion of its non-standard things and of course Google as a whole has been using Chrome's non-standard things quite a bit, which is a large part of the problem.

sangnoir 10y ago

> There's zero lock-in unless you want to use Hangouts. Or Google Earth. Or Inbox. That's not really Chrome's fault - it's the fault of the respective (Hangouts, Earth, Inbox) product teams. We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days, I think it would be fair to give Google that latitude unless you are ascribing nefarious motives above and beyond what lazy/resource-constrained web devs used to do with IE6-only web sites/apps.

yesbabyyes 10y ago
wat
pdkl95 10y ago
> We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days Yes, we did. Very loudly and very frequently. So loudly and frequently that the company was charged with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. The expression "embrace, extend, extinguish"[1] was first used to describe Microsoft's attempt to "lock-in" the WWW. Introducing incompatibilities into IE and proprietary extensions (ActiveX, which Google is copying with NaCL) allowed make a show of embracing open standards as bait for the lock-in. This isn't theoretical - in Bill Gates's own words[2]: >> "One thing we have got to change in our strategy--allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples [sic] browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities. Anything else is suicide for our platform." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish [2] (pdf) http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02991.pdf http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  >> We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days >Yes, we did. My phrasing wasn't as clear as I thought - what I meant to say "We didn't blame Microsoft for 'lock-in' due to 3rd parties creating IE-only websites, we blamed the 3rd parties." Implementing non-standard extensions was par for the course during the browser wars (Netscape did the same), and I doubt there was a real expectation of achieving lock-in via the browser by either party: Windows achieved lock-in via Windows, Office and legal threats. Not IE.
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    In South Korea, Windows achieved lock-in via legislation requiring IE (or more precisely ActiveX). See https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-security-law-south-korea-is-stuck-with-internet-explorer-for-online-shopping/2013/11/03/ffd2528a-3eff-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/due-to-sec... for a decent summary. And yes, there was very much expectation of achieving lock-in via ActiveX. And it worked in some cases.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bzbarsky 10y ago
> That's not really Chrome's fault It's Chrome's fault that it's shipping non-standard things. Not like any browser is blameless here, but let's not pretend they're innocent either. It's _Google's_ fault that it's shipping non-standard things in its browser and then using them in its other products to lock out other browsers. > We didn't blame Microsoft for "lock-in" back in the IE-only website days We sure did. And it wasn't even Microsoft creating the IE-only websites!
- sangnoir 10y ago
  > It's Chrome's fault that it's shipping non-standard things. I challenge you to name one non-niche browser that didn't ship "non-standard things"
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    The norms have been different in the past few years than during the first browser war. All browser manufacturers have effectively pledged to not ship things without consensus. In the case of NaCl, Google got around their own pledge by declaring NaCl "not part of Blink" and therefore not subject to the Blink rules, which was a cop-out if I've ever seen one.
  - bzbarsky 10y ago
    I explicitly said other browsers have done it too. Chrome has done a lot more promotion of its non-standard things and of course Google as a whole has been using Chrome's non-standard things quite a bit, which is a large part of the problem.