8 ms·

> Google’s attorney didn’t contest any of this... pointing out, without saying explicitly, that an app at the scale of Netflix can afford to bypass the store an

> Google’s attorney didn’t contest any of this... pointing out, without saying explicitly, that an app at the scale of Netflix can afford to bypass the store and rely on a browser signup ie., Google's attorney confirms the app-store model is a predatory racket

pjmlp 3y ago
Either way Google wins, thanks to all devs that have helped to transform the Web into ChromeOS. Netflix Web app is best viewed on Chrome anyway. And Safari only matters exactly because of the store. The day Chrome is allowed to replace Safari, it is over.
- Mindwipe 3y ago
  > Netflix Web app is best viewed on Chrome anyway Literally no it isn't. It gets higher resolution content and HDR in Edge and Safari. (Although Netflix do not support browser access on mobile at all.)
- amelius 3y ago
  > thanks to all devs that have helped to transform the Web into ChromeOS. I can't believe how shortsighted most developers are. Don't build your castle in someone else's kingdom, etc. Because in the long run it hurts almost everybody and yourself included. This holds for the entire platform economy. If you think government regulation is bad, then wait until you see a market regulated by a platform owner.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    It feels like the computing industry is made up of an alliance of those who never had any IE6 experience, combined with those who spent the 90s and 00s deeply into the Microsoft ecosystem
    - ksec 3y ago
      I think this summarise everything that is wrong with discussions on the web/ twitter or HN. Without knowing their age and experience, a lot of these context are completely missing.
    - buffet_overflow 3y ago
      I try not to think too much about how I mostly can not and likely will not see 1080p and higher content from my Linux desktop due to (a lack of) Chrome and DRM
      - longitudinal93 3y ago
        Won't it display properly in VLC?
        notpushkin 3y ago
        And the offline watching works way better!
        jowea 3y ago
        How would VLC connect to Netflix? Unless you're implying piracy.
        ta1243 3y ago
        netflix was never mentioned
      - notpushkin 3y ago
        If you're willing to run a blob for DRM support, you can get it running in any Chromium flavour. (I would rather prefer torrents, though.) Related: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux – https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html
      - Mindwipe 3y ago
        Chrome for Linux is still 720p at best and I'd expect that to drop over time, not go up. Chrome isn't what's holding higher resolution Netflix back on Linux, it's the lack of a signed graphics driver by an authority that would revoke anything that didn't enforce the DRM and pushes the decryption to trusted hardware.
  - solardev 3y ago
    What do you suggest as an alternative? Writing only Linux apps? Chrome was to the web what Windows was to the desktop PC: It made writing mainstream apps with wide distribution practical. It's not like devs were held hostage. They saw an opportunity in this new platform and flocked to it because it was so good. Finally, a way to write an app and deliver it to users across devices, mostly unchanged. Write once (well, really more like 1.3x), run anywhere. Chrome was a huge improvement over IE and by-then-bloated Firefox, and Gmail and Google Maps and Google Docs good early demonstrators of what the Web could be (yes, they bought many of those, but that's not too relevant here). Web technologies were still an uncertain bet back in the day, competing against Java, ActiveX, Flash, and plain old PHP/Coldfusion/ASP apps, or even .NET and ClickOnce, etc. Chrome and V8 largely enabled the web and JS to slowly gain traction, alongside the growing ecosystem of JS libraries and frameworks. The future, then as now, wasn't "FOSS GNU/Linux against Google's web". It was big company against big company. Even now, if it wasn't for the Web and Android, we'd simply have iOS supremacy instead of Windows. Linux doesn't gain mainstream traction among normal users because its desktop experience is relatively poor, thanks to a historical focus on engineering prowess and ideology over end user UX. It only succeeds when big companies build on top of it and polish it a lot (Android, Steam Deck, Ubuntu, ChromeOS). That's not Google's fault, it's just what the Linux community prioritizes. Even today, it's amazing that the Web is still largely visible source of HTML and React. And it's contributed to by a bunch of companies, from Meta to Vercel to Cloudflare to Amazon to Oracle to to tens of thousands of small businesses and NPM contributors. This is already vastly more open than iOS and Android apps, at least until WASM closes everything off again. And though Google has definitively won the browser wars, Blink and Webkit are still far more similar than any other two platforms. It's easier to develop for two browsers than even two Linux distros / package managers. Is it shortsighted? I think it's just going where the users are. And the users are typically going to choose ease of use over strict ideology. This shit isn't their passion. They don't spend their days pondering the virtues and vices of operating systems and licenses. It's just a phone. And to most devs, it's just a platform. People are practical creatures. They'll use and write apps where other people are. Ideology will never be enough to change that. Usability and popularity might.
    - est31 3y ago
      > Blink and Webkit are still far more similar than any other two platforms. It's easier to develop for two browsers than even two Linux distros / package managers. Given the EU digital market's act, this will deteriorate very quickly.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Netflix Web app is best viewed on Chrome anyway. Wild claim.
  - jowea 3y ago
    I think that's true compared to Firefox on Linux at least.
    - andsoitis 3y ago
      Netflix supported browsers: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081 Netflix computer requirements for HTML5 player: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
      - jowea 3y ago
        I don't know why it doesn't work well in FF and I haven't tried troubleshooting it but I am not the only one who uses Chrome on Linux only for Netflix.
- politelemon 3y ago
  > And Safari only matters exactly because of the store. > The day Chrome is allowed to replace Safari, it is over. I keep seeing this rhetoric and it strikes me as missing the entire point. It tries to paint Safari as some kind of stalwart against the web's doom. It is part of the problem and perpetuates the very same problems we're accusing Chrome of. Two wrongs do not make a right here.
  - jchw 3y ago
    Indeed. And look at all of the good our saint Apple does for the open web: still can't use royalty-free codecs and support iPhone/iPad, still can't test Safari support without Apple devices (and trust me, you'll need to) and of course, WebGPU Shading Language.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      You don’t pay royalties for the most popular codecs until you are at massive scale.
      - jchw 3y ago
        My desire for royalty-free "open" codecs has nothing to do with that, though. I know it has a lot to do with why Google and Netflix care about royalty-free codecs, but it has nothing to do with why I do, or why I think they are very important to an open Internet. Case in point, consider Wikipedia.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        There is no such thing as an “open” codecs. There are open source implementations of patent encumbered codecs.
        jchw 3y ago
        Uh huh.
- lukeschlather 3y ago
  I have had zero problems with Netflix on Firefox, I've used it for years. The other streaming services are very clunky but they are also bad on Chrome.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Unfortunately Firefox is irrelevant now, it won't recover from 3% and going down. So it is a matter of luck if someone at Netflix still cares to test on it.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Yep, I just love viewing Netflix on the web when I don’t have an internet connection and I’m watching previously downloaded content…
lupire 3y ago
No, he said that the App Store provides marketing value.
danShumway 3y ago
> Google offered to make Netflix a “platform development partner” under a program it called “LRAP++”, See, it's not a corporate deal happening behind the scenes. Don't call it a sweetheart deal, it's just a program. It's just a general pricing tier that Google was spinning up. /s > “Netflix is the only one this is being offered to at this point,” the document continued. You know, one of those "programs" that we happen to offer to exactly one company and only if we think there's a chance they have the ability to walk away.
crazygringo 3y ago
No. For companies with massive cultural recognition and trust and product awareness (Netflix, Microsoft, Spotify, etc.), you don't need the app store for discovery or for security. (Although security is debatable -- e.g. recall the Sony rootkit scandal. I'm still not sure I'd trust a Sony app unless it was vetted by an app store and sandboxed.) But for 99.9% of the apps out there, this is not the case. The app store provides a lot of value in terms of discovery, security, and distribution. It doesn't do a perfect job, but that doesn't mean it's a "predatory racket".
- scarface_74 3y ago
  It’s not like well known companies like Google and Facebook convinced consumer to install supposedly internal certificates on their devices to track everything they did on their iPhones or that Zoom installed a backdoor web server on Macs.
- realusername 3y ago
  Nobody needs the appstore for discovery and security, security is done by the OS and the discovery is done by external channels, the store discovery is close to worthless anyways.
scarface_74 3y ago
Yes because retail stores never get paid by customers for special deals
xboxnolifes 3y ago
Google's attorney confirms what every business owner knows: Big players get bulk pricing.

pjmlp 3y ago

Either way Google wins, thanks to all devs that have helped to transform the Web into ChromeOS. Netflix Web app is best viewed on Chrome anyway. And Safari only matters exactly because of the store. The day Chrome is allowed to replace Safari, it is over.

Mindwipe 3y ago
> Netflix Web app is best viewed on Chrome anyway Literally no it isn't. It gets higher resolution content and HDR in Edge and Safari. (Although Netflix do not support browser access on mobile at all.)
amelius 3y ago
> thanks to all devs that have helped to transform the Web into ChromeOS. I can't believe how shortsighted most developers are. Don't build your castle in someone else's kingdom, etc. Because in the long run it hurts almost everybody and yourself included. This holds for the entire platform economy. If you think government regulation is bad, then wait until you see a market regulated by a platform owner.
- ta1243 3y ago
  It feels like the computing industry is made up of an alliance of those who never had any IE6 experience, combined with those who spent the 90s and 00s deeply into the Microsoft ecosystem
  - ksec 3y ago
    I think this summarise everything that is wrong with discussions on the web/ twitter or HN. Without knowing their age and experience, a lot of these context are completely missing.
  - buffet_overflow 3y ago
    I try not to think too much about how I mostly can not and likely will not see 1080p and higher content from my Linux desktop due to (a lack of) Chrome and DRM
    - longitudinal93 3y ago
      Won't it display properly in VLC?
      - notpushkin 3y ago
        And the offline watching works way better!
      - jowea 3y ago
        How would VLC connect to Netflix? Unless you're implying piracy.
        ta1243 3y ago
        netflix was never mentioned
    - notpushkin 3y ago
      If you're willing to run a blob for DRM support, you can get it running in any Chromium flavour. (I would rather prefer torrents, though.) Related: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux – https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html
    - Mindwipe 3y ago
      Chrome for Linux is still 720p at best and I'd expect that to drop over time, not go up. Chrome isn't what's holding higher resolution Netflix back on Linux, it's the lack of a signed graphics driver by an authority that would revoke anything that didn't enforce the DRM and pushes the decryption to trusted hardware.
- solardev 3y ago
  What do you suggest as an alternative? Writing only Linux apps? Chrome was to the web what Windows was to the desktop PC: It made writing mainstream apps with wide distribution practical. It's not like devs were held hostage. They saw an opportunity in this new platform and flocked to it because it was so good. Finally, a way to write an app and deliver it to users across devices, mostly unchanged. Write once (well, really more like 1.3x), run anywhere. Chrome was a huge improvement over IE and by-then-bloated Firefox, and Gmail and Google Maps and Google Docs good early demonstrators of what the Web could be (yes, they bought many of those, but that's not too relevant here). Web technologies were still an uncertain bet back in the day, competing against Java, ActiveX, Flash, and plain old PHP/Coldfusion/ASP apps, or even .NET and ClickOnce, etc. Chrome and V8 largely enabled the web and JS to slowly gain traction, alongside the growing ecosystem of JS libraries and frameworks. The future, then as now, wasn't "FOSS GNU/Linux against Google's web". It was big company against big company. Even now, if it wasn't for the Web and Android, we'd simply have iOS supremacy instead of Windows. Linux doesn't gain mainstream traction among normal users because its desktop experience is relatively poor, thanks to a historical focus on engineering prowess and ideology over end user UX. It only succeeds when big companies build on top of it and polish it a lot (Android, Steam Deck, Ubuntu, ChromeOS). That's not Google's fault, it's just what the Linux community prioritizes. Even today, it's amazing that the Web is still largely visible source of HTML and React. And it's contributed to by a bunch of companies, from Meta to Vercel to Cloudflare to Amazon to Oracle to to tens of thousands of small businesses and NPM contributors. This is already vastly more open than iOS and Android apps, at least until WASM closes everything off again. And though Google has definitively won the browser wars, Blink and Webkit are still far more similar than any other two platforms. It's easier to develop for two browsers than even two Linux distros / package managers. Is it shortsighted? I think it's just going where the users are. And the users are typically going to choose ease of use over strict ideology. This shit isn't their passion. They don't spend their days pondering the virtues and vices of operating systems and licenses. It's just a phone. And to most devs, it's just a platform. People are practical creatures. They'll use and write apps where other people are. Ideology will never be enough to change that. Usability and popularity might.
  - est31 3y ago
    > Blink and Webkit are still far more similar than any other two platforms. It's easier to develop for two browsers than even two Linux distros / package managers. Given the EU digital market's act, this will deteriorate very quickly.
andsoitis 3y ago
> Netflix Web app is best viewed on Chrome anyway. Wild claim.
- jowea 3y ago
  I think that's true compared to Firefox on Linux at least.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    Netflix supported browsers: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081 Netflix computer requirements for HTML5 player: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
    - jowea 3y ago
      I don't know why it doesn't work well in FF and I haven't tried troubleshooting it but I am not the only one who uses Chrome on Linux only for Netflix.
politelemon 3y ago
> And Safari only matters exactly because of the store. > The day Chrome is allowed to replace Safari, it is over. I keep seeing this rhetoric and it strikes me as missing the entire point. It tries to paint Safari as some kind of stalwart against the web's doom. It is part of the problem and perpetuates the very same problems we're accusing Chrome of. Two wrongs do not make a right here.
- jchw 3y ago
  Indeed. And look at all of the good our saint Apple does for the open web: still can't use royalty-free codecs and support iPhone/iPad, still can't test Safari support without Apple devices (and trust me, you'll need to) and of course, WebGPU Shading Language.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    You don’t pay royalties for the most popular codecs until you are at massive scale.
    - jchw 3y ago
      My desire for royalty-free "open" codecs has nothing to do with that, though. I know it has a lot to do with why Google and Netflix care about royalty-free codecs, but it has nothing to do with why I do, or why I think they are very important to an open Internet. Case in point, consider Wikipedia.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        There is no such thing as an “open” codecs. There are open source implementations of patent encumbered codecs.
        jchw 3y ago
        Uh huh.
lukeschlather 3y ago
I have had zero problems with Netflix on Firefox, I've used it for years. The other streaming services are very clunky but they are also bad on Chrome.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Unfortunately Firefox is irrelevant now, it won't recover from 3% and going down. So it is a matter of luck if someone at Netflix still cares to test on it.
scarface_74 3y ago
Yep, I just love viewing Netflix on the web when I don’t have an internet connection and I’m watching previously downloaded content…

lupire 3y ago

No, he said that the App Store provides marketing value.

danShumway 3y ago

> Google offered to make Netflix a “platform development partner” under a program it called “LRAP++”, See, it's not a corporate deal happening behind the scenes. Don't call it a sweetheart deal, it's just a program. It's just a general pricing tier that Google was spinning up. /s > “Netflix is the only one this is being offered to at this point,” the document continued. You know, one of those "programs" that we happen to offer to exactly one company and only if we think there's a chance they have the ability to walk away.

crazygringo 3y ago

No. For companies with massive cultural recognition and trust and product awareness (Netflix, Microsoft, Spotify, etc.), you don't need the app store for discovery or for security. (Although security is debatable -- e.g. recall the Sony rootkit scandal. I'm still not sure I'd trust a Sony app unless it was vetted by an app store and sandboxed.) But for 99.9% of the apps out there, this is not the case. The app store provides a lot of value in terms of discovery, security, and distribution. It doesn't do a perfect job, but that doesn't mean it's a "predatory racket".

scarface_74 3y ago
It’s not like well known companies like Google and Facebook convinced consumer to install supposedly internal certificates on their devices to track everything they did on their iPhones or that Zoom installed a backdoor web server on Macs.
realusername 3y ago
Nobody needs the appstore for discovery and security, security is done by the OS and the discovery is done by external channels, the store discovery is close to worthless anyways.

scarface_74 3y ago

Yes because retail stores never get paid by customers for special deals

xboxnolifes 3y ago

Google's attorney confirms what every business owner knows: Big players get bulk pricing.