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Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Chrome or on these APIs. I think the explanation is quite mundane. An example usage: open google meet, start an empty
by _9yre 2y ago
Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on Chrome or on these APIs.
I think the explanation is quite mundane. An example usage: open google meet, start an empty meeting (an “instant meeting”), click the “…” menu, click “troubleshooting and help”.
There’ll be plots of various stats, including CPU utilization. I think meet will also helpfully suggest closing tabs if your machine is overloaded during a meet call, too.
It’s very helpful, I check it from time to time.
Edit: now that I think about it, I’m not sure about the suggestion to close tabs is actually a thing. I’ve only actually used the stats view.
- trickstra 2y agoSo helpful that no other website and no other browser can use it?
- john-n 2y agoI believe this is the point, rather than being mundane. Other video conference tools are not able to offer this debugging option - which you have pointed out is useful.
- tantalor 2y agoThe user could easily install an extension that provides the same debugging capability. Most users don't care, so they won't need it.
- elicksaur 2y agoDefaults are powerful.
- lucacasonato 2y agolike 90% of the DMA is just this haha
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoThen why did Google build it into the browser?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 3D30497420 2y agoAre features like this available to other websites outside of Google? Say, could Zoom also add a feature like this?
- RIMR 2y agoA level playing field for competition? This is Google we're talking about.
- SirMaster 2y agoIf Zoom makes a chrome extension, then yes.
- lwansbrough 2y agoWill the Zoom extension also be installed by default?
- ikiris 2y agoDo you want every person in the world to run a line to your house, or do you want to have 1, and use that service to talk to them?
- lucacasonato 2y agoExcept that is not what Google is doing. They have exclusive access to the one line that is preinstalled for all houses. Only they can use it. And if you want a different provider, you can't use that same line. You have to pay for the installation of a line from that provider with your own cash.
- SirMaster 2y agoHuh, Chrome doesn't come preinstalled unless you are talking about ChromeOS. I guess I just don't see the problem in a feature like this in a third party browser software that is completely optional to install and use and has lots of alternatives.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jhdifdhsak 2y agoif we are guessing I would drawn my guess from the hyper controlled access to android play services, which do much more than what you are guessing. my guess would also include some nifty debug info from FLoC ;)
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago[flagged]
- ascorbic 2y agoThis isn't a mundane explanation though: this is exactly the example Luca gives in the original thread. It's anti-competitive, because it's functionality only available to Google Meet. Google is using its browser monopoly to advantage its other products.
- danielmarkbruce 2y agoThey are just trying to make their products better. Anti competitive behavior is generally perceived to be about doing things that put the company in question in a better position without improving the product. Ask yourself the question - are customers better or worse off because of this?
- sbergot 2y agoOther companies are also trying to make their product better. If other products are not able to compete this can become a problem for the users.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kelnos 2y agoYou think that's the actual point? You cannot be serious.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
- RIMR 2y agoVery cool that Google built an anticompetitive browser that offers such useful features only to themselves. Very cool of you as a Google employee to say the quiet part out loud for us.
- danielmarkbruce 2y agoAre customers better off or worse off?
- trickstra 2y agoWorse, by having less alternatives to choose from. This is why anti-monopoly laws exist.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AlexandrB 2y agoWorse off. I have to use Meet for work, and I'm forced to run Chrome for Google's shitty software to run acceptably. Edit: And for some reason I have a Chrome profile even though I never created one and never "logged into" Chrome. Another thing that's been forced on me by Google's product team.
- Quarrel 2y agoMeet works in non-chromium browsers, so .. forced?
- karaterobot 2y agoTrying to be generous, the only reason I can think for why customers would be worse off is that Google is literally the only one who can be trusted with this kind of power. Not Zoom, not Microsoft, not the user whose data is being transmitted, etc. But even that does not explain why the existence of the API was not disclosed. Do you agree that that looks bad for them? Then there is the fact that Google is far from being a company people trust. They should be rushing to be transparent about their decision, if there is a good, persuasive reason for it. They could use the good press. Instead, they made a secret API that can read privileged system information, locked it so that nobody else could use it, and then never told anybody about it—all while claiming to be secure, and privacy-focused, and definitely not abusing their browser monopoly.
- miki123211 2y ago> I think the explanation is quite mundane > There’ll be plots of various stats, including CPU utilization. I think meet will also helpfully suggest closing tabs if your machine is overloaded This is not mundane at all, it's a perfect example of giving your product an unfair competitive advantage. If Meet users are told why their meeting isn't working correctly but Zoom, Teams and Slack, Meet users are going to have a better experience that Zoom, Teams or Slack has no way of replicating. No wonder every other meeting provider pushes you aggressively into using their desktop app, Google Meet's desktop app is just Chrome!
- trealira 2y ago> If Meet users are told why their meeting isn't working correctly but Zoom, Teams and Slack, Meet users are going to have a better experience that Zoom, Teams or Slack has no way of replicating. I had to re-read this a few times; did you accidentally omit a word? > If Meet users are told why their meeting isn't working correctly but Zoom, Teams and Slack aren't, Meet users are going to have a better experience that Zoom, Teams or Slack has no way of replicating. I fully agree with you, though; it's anticompetitive for them to use Chrome to give their other products an advantage.
- hot_gril 2y agoAt least other video conferencing tools don't lag like Meet, so users don't need to debug ;) I think this has to do with all of them using H.264 while Meet uses VP8/9.
- 2y ago
- vundercind 2y agoOh wow. This explanation was the first I read of what this actually does (yeah, yeah, I didn’t read the linked article first) and that’s a lot worse than I expected.
- tamimio 2y agoAnd they do the same thing with YouTube by slowing down the initial load in other browsers. Google is evil, and this is the least of it.
- justanotheratom 2y ago"don't be evil"
- ziml77 2y ago[flagged]
- shakna 2y agoChanging Firefox's UserAgent to Chrome's, results in a speed-up. Because when the useragent isn't Chrome, YouTube checks for feature availability, whilst on Chrome, they just assume it is all there.
- ziml77 2y agoThanks for giving me a specific example. At this point in the evolution of web standards and their implementations, that kind of UA check is stupid enough that I can believe there is at least some level of intent to not also making assumptions about available features on other browsers.
- lucacasonato 2y agoI agree it is very useful! This is also how I discovered this in the first place. But that is not at all my point. The point is that google.com web properties have access to an API and a browser capability that is not available to it's competitors. Google only allows reading CPU info for itself. The reason the data is not available for everyone, is because it would be a huge tracking vector. Same reason we don't allow webpages to read the device hostname, or username, or Chrome profile name. Google exposes this to google.com because it trusts itself. That poses this antitrust issue though.
- not2b 2y agoYou have a competitor, Zoom. They have an in-browser version. Can they use this API for troubleshooting performance issues? No? The European regulators might be interested in that. Perhaps this is one reason why Meet performs well in the browser and Zoom doesn't, meaning Zoom users use the native app if they want reasonable performance (particularly with many people in the meeting).
- paledot 2y agoMind you, Zoom does everything in their power to steer users away from their web client and toward their ~~malware~~ desktop client, so I don't think they're too upset about the status quo.
- micw 2y agoAre there any sources that the zoom desktop client is malware?
- account42 2y agohttps://infosecwriteups.com/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-maybe-an-rce-just-get-them-to-visit-your-website-ac75c83f4ef5 https://infosecwriteups.com/zoom-zero-day-4-million-webcams-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20387298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20387298
- not2b 2y agoThis is a link to a five year old issue, when Zoom was a much smaller operation and their quality was far worse than it is now. They implemented a convenience feature in an incredibly stupid and insure way, in 2019. Do you have any evidence that the current Zoom client is "malware"?
- FateOfNations 2y agoApparently, this system statistics API is generally available to extension developers. The underlying issue is that they bundle a hidden "Hangouts Service Extension" with Chrome. Zoom, Teams, etc. would have access to this API through a Chrome extension, although they wouldn't have the advantage of having that extension pre-installed.
- oldkinglog 2y agoMonopoly leveraging is illegal, not mundane.
- creatonez 2y agoThe monopolists' first step towards unfairly dominating a market always seems pretty mundane.
- heavyset_go 2y agoLooking forward to seeing this comment in discovery
- beefnugs 2y agoYeah a whole lot of things really do seem mundane... once you have already accepted the fact you are tracked down to the cpu-percentage-usage-in-time level