Thank you for working on Matrix, it has been smooth sailing (after some database cleanup) for me to operate since taking over a homeserver from a frustrated operator nearly half a year ago.
Considering how Stripe caused an abrupt vendor disappearance when buying Index, resulting in a tidalwave of broken integrations (as Stripe closed Index with no notice, and stopped responding to clients), I wouldn't trust them to support a platform for any period of time to ensure a smooth transition.
Stripe might leave the servers online in a half broken state for a few weeks, but they will not answer tickets or phone calls about critical issues if they've decided to can a product.
How is this better than the Google Home/Google Voice integration? Seems significantly more complex, and reliant on the end user having a working home phone line
Your at Amazon, right? You should be aware that many other Seattleites in tech despise those who are part of FAANG, vast data mining (FANG) & extreme internal secrecy (Apple, Amazon) have created an environment where ethics are ignored, and only bootlickers are promoted.
This has come back to haunt some of these companies already, but fixing the structural rot is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
How long can Apple push against all of the major content providers? Google, Netflix, Mozilla, AT&T & the plethora of other streaming providers will not fully support H.265, and Apple doesn't want to not have a seat at the table as they build a codec to supplant it.
I think this is a repeat of the USB C engineering participation by Apple, they may roll it out to their tiny MacOS install base, but it could be years before AV1 is supported on iOS. Safari on iOS is where Apple likes to draw its line in the sand, it also happens to be where they have nearly 1 billion users, versus 70 million on MacOS: https://ngcodec.com/news/2018/10/9/whats-in-a-codec-hevc-ver...
> Google Meet is a video conferencing app, not a telephone replacement.
Great, I really don't care about Google's WebRTC app of the month, it is unlikely to be with us in 10 years.
Your root question about why Google hasn't supported Safari with their Meet product likely boils down to the codec wars, as without VP8/VP9 support, Safari does not support the WebRTC standard. A reasonable thing Safari could do is rank codecs by power usage, prioritizing H.264 front and center.
Another take is the failing tests listed here, Google could easily depend on a component that Safari has not implemented (once again not WebRTC spec compliant): https://wpt.fyi/results/webrtc?label=stable&aligned
> In any case, if you want better than H.264, how about H.265
H.265 is a patent encumbered, licensed codec that is only supported by Safari & Edge (if you download the H.265 codec manually on Win10). At this point, Apple, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft and others are working on AV1 as a successor: https://headjack.io/blog/hevc-vp9-vp10-dalaa-thor-netvc-futu...
> I have no idea if WebRTC allows the endpoints to negotiate alternative codecs, and I'm having difficulty finding the answer to that.
You can send literally anything in the SDP that you want, WebRTC is a forklift of traditional SIP onto the web, but with things like TLS enforced (otherwise idiots like the entire existing VoIP industry will run all signaling & calls over UDP with no crypto, then claim its "secure"). The only limitations you have are the codecs supported by your device, though you could totally write your own fairly complex codec in javascript :P
Rejecting VP8/VP9 due to Google's involvement is silly and pointless, they're free to use codecs that are much more efficient than H.264. Apple has made its choice to push H.264 & H.265 due to their vested interest in the licensing revenue they stand to gain via the MPEG LA.
This is why Mozilla is pushing AV1 and VP8/VP9 so hard, being stuck with H.264 as the whole industry migrates to H.265 due to bandwidth savings is a major impediment, and the licensing body could easily extract usurious rent for H.265 if it becomes the only reasonable option: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/08/the-video-wars-of-2027/
WebRTC was created to replace the need for apps that handle calling, without web push notifications (like every other WebRTC supporting browser has) there is no way for inbound calls to cause the phone to receive a notification unless Safari is open and has the webpage pulled up.
WRT VP8/VP9, bandwidth is much more of a concern than you make it out to be. Network bandwidth on mobile devices is inconsistent, unstable, and often relatively low (say hello to congested towers, or fringe 700Mhz coverage where 500Kbps is all you get :P), thus the best compression possible ensures that video quality and usability is top notch.
By restricting video to H.264, your stuck with a legacy codec that has relatively poor compression rates compared to the other standardized codecs. Is it good for interop with a 2005 era deskphone? Sure, but not much else.
Safari has purposefully neutered WebRTC, both Firefox and Google have full codec support while Apple tries to push H.264 only, plus things like web push still doesn't work on iOS: https://webrtchacks.com/safari-webrtc/
Hetzner does pay lip service to improving their network, but its akin to ColoCrossing, the internal network infrastructure is not amazing due to budget constraints, and the peering situation isn't apt to improve as its essentially money and politics that created it.
> What kind of stable do you mean (referring to OVH)? Bandwidth, latency, average I/O ops, CPU load?
I am referring to bandwidth, latency & jitter when comparing OVH to others. One thing OVH has nailed is keeping jitter minimal, and there has been significant optimizations for routes in their newer datacenters as time has gone on.
Mature OVH locations already have fairly good peering, to the point that many time sensitive workloads that can't be fronted/cached choose OVH in certain regions.
Its really sad to see Google Cloud and AWS flunking on this front, the lack of internal IPv6 support to the VM kills mobile performance, adding tens of milliseconds of latency and incurring a stateful connection in cellular carriers CGNAT (which gets killed after ~100 seconds), reducing performance and breaking long term open connections. Sending a packet over IPv6 to a cellphone is often faster than using push messaging on iOS or Android.
DigitalOcean and Linode are currently the same price, what $5 buys you on DO gets you the same specs on Linode.
Hetzner is not a reasonable choice for servers IMO, its akin to hosting in a datahole in Dallas, expect mixed bandwidth quality and questionable policies when issues arise. Comparatively, OVH looks stable.