11 ms·

Google 'discourages' users of old browsers

81 points by shazzy 12y ago

dblotsky 12y ago
I may be misinterpreting the article, but isn't that just graceful degradation?
- kijin 12y ago
  Except the degradation isn't particularly "graceful". Google just seems to be sniffing the user agent and sending different content.
  - cromwellian 12y ago
    Capability checks and run-time tests can only go so far. You end up with a bewildering array of code path fallbacks and polyfills that massively complicates the readability and maintainability of such apps. I realize web developers think it's kind of marvelous and cool and philosophically pure to serve one page that scales from Netscape 1.0 all the way up to today's bleeding edge mobile browsers, but realistically, it is better to focus team resources on different tiers of functionality and in effect, write two or more difference pages optimizes for different scenarios.
- leexedeX 12y ago
  Considering that all the features in the regular version still work (at least in Opera 12), it really isn't. I'd rather be able to still use the old browser, with the understanding that features might break, instead of Google intentionally breaking features.
awjr 12y ago
I know it's wrong, but I'd be happy if they just refused to provide any services unless you had an up to date browser or any interaction would immediately take the user to the what browser site http://whatbrowser.org/ http://whatbrowser.org/
growse 12y ago
I'm on the latest chrome (v37) on Ubuntu, and I'm getting ye olde schoole Google for omnibar searches. If I hit google.com and then type a search in the page, I get the current Google layout. Weird.
- chrisfosterelli 12y ago
  I'm on Chromium 36 on Ubuntu, and see the current Google layout through omnibar searches.
userbinator 12y ago
Google has started showing old versions of its search page to people using out-of-date versions of some web browsers. On the other hand, many of the people using older versions of browsers would probably be the same ones who don't like the changes Google's made to its pages. As someone who regularly uses various browsers (including text-based), I have a very strong opinion on this: I've noticed the "you must use browser X, Y, or Z" trend become more prevalent over the years, and I think it's against the basic premise of the Internet to be an accessible source of information to all. Users should be free to use whatever browser they want, on whatever hardware they want, with the understanding that some sites may use features their browsers don't support. Most sites on the Internet are still primarily sources of information, and it's rather disconcerting to see "appification" turning easily accessible pages containing text and images into complex behemoths that only work in the latest browsers from the big vendors. I know there is a certain allure to using the "latest technologies" for many developers, but if it needlessly excludes some others, there's a marginalising, discriminatory element to it that I just can't agree with. She added: "We're continually making improvements to Search, so we can only provide limited support for some outdated browsers." It would help if she pointed out the particular "improvements" and what features they need.
- jasonisalive 12y ago
  I disagree. The marginalising, discriminatory effects of web developers using the state of the art is critical to moving web technology forward as quickly as possible. By penalising users who use antiquated browsers or computing devices, it helps create pressure and demand for: a) more affordable modern computing devices b) more intelligent auto-updating browsing software c) more educated and engaged consumers Mollycoddling stragglers only hurts everybody in the long run.
  - nirvdrum 12y ago
    Then let's just dispense with the silly idea of having open standards. The idea was to allow graceful degradation. But if you're just going to block out people, just dump the baggage of HTML and CSS and truly move everything forward. I'm not really sure how the rest of your points follow, however. Modern browser features have led to higher battery consumption on the whole. The number of sites that can peg a CPU core is staggering (and naturally terrible for batter life). The motivating factor for auto-updating browsers is to deal with security matters, not jamming features consumers aren't really asking for down the pipe. No one really needs drop shadows badly enough to risk instability every 6 weeks. And I'm not sure how constantly trying to get people to download Chrome makes them either more educated or engaged. It strikes me to be the opposite. I'd like to mention that there's a whole class of HTTP clients that aren't end user browsers that get impacted by this sort of thing. It kinda sucks having to fire up a hefty PhantomJS or SlimerJS process because the standard HTTP clients for whatever language of choice can't do anything meaningful with certain sites any longer.
afafsd 12y ago
I'm using Firefox 3.5, and a helluva lot of stuff doesn't work properly any more. For instance, I notice that reddit broke a few weeks ago and I can no longer vote or comment. Why? I have no idea. "Why don't you just get a new browser?" you might ask. Because new versions of browsers don't work on OS 10.4. "So why don't you upgrade your OS?" Because as far as I can tell, no upgraded OS that will work on this machine is still available. There's no upgrade path from here to there. OS 10.6 would run on this machine, and OS 10.6 would run the latest Chrome, but you can't get OS 10.6 any more. So I'm stuck in a bind, with no other option than to throw this (perfectly good) machine out completely. I do have a newer machine, but I keep it in the office, and this one ought to be capable of doing everything I want from it, but web devs keep breaking things that used to work fine.
- Chronic29 12y ago
  Then run a VM? There are plenty of alternatives available.
- DieBuche 12y ago
  Buy a used copy of 10.6 on ebay or just simply download it somewhere.
  - dmm 12y ago
    He's describing a powerpc mac that literally cannot run anything newer than 10.4
- bane 12y ago
  I'm in a similar boat with an older 2006 era MBP. It runs fine, and I'd just love to use it to watch movies or whatever. But I'm stuck in a similar "can't upgrade" mill, and the machine is too old to be useful for much else. So it just sits and collects dust. Strangely my Windows machines from the same era (and earlier) aren't caught in the same pile of issues. They're still running XP, but pretty much everything still more or less works on XP (at least things the machines are physically capable of running). I've toyed around with installing Win 7 on them, but really, what's the point? There's nothing I can't really do with those machines that's within their processor profiles.
millstone 12y ago
Riiiight. "Old browsers." Which "old version" of Chrome do you think is affected? Google has already proven their willingness to degrade their search experience for non-Chrome browsers, by splashing a Chrome banner ad on the Google search home page[1]. This is about capturing more marketshare for Chrome, pure and simple. Eventually "old browsers" will be replaced by "browsers we don't care to support" will be replaced by "browsers that aren't Chrome." In the end, there's a possibility that Google's client software will be required to access Google's services. Do you think that's farfetched? That Google is committed to browser diversity on the web? Then look at their vision for the desktop: Chromebooks, which do not support installing any web browser that's not Chrome. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-chrome-home-page/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-chro... and http://timothycope.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/05292014001.png http://timothycope.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/0529201400...
- SEMW 12y ago
  > Riiiight. "Old browsers." Which "old version" of Chrome do you think is affected? Not sure about search, but for gapps, Google's chrome versions support is the least generous of any browser. They only support the latest version (as opposed to the two most recent versions of other browsers). Effectively they only support chrome with autoupdate enabled. (Which presumably they feel they can do because they have the most aggressive - but also most smooth/invisible - autoupdate of any major browser).
- 1971genocide 12y ago
  Google has done amazing stuff for the web, so has microsoft, IBM,etc before it. The trick is to not give any one company a lot of power and diversify the power among many corporations etc. Google is still the most innovative company out there but lets hope we realize the time when they will need to step-aside and let other more innovative companies take its place.
  - nfoz 12y ago
    Genuinely curious, what "amazing stuff" have Microsoft and IBM done for the web?
dpweb 12y ago
Old == not Chrome?
weilu 12y ago
As a web dev, I'm very well aware of the pain of supporting old browsers. I appreciate what Google did for that very selfish reason. Google provide a "free" service ("free" as in they don't directly charge you for it, they show you ads and have advertisers pay for it instead). Users sure have the freedom to use browsers of their choice and search engines of their choice, so is Google entitled to similar kind of freedom -- they are free to set their own house rules, whether that's "old homepage for old browsers" or "special homepage for chrome". As a user of such a "free" service either you suck it up or leave. Bitching about something like this is like getting a free lunch and complaining there's not enough salt, imho.
diminish 12y ago
Do they really discourage the stock browser in many Android 2.x devices? I have one, and I don't see anything, anyway I can't update it neither.
butterfly14 12y ago
<sarcasm>This is great news! Now all I have to do is not update my browser any more and I won't have to deal with the mess of google, facebook etc. changing their UI every so often and making me search for the new locations of the links to the features I use frequently.</sarcasm> More seriously, I have set my "google" bookmark to google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en because I LIKE the old style better and don't want instant/autocomplete.
- dmitri145 12y ago
  Any source of how to get back other removed Google features? :)
josteink 12y ago
'Discourages' eh? I think a quote from Iain M. Bank's culture-series is in place here: "You might call them soft, and they might agree with you, but they're soft like the ocean is soft, and any sailor will tell you how harmless the Ocean is." Google is just being 'soft' on non-Chrome browsers here.
thomasfoster96 12y ago
While I do respect Google wanting to move forward and bring along newer features that need newer technology, is it really too much to ask for simple fallbacks for browsers that are otherwise still supported by their vendors? Safari 5.1 is pretty old, but it's no IE8. It supports enough HTML5 and CSS3 features to make me think that Google's just being a bit cheeky to non-Chrome older browser users in user-agent sniffing and then not providing a current search page with fallbacks. By the way, are versions of Chrome at about the same age of these other browsers also being affected?
- acdha 12y ago
  How many security fixes have you backported to Safari 5.1? A lot of Google's upgrade obsession is driven by the fact that they have a LOT of other people's data which is under constant attack.
  - thomasfoster96 12y ago
    Browser security issues shouldn't mean that functionality is suddenly thrown back 12 months for certain browsers, rather Google could simply display a banner urging them to update if it's an issue for them. Arguably simpler and makes a bit more sense.
    - acdha 12y ago
      The question is which browsers you invest your time and money supporting. If the vendor doesn't support a browser, it becomes increasingly hard to justify investing your resources on it and a single block-list makes everything consistent.
wldlyinaccurate 12y ago
Annoyingly, Google seems to consider my installation of Chrome 37 on Ubuntu 14.04 an "old" browser, so I now get an outdated version of Google.
dredmorbius 12y ago
No problems with old browsers on DDG Though I'm fond of https://duckduckgo.com/lite https://duckduckgo.com/lite for my w3m sessions.
squidmccactus 12y ago
Which companies are discouraging old browser users again? That sounds like ageism.

81 points by shazzy 12y ago

dblotsky 12y ago

I may be misinterpreting the article, but isn't that just graceful degradation?

kijin 12y ago
Except the degradation isn't particularly "graceful". Google just seems to be sniffing the user agent and sending different content.
- cromwellian 12y ago
  Capability checks and run-time tests can only go so far. You end up with a bewildering array of code path fallbacks and polyfills that massively complicates the readability and maintainability of such apps. I realize web developers think it's kind of marvelous and cool and philosophically pure to serve one page that scales from Netscape 1.0 all the way up to today's bleeding edge mobile browsers, but realistically, it is better to focus team resources on different tiers of functionality and in effect, write two or more difference pages optimizes for different scenarios.
leexedeX 12y ago
Considering that all the features in the regular version still work (at least in Opera 12), it really isn't. I'd rather be able to still use the old browser, with the understanding that features might break, instead of Google intentionally breaking features.

awjr 12y ago

I know it's wrong, but I'd be happy if they just refused to provide any services unless you had an up to date browser or any interaction would immediately take the user to the what browser site http://whatbrowser.org/ http://whatbrowser.org/

growse 12y ago

I'm on the latest chrome (v37) on Ubuntu, and I'm getting ye olde schoole Google for omnibar searches. If I hit google.com and then type a search in the page, I get the current Google layout. Weird.

chrisfosterelli 12y ago
I'm on Chromium 36 on Ubuntu, and see the current Google layout through omnibar searches.

userbinator 12y ago

Google has started showing old versions of its search page to people using out-of-date versions of some web browsers. On the other hand, many of the people using older versions of browsers would probably be the same ones who don't like the changes Google's made to its pages. As someone who regularly uses various browsers (including text-based), I have a very strong opinion on this: I've noticed the "you must use browser X, Y, or Z" trend become more prevalent over the years, and I think it's against the basic premise of the Internet to be an accessible source of information to all. Users should be free to use whatever browser they want, on whatever hardware they want, with the understanding that some sites may use features their browsers don't support. Most sites on the Internet are still primarily sources of information, and it's rather disconcerting to see "appification" turning easily accessible pages containing text and images into complex behemoths that only work in the latest browsers from the big vendors. I know there is a certain allure to using the "latest technologies" for many developers, but if it needlessly excludes some others, there's a marginalising, discriminatory element to it that I just can't agree with. She added: "We're continually making improvements to Search, so we can only provide limited support for some outdated browsers." It would help if she pointed out the particular "improvements" and what features they need.

jasonisalive 12y ago
I disagree. The marginalising, discriminatory effects of web developers using the state of the art is critical to moving web technology forward as quickly as possible. By penalising users who use antiquated browsers or computing devices, it helps create pressure and demand for: a) more affordable modern computing devices b) more intelligent auto-updating browsing software c) more educated and engaged consumers Mollycoddling stragglers only hurts everybody in the long run.
- nirvdrum 12y ago
  Then let's just dispense with the silly idea of having open standards. The idea was to allow graceful degradation. But if you're just going to block out people, just dump the baggage of HTML and CSS and truly move everything forward. I'm not really sure how the rest of your points follow, however. Modern browser features have led to higher battery consumption on the whole. The number of sites that can peg a CPU core is staggering (and naturally terrible for batter life). The motivating factor for auto-updating browsers is to deal with security matters, not jamming features consumers aren't really asking for down the pipe. No one really needs drop shadows badly enough to risk instability every 6 weeks. And I'm not sure how constantly trying to get people to download Chrome makes them either more educated or engaged. It strikes me to be the opposite. I'd like to mention that there's a whole class of HTTP clients that aren't end user browsers that get impacted by this sort of thing. It kinda sucks having to fire up a hefty PhantomJS or SlimerJS process because the standard HTTP clients for whatever language of choice can't do anything meaningful with certain sites any longer.

afafsd 12y ago

I'm using Firefox 3.5, and a helluva lot of stuff doesn't work properly any more. For instance, I notice that reddit broke a few weeks ago and I can no longer vote or comment. Why? I have no idea. "Why don't you just get a new browser?" you might ask. Because new versions of browsers don't work on OS 10.4. "So why don't you upgrade your OS?" Because as far as I can tell, no upgraded OS that will work on this machine is still available. There's no upgrade path from here to there. OS 10.6 would run on this machine, and OS 10.6 would run the latest Chrome, but you can't get OS 10.6 any more. So I'm stuck in a bind, with no other option than to throw this (perfectly good) machine out completely. I do have a newer machine, but I keep it in the office, and this one ought to be capable of doing everything I want from it, but web devs keep breaking things that used to work fine.

Chronic29 12y ago
Then run a VM? There are plenty of alternatives available.
DieBuche 12y ago
Buy a used copy of 10.6 on ebay or just simply download it somewhere.
- dmm 12y ago
  He's describing a powerpc mac that literally cannot run anything newer than 10.4
bane 12y ago
I'm in a similar boat with an older 2006 era MBP. It runs fine, and I'd just love to use it to watch movies or whatever. But I'm stuck in a similar "can't upgrade" mill, and the machine is too old to be useful for much else. So it just sits and collects dust. Strangely my Windows machines from the same era (and earlier) aren't caught in the same pile of issues. They're still running XP, but pretty much everything still more or less works on XP (at least things the machines are physically capable of running). I've toyed around with installing Win 7 on them, but really, what's the point? There's nothing I can't really do with those machines that's within their processor profiles.

millstone 12y ago

Riiiight. "Old browsers." Which "old version" of Chrome do you think is affected? Google has already proven their willingness to degrade their search experience for non-Chrome browsers, by splashing a Chrome banner ad on the Google search home page[1]. This is about capturing more marketshare for Chrome, pure and simple. Eventually "old browsers" will be replaced by "browsers we don't care to support" will be replaced by "browsers that aren't Chrome." In the end, there's a possibility that Google's client software will be required to access Google's services. Do you think that's farfetched? That Google is committed to browser diversity on the web? Then look at their vision for the desktop: Chromebooks, which do not support installing any web browser that's not Chrome. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-chrome-home-page/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-chro... and http://timothycope.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/05292014001.png http://timothycope.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/0529201400...

SEMW 12y ago
> Riiiight. "Old browsers." Which "old version" of Chrome do you think is affected? Not sure about search, but for gapps, Google's chrome versions support is the least generous of any browser. They only support the latest version (as opposed to the two most recent versions of other browsers). Effectively they only support chrome with autoupdate enabled. (Which presumably they feel they can do because they have the most aggressive - but also most smooth/invisible - autoupdate of any major browser).
1971genocide 12y ago
Google has done amazing stuff for the web, so has microsoft, IBM,etc before it. The trick is to not give any one company a lot of power and diversify the power among many corporations etc. Google is still the most innovative company out there but lets hope we realize the time when they will need to step-aside and let other more innovative companies take its place.
- nfoz 12y ago
  Genuinely curious, what "amazing stuff" have Microsoft and IBM done for the web?

dpweb 12y ago

Old == not Chrome?

weilu 12y ago

As a web dev, I'm very well aware of the pain of supporting old browsers. I appreciate what Google did for that very selfish reason. Google provide a "free" service ("free" as in they don't directly charge you for it, they show you ads and have advertisers pay for it instead). Users sure have the freedom to use browsers of their choice and search engines of their choice, so is Google entitled to similar kind of freedom -- they are free to set their own house rules, whether that's "old homepage for old browsers" or "special homepage for chrome". As a user of such a "free" service either you suck it up or leave. Bitching about something like this is like getting a free lunch and complaining there's not enough salt, imho.

diminish 12y ago

Do they really discourage the stock browser in many Android 2.x devices? I have one, and I don't see anything, anyway I can't update it neither.

butterfly14 12y ago

<sarcasm>This is great news! Now all I have to do is not update my browser any more and I won't have to deal with the mess of google, facebook etc. changing their UI every so often and making me search for the new locations of the links to the features I use frequently.</sarcasm> More seriously, I have set my "google" bookmark to google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en because I LIKE the old style better and don't want instant/autocomplete.

dmitri145 12y ago
Any source of how to get back other removed Google features? :)

josteink 12y ago

'Discourages' eh? I think a quote from Iain M. Bank's culture-series is in place here: "You might call them soft, and they might agree with you, but they're soft like the ocean is soft, and any sailor will tell you how harmless the Ocean is." Google is just being 'soft' on non-Chrome browsers here.

thomasfoster96 12y ago

While I do respect Google wanting to move forward and bring along newer features that need newer technology, is it really too much to ask for simple fallbacks for browsers that are otherwise still supported by their vendors? Safari 5.1 is pretty old, but it's no IE8. It supports enough HTML5 and CSS3 features to make me think that Google's just being a bit cheeky to non-Chrome older browser users in user-agent sniffing and then not providing a current search page with fallbacks. By the way, are versions of Chrome at about the same age of these other browsers also being affected?

acdha 12y ago
How many security fixes have you backported to Safari 5.1? A lot of Google's upgrade obsession is driven by the fact that they have a LOT of other people's data which is under constant attack.
- thomasfoster96 12y ago
  Browser security issues shouldn't mean that functionality is suddenly thrown back 12 months for certain browsers, rather Google could simply display a banner urging them to update if it's an issue for them. Arguably simpler and makes a bit more sense.
  - acdha 12y ago
    The question is which browsers you invest your time and money supporting. If the vendor doesn't support a browser, it becomes increasingly hard to justify investing your resources on it and a single block-list makes everything consistent.

wldlyinaccurate 12y ago

Annoyingly, Google seems to consider my installation of Chrome 37 on Ubuntu 14.04 an "old" browser, so I now get an outdated version of Google.

dredmorbius 12y ago

No problems with old browsers on DDG Though I'm fond of https://duckduckgo.com/lite https://duckduckgo.com/lite for my w3m sessions.

squidmccactus 12y ago

Which companies are discouraging old browser users again? That sounds like ageism.