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Your points are noted, and I agree with you. But I'm not convinced by Dianne's post. Big red flag is what on earth you need cloud for to provide a location serv

Your points are noted, and I agree with you. But I'm not convinced by Dianne's post. Big red flag is what on earth you need cloud for to provide a location service? And mail? An MTU is a client app by definition. Open implies supporting popular protocols - that hardly creates a dependency on Gmail. The biggest issue of all though is how most apps are virtually unusable without an internet connection. That, in the real world, happens a hell of a lot more often than people like Dianne care to realise. I call bullshit. Her post is as biased as the posts she's responding to.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
The reason you need tho cloud for location service is because you can save user time and battery by doing a lookup based on nearby wifi points, a database of which is stored in the cloud. Relevantly, Mozilla are trying to build an open one of these. https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2013/10/28/introducing-the-mozilla-location-service/ https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2013/10/28/introducing-the... Though privacy issues make it complicated for people to just download the data, rather than make a call to the cloud. Those who object to the whole idea of this will probably just have to accept slower lookups. I'm not sure what you're saying with your other points, I would have thought a GMail app would be expected to have a dependency on GMail. The Email app (which Ars claimed was abandoned, yet just got a overhaul) is there for communicating over popular protocols to non-Google services.
- Spearchucker 13y ago
  I use a normal (non-Gmail dependent) MTU for my Gmail. What user need does the Gmail-dependent MTU from Google fulfill that warrants that dependency? As far as I can tell, my non-Google MTU adds more functionality to GMail than GMail has. As for AGPS - great. But we already know that location services function quite well without it. Did you know that you can do AGPS and drastically reduce time to fix just by initializing a GPS receiver using your last known location? AGPS with a location obtained from a WiFi SSID (via a call to the cloud) is only faster when your last known location is drastically different to your current location (another state, or country). I won't believe that Google is incapable of designing a location API that's extensible. There's a non-technical reason, and that reason is in conflict with the openness Google likes to play up.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

The reason you need tho cloud for location service is because you can save user time and battery by doing a lookup based on nearby wifi points, a database of which is stored in the cloud. Relevantly, Mozilla are trying to build an open one of these. https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2013/10/28/introducing-the-mozilla-location-service/ https://blog.mozilla.org/services/2013/10/28/introducing-the... Though privacy issues make it complicated for people to just download the data, rather than make a call to the cloud. Those who object to the whole idea of this will probably just have to accept slower lookups. I'm not sure what you're saying with your other points, I would have thought a GMail app would be expected to have a dependency on GMail. The Email app (which Ars claimed was abandoned, yet just got a overhaul) is there for communicating over popular protocols to non-Google services.

Spearchucker 13y ago
I use a normal (non-Gmail dependent) MTU for my Gmail. What user need does the Gmail-dependent MTU from Google fulfill that warrants that dependency? As far as I can tell, my non-Google MTU adds more functionality to GMail than GMail has. As for AGPS - great. But we already know that location services function quite well without it. Did you know that you can do AGPS and drastically reduce time to fix just by initializing a GPS receiver using your last known location? AGPS with a location obtained from a WiFi SSID (via a call to the cloud) is only faster when your last known location is drastically different to your current location (another state, or country). I won't believe that Google is incapable of designing a location API that's extensible. There's a non-technical reason, and that reason is in conflict with the openness Google likes to play up.