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Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook r

Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

arthurcolle 6y ago
that would have made builds massive, unless you're referring to just the desktop experience...
- elcomet 6y ago
  I'm saying they would have find a way to deliver the app to customers, whether in desktop or web form. And customers would have downloaded the app if needed, as it seems to be the only powerful way to manage ads.
aequitas 6y ago
Indeed, people will always find a way, especially if money is involved. And running outdated browsers for legacy support, while being a huge security risk, is not uncommon for a lot of use cases, especially back then.
mcv 6y ago
A hit of 25-50% of revenue would certainly have hurt, but probably not killed Facebook. That people will find a workaround is absolutely true. I once worked on a system to order mobile phone subscription from a website that only worked on IE6. So we had a website that accepted orders from customers, created jobs that would be sent to one of 10 VMs that ran IE6, where a watir script would steer IE6 to enter the order into the old website. It's the most horrible hack I ever worked on, but it worked.
- Pelic4n 6y ago
  Absolute cringe, thanks you for this.
- spacemanmatt 6y ago
  When BBSes started telling me to call back when I could connect faster than 300 baud, I discovered they would let me in at 110 baud.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  I used to have to manage mailing list subscriptions based on data in a SQL database. The mailing list software only had a web UI. So I worked out what GET and POST commands and data I needed, and scripted it in bash using curl commands to interact with the list software. Ugly, fragile, but it worked.

arthurcolle 6y ago

that would have made builds massive, unless you're referring to just the desktop experience...

elcomet 6y ago
I'm saying they would have find a way to deliver the app to customers, whether in desktop or web form. And customers would have downloaded the app if needed, as it seems to be the only powerful way to manage ads.

aequitas 6y ago

Indeed, people will always find a way, especially if money is involved. And running outdated browsers for legacy support, while being a huge security risk, is not uncommon for a lot of use cases, especially back then.

mcv 6y ago

A hit of 25-50% of revenue would certainly have hurt, but probably not killed Facebook. That people will find a workaround is absolutely true. I once worked on a system to order mobile phone subscription from a website that only worked on IE6. So we had a website that accepted orders from customers, created jobs that would be sent to one of 10 VMs that ran IE6, where a watir script would steer IE6 to enter the order into the old website. It's the most horrible hack I ever worked on, but it worked.

Pelic4n 6y ago
Absolute cringe, thanks you for this.
spacemanmatt 6y ago
When BBSes started telling me to call back when I could connect faster than 300 baud, I discovered they would let me in at 110 baud.
throwawayboise 6y ago
I used to have to manage mailing list subscriptions based on data in a SQL database. The mailing list software only had a web UI. So I worked out what GET and POST commands and data I needed, and scripted it in bash using curl commands to interact with the list software. Ugly, fragile, but it worked.