5 ms·

Google's insistence on using security as an excuse to remove functionality that they want to keep exclusive to their products is so blatant it either is or shou

by franga2000 5y ago

Google's insistence on using security as an excuse to remove functionality that they want to keep exclusive to their products is so blatant it either is or should be illegal. No local access kills Google Cast competitors as well as things like this (Nearby Share competitor), Android SMS limitations nearly killed most Android Messenger competitors, removing clipboard access forced people to use one of 2 decent Android keyboards to get clipboard sync back (one of which is conveniently enough developed by Google)... I have not seen one single instance of Google killing some functionality for security that wouldn't have been easily implemented with permissions instead and that wasn't clearly designed to stomp out competition.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Thorrez 5y ago
>No local access Local access itself isn't killed, there are still some ways to do it. This Chrome post lists a number of options. I think the WebTransport and Reverse embedding options would both work for Portal. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/private-network-access-update/ https://developer.chrome.com/blog/private-network-access-upd... Full disclosure I work at Google, but not on Chrome or any of the other products you mentioned.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Any word on how long until the remaining ways to do it are removed? All Google APIs should include a call that tells you how long until the API stops working.
  - smoyer 5y ago
    Remember when all the Google products had a beta label on them (except search)? ... when you're designing software that interacts with Google, always imagine it has a beta tag and plan on what you'd do if the beta was abandoned. I personally miss what Wave could have been (better than Slack) and think the trajectory of GWT could have been dramatically better if Google had remained the primary developer. I'm now devoid of Google dependencies with one exception - the Go UUID library. Other implementations exist and it would be trivial to wrap one.
Noumenon72 5y ago
What's the other good keyboard? Since Swype went off the app store I have not been happy with Google keyboard at all. I want to be able to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V like I could with Swype.
- jiffygist 5y ago
  Try hacker's keyboard https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard
  - floatboth 5y ago
    https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard is currently the leading FOSS keyboard, even with swipe input (swipe is English only for now and not as good quality as the proprietary solutions, but it's the first step)
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    is there an equivalent of this for iOS?
bserge 5y ago
I still hate the inability of apps to write to SD cards. Just fucking my internal storage for no reason. Not sure how that helped Google, or security.
smoldesu 5y ago
> Google's insistence on using security as an excuse to remove functionality that they want to keep exclusive to their products is so blatant it either is or should be illegal. Apple got away with it, why can't Google?
Spivak 5y ago
I don't really know a good solution to the problem of "if platform vendor does something it doesn't naturally cross a security boundary but if 3rd party app or website does the same thing it would." Because we deal with this kind of stuff all the time in totally benign ways -- people aren't too upset that the kernel can do things that userspace processes can't and that certain privileged functionality has to be built-in. Chromecast isn't that magic. If you wanted to build a CC competitor you have to provide a browser extension or an app that uses native messaging which seems fine, it's the same as what Google themselves do. Google's advantage is that they get to be bundled with Chrome (heyooo Pocket). I think you could make a case that maybe it shouldn't be necessary and that a sandboxed webpage with local network access is better than an extension or native app that isn't sandboxed at all but tomato potato.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Thorrez 5y ago

>No local access Local access itself isn't killed, there are still some ways to do it. This Chrome post lists a number of options. I think the WebTransport and Reverse embedding options would both work for Portal. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/private-network-access-update/ https://developer.chrome.com/blog/private-network-access-upd... Full disclosure I work at Google, but not on Chrome or any of the other products you mentioned.

DonHopkins 5y ago
Any word on how long until the remaining ways to do it are removed? All Google APIs should include a call that tells you how long until the API stops working.
- smoyer 5y ago
  Remember when all the Google products had a beta label on them (except search)? ... when you're designing software that interacts with Google, always imagine it has a beta tag and plan on what you'd do if the beta was abandoned. I personally miss what Wave could have been (better than Slack) and think the trajectory of GWT could have been dramatically better if Google had remained the primary developer. I'm now devoid of Google dependencies with one exception - the Go UUID library. Other implementations exist and it would be trivial to wrap one.

Noumenon72 5y ago

What's the other good keyboard? Since Swype went off the app store I have not been happy with Google keyboard at all. I want to be able to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V like I could with Swype.

jiffygist 5y ago
Try hacker's keyboard https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard https://github.com/klausw/hackerskeyboard
- floatboth 5y ago
  https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard https://github.com/florisboard/florisboard is currently the leading FOSS keyboard, even with swipe input (swipe is English only for now and not as good quality as the proprietary solutions, but it's the first step)
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  is there an equivalent of this for iOS?

bserge 5y ago

I still hate the inability of apps to write to SD cards. Just fucking my internal storage for no reason. Not sure how that helped Google, or security.

smoldesu 5y ago

> Google's insistence on using security as an excuse to remove functionality that they want to keep exclusive to their products is so blatant it either is or should be illegal. Apple got away with it, why can't Google?

Spivak 5y ago

I don't really know a good solution to the problem of "if platform vendor does something it doesn't naturally cross a security boundary but if 3rd party app or website does the same thing it would." Because we deal with this kind of stuff all the time in totally benign ways -- people aren't too upset that the kernel can do things that userspace processes can't and that certain privileged functionality has to be built-in. Chromecast isn't that magic. If you wanted to build a CC competitor you have to provide a browser extension or an app that uses native messaging which seems fine, it's the same as what Google themselves do. Google's advantage is that they get to be bundled with Chrome (heyooo Pocket). I think you could make a case that maybe it shouldn't be necessary and that a sandboxed webpage with local network access is better than an extension or native app that isn't sandboxed at all but tomato potato.