4 ms·

exagerado.

duncan_bayne 13y ago
Nah, farsighted :) Seriously, you just wait. If you're a user on a commercial system you didn't pay for (Google, Facebook, etc.) then you're not a customer, you're cattle. Your value is directly proportional to how much the company running the system knows about you. I don't like where Facebook is going, and I think Google is following in their footsteps, albeit helped along by an excellent reputation for quality and fair play, especially amongst geeks. Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon, but I think Google is playing the same 'embrace and extend' card as Microsoft did back in the day, just for slightly different reasons.
- jmesserly 13y ago
  > Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon, but I think Google is playing the same 'embrace and extend' card as Microsoft did back in the day, just for slightly different reasons. I see this meme a lot, but I don't get it how the analogy is supposed to work. There is actual evidence that Microsoft in the 90's was trying to sabotage standard protocols and open source software, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents. The key part of "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy was extending the standard in proprietary ways, thus making it incompatible and no longer implementable via open source software, thus killing it. I don't get how any of this applies to any web company, where nearly the entire business is based on the web and the standards that back it. It's no wonder that many of these companies contribute back to the web standards and open source software. Sure, these contributions are in the company's interests--but that's the whole point. We reached a time when it's in interests of many big (and small) corporations to contribute to open source and standards (including Microsoft!). Some people see efforts to improve standards or contribute new ones as somehow bad, "embrace and extend". When actually it's the opposite: investing in the commons to promote its welfare. Obligatory disclaimer: speaking for myself here, not any employer past or present.
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    ... except where it isn't in their interests, which is why Google is trying to kill off RSS with a multi-pronged strategy (ignore RSS in Chromium, kill off RSS reader, don't offer an RSS feed in G+). If your platform is free-as-in-beer, you have to monetise your users to advertisers. You do this by learning more about them by keeping them within your ecosystem, not by allowing them access to your platform through open protocols. I see it as a fundamental conflict between users of a system (you and me) and the customers (advertisers). Google has made it clear which side of that equation they care about. See e.g. their support of DRM in HTML.
    - magicalist 13y ago
      Not only would that be a pretty poor multi-pronged strategy, it still has absolutely nothing to do with "embrace, extend, and extinguish", as the parent pointed out. And, seriously, "ignore RSS in Chromium" is now kowtowing to advertisers? How about the lack of gopher support[1]? And no built in bittorrent client[2]?? I'm starting to agree with others that you have a point somewhere in here but you're missing it over anger about Reader. [1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11345 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11345 [2] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=182399 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=182399
      - duncan_bayne 13y ago
        Not exactly embrace and extend like MS did it, but similar in spirit: take an open protocol, embrace it for a while, gradually weaken it over time in favour of a parallel closed system, then once everyone is happily using it, kill it dead and watch the migration into the closed system. If I had to guess, I'd say that torrent support was nixed for fear of offending Big Content; Opera has already showed that it's reasonable for a browser to support it. Also there's already a plugin for that protocol, so it may just be a low priority for the team. Odd that they flagged the request 'invalid' though. (Please stop telling me that I'm angry about Reader. It's not that I'm angry: I've identified what I think is a pattern in Google's behaviour, figured out what their end goal is, and it troubles me. So I'm abandoning their platform to the greatest extent practical.)
- mtgx 13y ago
  99% of websites make money from ads. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Imagine if everyone even asked for $1 per month to sustain themselves. That would be unfeasible. Ads are here to stay.
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    And that's 100% alright for many things. But important infrastructure like email and contacts? I'm not so sure any more.

exagerado.

Nah, farsighted :) Seriously, you just wait. If you're a user on a commercial system you didn't pay for (Google, Facebook, etc.) then you're not a customer, you're cattle. Your value is directly proportional to how much the company running the system knows about you. I don't like where Facebook is going, and I think Google is following in their footsteps, albeit helped along by an excellent reputation for quality and fair play, especially amongst geeks. Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon, but I think Google is playing the same 'embrace and extend' card as Microsoft did back in the day, just for slightly different reasons.

jmesserly 13y ago
> Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon, but I think Google is playing the same 'embrace and extend' card as Microsoft did back in the day, just for slightly different reasons. I see this meme a lot, but I don't get it how the analogy is supposed to work. There is actual evidence that Microsoft in the 90's was trying to sabotage standard protocols and open source software, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents. The key part of "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy was extending the standard in proprietary ways, thus making it incompatible and no longer implementable via open source software, thus killing it. I don't get how any of this applies to any web company, where nearly the entire business is based on the web and the standards that back it. It's no wonder that many of these companies contribute back to the web standards and open source software. Sure, these contributions are in the company's interests--but that's the whole point. We reached a time when it's in interests of many big (and small) corporations to contribute to open source and standards (including Microsoft!). Some people see efforts to improve standards or contribute new ones as somehow bad, "embrace and extend". When actually it's the opposite: investing in the commons to promote its welfare. Obligatory disclaimer: speaking for myself here, not any employer past or present.
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  ... except where it isn't in their interests, which is why Google is trying to kill off RSS with a multi-pronged strategy (ignore RSS in Chromium, kill off RSS reader, don't offer an RSS feed in G+). If your platform is free-as-in-beer, you have to monetise your users to advertisers. You do this by learning more about them by keeping them within your ecosystem, not by allowing them access to your platform through open protocols. I see it as a fundamental conflict between users of a system (you and me) and the customers (advertisers). Google has made it clear which side of that equation they care about. See e.g. their support of DRM in HTML.
  - magicalist 13y ago
    Not only would that be a pretty poor multi-pronged strategy, it still has absolutely nothing to do with "embrace, extend, and extinguish", as the parent pointed out. And, seriously, "ignore RSS in Chromium" is now kowtowing to advertisers? How about the lack of gopher support[1]? And no built in bittorrent client[2]?? I'm starting to agree with others that you have a point somewhere in here but you're missing it over anger about Reader. [1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11345 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11345 [2] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=182399 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=182399
    - duncan_bayne 13y ago
      Not exactly embrace and extend like MS did it, but similar in spirit: take an open protocol, embrace it for a while, gradually weaken it over time in favour of a parallel closed system, then once everyone is happily using it, kill it dead and watch the migration into the closed system. If I had to guess, I'd say that torrent support was nixed for fear of offending Big Content; Opera has already showed that it's reasonable for a browser to support it. Also there's already a plugin for that protocol, so it may just be a low priority for the team. Odd that they flagged the request 'invalid' though. (Please stop telling me that I'm angry about Reader. It's not that I'm angry: I've identified what I think is a pattern in Google's behaviour, figured out what their end goal is, and it troubles me. So I'm abandoning their platform to the greatest extent practical.)
mtgx 13y ago
99% of websites make money from ads. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Imagine if everyone even asked for $1 per month to sustain themselves. That would be unfeasible. Ads are here to stay.
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  And that's 100% alright for many things. But important infrastructure like email and contacts? I'm not so sure any more.