8 ms·

As a Googler who cares very much about open standards, I don't think that assessment is fair or accurate.

groovecoder 12y ago
As a Mozillian who also cares very much about open standards, I agree. Google has both a long and recent track record of helping to advance open standards - CalDAV, WebRTC, WebM, etc. - and I have no doubt they will continue to do so - e.g., Physical Web. However, Google's purpose in the world is not to advance open standards. That is Mozilla's purpose. That's why this is a strategic, long-term decision on Mozilla's part. A world with a strong Google, strong Mozilla, and strong Yahoo (and Apple, and Microsoft, and Samsung, and Intel, etc.) is better for everyone. A world where any one of those entities controls too much power is worse. For me, I look forward to working with partners at Google and Yahoo.
- stephenr 12y ago
  Advance open standards? * Like how they were planning to require whitelisting for CalDAV access? * Like how they completely bastardise the IMAP protocol? * Like how they disabled XMPP federation and then dropped XMPP support completely, for their GTalk replacement?
  - haberman 12y ago
    This is a perfect example of how (some) open-standards advocates have impossible expectations. Your complaints about IMAP and XMPP are completely opposite. When Hangouts stopped supporting XMPP (designed in 1998) due to product evolution, you complain that they dropped XMPP support. But when Gmail continued to support IMAP (designed in 1986) despite the product diverging somewhat from traditional email, you complain they are "bastardizing the IMAP protocol." What course of action by Google would make you happy? The Internet can't stay in the year 2000. Major players move it forward -- Mozilla, Google, and others. I think Google has a pretty good track record of doing this as openly as they can.
    - stephenr 12y ago
      Google's stated reason for abandoning XMPP is nothing to do with product evolution. They publicly stated that the reason for dropping support, was a lack of "industry adoption". Personally I trust that about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy - open access means less control for Google, which means less ability to collect data and/or display ads. Keeping XMPP support (and federation) would have allowed interoperability with a range of XMPP clients on desktop/mobile devices, AND with users of other XMPP services - whether they be services provided by third parties, or "private" services run by organisations/individuals. It would also have also been useful as leverage to encourage other "big" IM networks to open up their "private" XMPP based IM networks - Facebook Chat, WhatsApp, Cisco WebEx, etc. They're all using XMPP, but they're islands right now. At this point Google are worse than those islands, because not only are they not embracing open XMPP & federation, they're not even supporting XMPP any more - so if FB/WhatsApp said "hey we want to support XMPP federation from tomorrow" Google users have no possible way to be involved in that any more. Google's implementation of IMAP is fundamentally broken. The big ticket item, "tags" is ridiculous, as IMAP already has a defined standard for "tags": the IMAP keywords feature. The usual Google fanboy response to this is "but IMAP clients don't support keywords fully", which of course ignores the fact that standard IMAP clients also don't support the idea of messages appearing in multiple mailboxes (i.e. folders) either, but the network effect of Gmail has meant MANY clients have come to support Gmail specific features. Imagine for a second, if instead of its current shit soup solution, Google had implemented the existing IMAP standard for keywords. It's not unreasonable to expect that the majority of IMAP clients would have been quick(er) to implement support for this part of the spec, which would mean users of other IMAP services (either hosted services or self-hosted mail servers) would also be able to use IMAP keywords. It's been said before and I'll say it again: Google is following the same plays that Microsoft made over a decade ago. Latch onto an open standard, use your market position to make "additions" to said standard, and finally pull support for said standard, in favour of your own closed solution. I'll wait for the regular Google fanboy down votes.
      - sounds 12y ago
        I downvoted you, and I feel obligated to explain my reason. Others will vote how they will. I'm no Google fanboy. But please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. Instead of calling gmail "shit soup," just talk about the existing IMAP standard for keywords.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- hobarrera 12y ago
  > and I have no doubt they will continue to do so Regrettably, you're quite mistaken in doing so. They're dropping CalDAV. Their IMAP implementation has been broken for close to a decade. But the very worst is their dropping XMPP is favour of Hangouts. This truly reflected Google's final intentions.
glitchdout 12y ago
What about the move from Talk to Hangouts? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-s...
- haberman 12y ago
  Google added support for XMPP fedederation in 2006, hoping that other messaging services would follow suit: http://www.zdnet.com/google-embraces-open-im-standards-3039247988/ http://www.zdnet.com/google-embraces-open-im-standards-30392... Seven years later, not a single other major IM service had added the same support. All XMPP federation support had accomplished was providing a spam vector to Google Talk users. Google's public statement when they dropped federation in 2013 was: "XMPP was designed over a decade ago to provide a way for chat networks to interoperate, known as federation. Google Talk was the only major network to support federation, and after seven years, it’s evident that the rest of the industry is not moving to embrace this open system. If, at some point in the future, the industry shows interest, then we would then be open to discussions about developing an interface that's designed for modern needs." http://www.zdnet.com/google-moves-away-from-the-xmpp-open-messaging-standard-7000015918/ http://www.zdnet.com/google-moves-away-from-the-xmpp-open-me... Calling this an anti-openness move seems a little backwards when Google was the only company supporting federation to begin with!
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    Thousands of XMPP servers serving millions of people had S2S properly enabled and working among them. Or one has to be a single entity as large as MSN or AIM to be considered worthy to enjoy openness?
    - haberman 12y ago
      > Thousands of XMPP servers serving millions of people had S2S properly enabled and working among them. I'm surprised to hear a number that high, but regardless of what the number actually is, it certainly sucked for those people. But remember the context: Google was looking to expand Talk into Hangouts, and XMPP would have needed a makeover to support that product evolution. If Google had extended XMPP unilaterally, they would have been accused of "embrace, extend, extinguish." Without other major players to co-design with, it didn't make a lot of sense to try pursuing a next-generation standard. > Or one has to be a single entity as large as MSN or AIM to be considered worthy to enjoy openness? That's kind of inflammatory. Remember when Mozilla removed MNG support from Firefox despite having 700 votes on the bug? Remember when the Mozilla CEO responded to a status update on the bug by saying "stop adding new noxious gas to this bloated corpse of a bug"? Are those 700 people not "considered worthy to enjoy openness" either? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574 Organizations have to make trade-offs sometimes, and you can't please everybody all the time.
joelhaus 12y ago
Agreed. Sometimes I think the people who don't appreciate Google's "openness" are not old enough to remember either the early closed internet platforms (Prodigy/CompuServe/AOL) or the Microsoft products that are only recently getting around to open standards.
- stephenr 12y ago
  Luckily, those people who didn't experience/don't remember the Microsoft experience the first time around, will get to experience it all over again now with Google.
ksk 12y ago
So.. can I migrate to another search engine by taking all of my personal data that Google has collected on me? Well, you should know that you work for a marketing company that inserts itself between content other people create, and users that want to access it and then exacts a toll in the form of personal data. The entirety of Google's revenue is about lock-in and proprietary code and APIs. The advertising-enabled anti-privacy web that Google has enabled is frankly quite unappealing.

As a Mozillian who also cares very much about open standards, I agree. Google has both a long and recent track record of helping to advance open standards - CalDAV, WebRTC, WebM, etc. - and I have no doubt they will continue to do so - e.g., Physical Web. However, Google's purpose in the world is not to advance open standards. That is Mozilla's purpose. That's why this is a strategic, long-term decision on Mozilla's part. A world with a strong Google, strong Mozilla, and strong Yahoo (and Apple, and Microsoft, and Samsung, and Intel, etc.) is better for everyone. A world where any one of those entities controls too much power is worse. For me, I look forward to working with partners at Google and Yahoo.

stephenr 12y ago
Advance open standards? * Like how they were planning to require whitelisting for CalDAV access? * Like how they completely bastardise the IMAP protocol? * Like how they disabled XMPP federation and then dropped XMPP support completely, for their GTalk replacement?
- haberman 12y ago
  This is a perfect example of how (some) open-standards advocates have impossible expectations. Your complaints about IMAP and XMPP are completely opposite. When Hangouts stopped supporting XMPP (designed in 1998) due to product evolution, you complain that they dropped XMPP support. But when Gmail continued to support IMAP (designed in 1986) despite the product diverging somewhat from traditional email, you complain they are "bastardizing the IMAP protocol." What course of action by Google would make you happy? The Internet can't stay in the year 2000. Major players move it forward -- Mozilla, Google, and others. I think Google has a pretty good track record of doing this as openly as they can.
  - stephenr 12y ago
    Google's stated reason for abandoning XMPP is nothing to do with product evolution. They publicly stated that the reason for dropping support, was a lack of "industry adoption". Personally I trust that about as much as I would trust a priest to give me a colonoscopy - open access means less control for Google, which means less ability to collect data and/or display ads. Keeping XMPP support (and federation) would have allowed interoperability with a range of XMPP clients on desktop/mobile devices, AND with users of other XMPP services - whether they be services provided by third parties, or "private" services run by organisations/individuals. It would also have also been useful as leverage to encourage other "big" IM networks to open up their "private" XMPP based IM networks - Facebook Chat, WhatsApp, Cisco WebEx, etc. They're all using XMPP, but they're islands right now. At this point Google are worse than those islands, because not only are they not embracing open XMPP & federation, they're not even supporting XMPP any more - so if FB/WhatsApp said "hey we want to support XMPP federation from tomorrow" Google users have no possible way to be involved in that any more. Google's implementation of IMAP is fundamentally broken. The big ticket item, "tags" is ridiculous, as IMAP already has a defined standard for "tags": the IMAP keywords feature. The usual Google fanboy response to this is "but IMAP clients don't support keywords fully", which of course ignores the fact that standard IMAP clients also don't support the idea of messages appearing in multiple mailboxes (i.e. folders) either, but the network effect of Gmail has meant MANY clients have come to support Gmail specific features. Imagine for a second, if instead of its current shit soup solution, Google had implemented the existing IMAP standard for keywords. It's not unreasonable to expect that the majority of IMAP clients would have been quick(er) to implement support for this part of the spec, which would mean users of other IMAP services (either hosted services or self-hosted mail servers) would also be able to use IMAP keywords. It's been said before and I'll say it again: Google is following the same plays that Microsoft made over a decade ago. Latch onto an open standard, use your market position to make "additions" to said standard, and finally pull support for said standard, in favour of your own closed solution. I'll wait for the regular Google fanboy down votes.
    - sounds 12y ago
      I downvoted you, and I feel obligated to explain my reason. Others will vote how they will. I'm no Google fanboy. But please reply to the argument instead of calling names. Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you. Instead of calling gmail "shit soup," just talk about the existing IMAP standard for keywords.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
hobarrera 12y ago
> and I have no doubt they will continue to do so Regrettably, you're quite mistaken in doing so. They're dropping CalDAV. Their IMAP implementation has been broken for close to a decade. But the very worst is their dropping XMPP is favour of Hangouts. This truly reflected Google's final intentions.

glitchdout 12y ago

What about the move from Talk to Hangouts? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-standards-instant-messaging https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/google-abandons-open-s...

haberman 12y ago
Google added support for XMPP fedederation in 2006, hoping that other messaging services would follow suit: http://www.zdnet.com/google-embraces-open-im-standards-3039247988/ http://www.zdnet.com/google-embraces-open-im-standards-30392... Seven years later, not a single other major IM service had added the same support. All XMPP federation support had accomplished was providing a spam vector to Google Talk users. Google's public statement when they dropped federation in 2013 was: "XMPP was designed over a decade ago to provide a way for chat networks to interoperate, known as federation. Google Talk was the only major network to support federation, and after seven years, it’s evident that the rest of the industry is not moving to embrace this open system. If, at some point in the future, the industry shows interest, then we would then be open to discussions about developing an interface that's designed for modern needs." http://www.zdnet.com/google-moves-away-from-the-xmpp-open-messaging-standard-7000015918/ http://www.zdnet.com/google-moves-away-from-the-xmpp-open-me... Calling this an anti-openness move seems a little backwards when Google was the only company supporting federation to begin with!
- drdaeman 12y ago
  Thousands of XMPP servers serving millions of people had S2S properly enabled and working among them. Or one has to be a single entity as large as MSN or AIM to be considered worthy to enjoy openness?
  - haberman 12y ago
    > Thousands of XMPP servers serving millions of people had S2S properly enabled and working among them. I'm surprised to hear a number that high, but regardless of what the number actually is, it certainly sucked for those people. But remember the context: Google was looking to expand Talk into Hangouts, and XMPP would have needed a makeover to support that product evolution. If Google had extended XMPP unilaterally, they would have been accused of "embrace, extend, extinguish." Without other major players to co-design with, it didn't make a lot of sense to try pursuing a next-generation standard. > Or one has to be a single entity as large as MSN or AIM to be considered worthy to enjoy openness? That's kind of inflammatory. Remember when Mozilla removed MNG support from Firefox despite having 700 votes on the bug? Remember when the Mozilla CEO responded to a status update on the bug by saying "stop adding new noxious gas to this bloated corpse of a bug"? Are those 700 people not "considered worthy to enjoy openness" either? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574 Organizations have to make trade-offs sometimes, and you can't please everybody all the time.

joelhaus 12y ago

Agreed. Sometimes I think the people who don't appreciate Google's "openness" are not old enough to remember either the early closed internet platforms (Prodigy/CompuServe/AOL) or the Microsoft products that are only recently getting around to open standards.

stephenr 12y ago
Luckily, those people who didn't experience/don't remember the Microsoft experience the first time around, will get to experience it all over again now with Google.

ksk 12y ago

So.. can I migrate to another search engine by taking all of my personal data that Google has collected on me? Well, you should know that you work for a marketing company that inserts itself between content other people create, and users that want to access it and then exacts a toll in the form of personal data. The entirety of Google's revenue is about lock-in and proprietary code and APIs. The advertising-enabled anti-privacy web that Google has enabled is frankly quite unappealing.