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My complaint - and I'm speaking as a consumer, who pays for devices and watches ads - is that Google doesn't provide apps for Windows platforms and blocks devel

My complaint - and I'm speaking as a consumer, who pays for devices and watches ads - is that Google doesn't provide apps for Windows platforms and blocks developers (Microsoft and 3rd party) who do. For the YouTube case, neither the Android nor iOS app were built on HTML5. Why did the WP app need to be? And, fine, if it needs to run on HTML5, were there API's or metadata provided to allow showing the ads using HTML5 standards? Nope. Same for Google Voice - they won't provide an app and won't allow other developers to provide one. I don't care about having an official Google app; I do care about them completely walling off access to one. Starting around the Google+ days, I began to get a very clear sense that Google cared about their strategies a lot more than me as a user. As a long-time Google user - since Gmail beta, OG Droid user, etc. - this was a dramatic shift. Compare this to pretty much everything Microsoft releases these days - published standards, open API's. They publish things for other platforms and encourage developers to access and extend theirs. That's a technology future I'd prefer to support.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago
> My complaint - and I'm speaking as a consumer, who pays for devices and watches ads - is that Google doesn't provide apps for Windows platforms and blocks developers (Microsoft and 3rd party) who do. The problem is they're not really apps, they're services. Go ask Netflix if you can write a third party client for their service. Or Skype for that matter. I'll be the first in line if you can get rid of all the useless DRM/telecoms regulation/whatever that makes these companies think this is necessary, but Google is if anything doing less of that than their competitors. At least they have platform-independent HTML5 versions of pretty much everything. You have to admit the schadenfreude is delicious. Microsoft pushes DRM knowing full well it will disadvantage minority platforms and then it comes back to bite them now that they're the minority platform. > published standards, open API's It doesn't count when the standard just says "do it the way X version of Microsoft Office does it" without actually specifying what that is.
- jongalloway2 12y ago
  > Skype for that matter Not really an issue because Skype releases clients for Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, PlayStation... > Useless DRM/telecoms regulation What's that in reference to? Haven't heard Google say anything about that. > HTML5 versions of pretty much everything Sort of. See this thread on Google Inbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495257 And this for Google Hangouts: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912 > delicious To me as I consumer, schadenfreude is never delicious when it affects me. > It doesn't count when the standard just says "do it the way X version of Microsoft Office does it" without actually specifying what that is. Which API are you talking about? There are published, documented API endpoints for all kinds of Office services: https://www.google.com/?q=office+apis https://www.google.com/?q=office+apis I wasn't just talking about Office, by the way. For example, part of the HoloLens announcement was the invitation for Oculus, Magic Leap and Google Glass devs to build on the holographic APIs (http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7865539/microsoft-windows-10-event-what-you-need-to-know http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7865539/microsoft-windows-...). Back to the original point - if a service provider won't provide an app, they should provide an API. Ideally both, but at least one. It's in their rights not to, but that's my cue to go somewhere else because that's not how I want to be treated.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    > Not really an issue because Skype releases clients for Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, PlayStation... It's still kind of an issue if you want to run it on SteamOS, Solaris, FirefoxOS, Tizen, BeOS/Haiku, Plan9, all the different BSDs, etc. etc. You can't expect anybody to support everything. > Sort of. Yes, Chrome-only for the brand new bleeding edge stuff is stupid. But it doesn't actually exclude any platforms because chromium is open source and anyone can port it to whatever you like. And then they end up supporting other browsers anyway. > To me as I consumer, schadenfreude is never delicious when it affects me. Yeah, I was a little confused about that. It seems like you were saying that Windows Phone users are having a hard time so you decided to switch to it. In which case it affecting you would seem to be intentionally self-inflicted. > Which API are you talking about? The "standard" for OOXML that Microsoft pushed through so they could say it was a "standard" even though the standards document was essentially entirely written by Microsoft and didn't provide all the information necessary to actually implement it correctly. > Back to the original point - if a service provider won't provide an app, they should provide an API. What you're really saying is that they should always provide an API, because nobody is going to provide an app for each of 10,000 different platforms. And I completely agree. But YouTube is doing the same as Netflix/Hulu/HBO and Google Voice is doing the same as Skype/MagicApp/Vonage. Blame all of them or none of them.

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

> My complaint - and I'm speaking as a consumer, who pays for devices and watches ads - is that Google doesn't provide apps for Windows platforms and blocks developers (Microsoft and 3rd party) who do. The problem is they're not really apps, they're services. Go ask Netflix if you can write a third party client for their service. Or Skype for that matter. I'll be the first in line if you can get rid of all the useless DRM/telecoms regulation/whatever that makes these companies think this is necessary, but Google is if anything doing less of that than their competitors. At least they have platform-independent HTML5 versions of pretty much everything. You have to admit the schadenfreude is delicious. Microsoft pushes DRM knowing full well it will disadvantage minority platforms and then it comes back to bite them now that they're the minority platform. > published standards, open API's It doesn't count when the standard just says "do it the way X version of Microsoft Office does it" without actually specifying what that is.

jongalloway2 12y ago
> Skype for that matter Not really an issue because Skype releases clients for Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, PlayStation... > Useless DRM/telecoms regulation What's that in reference to? Haven't heard Google say anything about that. > HTML5 versions of pretty much everything Sort of. See this thread on Google Inbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495257 And this for Google Hangouts: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912 > delicious To me as I consumer, schadenfreude is never delicious when it affects me. > It doesn't count when the standard just says "do it the way X version of Microsoft Office does it" without actually specifying what that is. Which API are you talking about? There are published, documented API endpoints for all kinds of Office services: https://www.google.com/?q=office+apis https://www.google.com/?q=office+apis I wasn't just talking about Office, by the way. For example, part of the HoloLens announcement was the invitation for Oculus, Magic Leap and Google Glass devs to build on the holographic APIs (http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7865539/microsoft-windows-10-event-what-you-need-to-know http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7865539/microsoft-windows-...). Back to the original point - if a service provider won't provide an app, they should provide an API. Ideally both, but at least one. It's in their rights not to, but that's my cue to go somewhere else because that's not how I want to be treated.
- AnthonyMouse 12y ago
  > Not really an issue because Skype releases clients for Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, PlayStation... It's still kind of an issue if you want to run it on SteamOS, Solaris, FirefoxOS, Tizen, BeOS/Haiku, Plan9, all the different BSDs, etc. etc. You can't expect anybody to support everything. > Sort of. Yes, Chrome-only for the brand new bleeding edge stuff is stupid. But it doesn't actually exclude any platforms because chromium is open source and anyone can port it to whatever you like. And then they end up supporting other browsers anyway. > To me as I consumer, schadenfreude is never delicious when it affects me. Yeah, I was a little confused about that. It seems like you were saying that Windows Phone users are having a hard time so you decided to switch to it. In which case it affecting you would seem to be intentionally self-inflicted. > Which API are you talking about? The "standard" for OOXML that Microsoft pushed through so they could say it was a "standard" even though the standards document was essentially entirely written by Microsoft and didn't provide all the information necessary to actually implement it correctly. > Back to the original point - if a service provider won't provide an app, they should provide an API. What you're really saying is that they should always provide an API, because nobody is going to provide an app for each of 10,000 different platforms. And I completely agree. But YouTube is doing the same as Netflix/Hulu/HBO and Google Voice is doing the same as Skype/MagicApp/Vonage. Blame all of them or none of them.