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Google broke itself up in 2015. What are you even asking for here? Chrome and Android are open source, and there are several forks of both thriving in the ecos

by px43 3y ago

Google broke itself up in 2015. What are you even asking for here? Chrome and Android are open source, and there are several forks of both thriving in the ecosystem. Yeah it would be cool if there was a decent open source alternative to GMail and Drive, but no one else seems to have figured out how to get the incentives right for something like that.

troupo 3y ago
That "incentive" for Google is "80% of our revenue comes from ads". Google's open source projects are open in name only.
- px43 3y ago
  > Google's open source projects are open in name only. The link at the top of the page is pointing to the GitHub repo, where you can see literally over a million contributions from thousands of people working at hundreds of companies: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main I've worked on both Chrome and Android (Chromium and AOSP) professionally, and never worked at Google.
  - jsjohnst 3y ago
    You and GP both can be right depending on definition used for “open source”.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    There is the OSS vs FOSS distinction which may have been unwittingly invoked. Certainly there is nothing “free” about Chromium except its price. Google is not about to switch to a fork for Chrome and any changes to Chromium which are not approved by Google are unlikely to be in any release builds.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Well, true :) What I should've written is that: yes, they are open source, but there's no way to influence the direction they are going. These projects are 100% Google-run, and very few (if any) decisions are public. For most projects there's also a significant proprietary part in the actual final product
BlargMcLarg 3y ago
It's not the lack of open source, it's ease of use. Alternatives exist, but no company is going to run a charity case for you to store tons of data for free. Mail in particular is commonly known to be a hassle which has nothing to do with Gmail the software, as much as Gmail the provider.
alistairSH 3y ago
Google broke itself up in 2015. What are you even asking for here? No, it didn't, it restructured itself into Alphabet, with many subsidiaries. But, all the core businesses are still under that umbrella organization, with most web-related businesses remaining inside the current Google entity. A forced divestment of the browser business might help. Same for the productivity products.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  What browser “business”? Chrome makes no money. Don’t you think they are going to fund themselves the same way that Firefox does - via Google ads? No one has paid for a browser in almost 3 decades and even then few did.
  - jsjohnst 3y ago
    > No one has paid for a browser in almost 3 decades and even then few did. Considering NCSA Mosaic’s initial release was just 30 years ago this year and it’s considered the first browser, think you might be using a bit of hyperbole there? Twenty years would’ve been more accurate.
    - xp84 3y ago
      MSIE was free, 28 years ago in late 1995, and while Netscape did take 5 years to follow suit, by 1998 Netscape was not in a healthy position because of the free competition.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        And to a first approximation. No one paid for Netscape then. I first downloaded it free in 1996 from their ftp server.
    - bradleyy 3y ago
      As someone who worked in this space at the time (Webmaster at Spry, Inc. in 1994), and we sold a web browser in the 1994-ish timeframe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox, no, saying "almost 3 decades" isn't hyperbolic at all. 29 years is close enough.
goffer 3y ago
Say that to Huawei.

by px43 3y ago

troupo 3y ago

That "incentive" for Google is "80% of our revenue comes from ads". Google's open source projects are open in name only.

px43 3y ago
> Google's open source projects are open in name only. The link at the top of the page is pointing to the GitHub repo, where you can see literally over a million contributions from thousands of people working at hundreds of companies: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main I've worked on both Chrome and Android (Chromium and AOSP) professionally, and never worked at Google.
- jsjohnst 3y ago
  You and GP both can be right depending on definition used for “open source”.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  There is the OSS vs FOSS distinction which may have been unwittingly invoked. Certainly there is nothing “free” about Chromium except its price. Google is not about to switch to a fork for Chrome and any changes to Chromium which are not approved by Google are unlikely to be in any release builds.
- troupo 3y ago
  Well, true :) What I should've written is that: yes, they are open source, but there's no way to influence the direction they are going. These projects are 100% Google-run, and very few (if any) decisions are public. For most projects there's also a significant proprietary part in the actual final product

BlargMcLarg 3y ago

It's not the lack of open source, it's ease of use. Alternatives exist, but no company is going to run a charity case for you to store tons of data for free. Mail in particular is commonly known to be a hassle which has nothing to do with Gmail the software, as much as Gmail the provider.

alistairSH 3y ago

Google broke itself up in 2015. What are you even asking for here? No, it didn't, it restructured itself into Alphabet, with many subsidiaries. But, all the core businesses are still under that umbrella organization, with most web-related businesses remaining inside the current Google entity. A forced divestment of the browser business might help. Same for the productivity products.

scarface_74 3y ago
What browser “business”? Chrome makes no money. Don’t you think they are going to fund themselves the same way that Firefox does - via Google ads? No one has paid for a browser in almost 3 decades and even then few did.
- jsjohnst 3y ago
  > No one has paid for a browser in almost 3 decades and even then few did. Considering NCSA Mosaic’s initial release was just 30 years ago this year and it’s considered the first browser, think you might be using a bit of hyperbole there? Twenty years would’ve been more accurate.
  - xp84 3y ago
    MSIE was free, 28 years ago in late 1995, and while Netscape did take 5 years to follow suit, by 1998 Netscape was not in a healthy position because of the free competition.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      And to a first approximation. No one paid for Netscape then. I first downloaded it free in 1996 from their ftp server.
  - bradleyy 3y ago
    As someone who worked in this space at the time (Webmaster at Spry, Inc. in 1994), and we sold a web browser in the 1994-ish timeframe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox, no, saying "almost 3 decades" isn't hyperbolic at all. 29 years is close enough.

goffer 3y ago

Say that to Huawei.