Google embraces, extends, and extinguishes(drewdevault.com)
drewdevault.com
Google embraces, extends, and extinguishes
https://drewdevault.com/2018/05/03/Google-embraces-extends-extinguishes.html
189 comments
IMO Kubernetes is safe. It has way too many outside contributors for Google to pull it back in. And it's going in the opposite direction as you describe: networking, storage and ingress used to be considerably more clunky on non-GKE based installations, but now we're at the stage where people are starting to use third-party ingress and storage plugins on GKE because those have features that the Google implementation doesn't have.
And Google is probably ecstatic. It's disrupting the AWS monopoly that was developing, tons of outside developers are improving GKE for them, and it's running a textbook "commoditize your complements" play.
Compare that with Android, which Google is successfully doing the EEE strategy on. Despite widespread usage, it has few outside contributors, so Google is bearing all of the costs of it being open source without reaping few of the benefits.
But that's Google's fault. It's hard to build and contribute to Android. Development is done privately and thrown over the wall.
OTOH, it's easy to contribute to Kubernetes, and it's done in the open.
And Google is probably ecstatic. It's disrupting the AWS monopoly that was developing, tons of outside developers are improving GKE for them, and it's running a textbook "commoditize your complements" play.
Compare that with Android, which Google is successfully doing the EEE strategy on. Despite widespread usage, it has few outside contributors, so Google is bearing all of the costs of it being open source without reaping few of the benefits.
But that's Google's fault. It's hard to build and contribute to Android. Development is done privately and thrown over the wall.
OTOH, it's easy to contribute to Kubernetes, and it's done in the open.
Posted further down, but I'll move it here since it's more relevant to android's development:
So a few years ago I created an open source community in gaming (which coincidentally, the author of this blog post was a part of early on). We had a Github organization, an IRC channel, etc. It was fun.
At some point I grew part of the community into a company, which today is growing and thriving. We're rooted in open source. I'm rooted in open source (Nearly all my work has been public and on Github for the past decade).
Today we still have nearly all our work up and public on Github but get next to zero external contributions. Because contributing as someone external to the company is hard.
Unless your actual goal as the company is to produce free & open source software, it's going to be really, really hard to make it possible for external actors to contribute to the core products as smoothly as for the company's employees. There's loads of things that pile up, like reusing internal CI systems for testing, requiring API keys and passwords for access to resources that are required or highly useful for development (eg. testing a redshift environment), and so on. All those things are fixable, but take a huge amount of time to fix, and why would you fix it if nearly nobody external to the company is contributing anyway? It's not like making the experience easy is a guaranteed win either.
Things like product design, project management, etc... it's not obvious how to make those open processes. It's not like you can do part time project management contributions to any random open source project out there. And when the processes aren't open, the barrier of entry to contribution is that much higher.
And quite frankly, certain people (who will recognize themselves) make it extremely unappealing to spend a lot of efforts on keeping the entire project open. The kind of people who will complain about every little detail of how you're trying to open up the project, until its name is prefixed with GNU/. "All or nothing" is an atrocious approach to open source and actively harms the ecosystem.
Point is, don't blame Google for making Android and Chromium hard to contribute to. It's not like it's on purpose, it just takes a huge investment for it to be possible. I mean fuck, Firefox isn't exactly easy to contribute to, and Mozilla is one of the most open companies out there, and in many ways a role model of how an open source company should be run.
So a few years ago I created an open source community in gaming (which coincidentally, the author of this blog post was a part of early on). We had a Github organization, an IRC channel, etc. It was fun.
At some point I grew part of the community into a company, which today is growing and thriving. We're rooted in open source. I'm rooted in open source (Nearly all my work has been public and on Github for the past decade).
Today we still have nearly all our work up and public on Github but get next to zero external contributions. Because contributing as someone external to the company is hard.
Unless your actual goal as the company is to produce free & open source software, it's going to be really, really hard to make it possible for external actors to contribute to the core products as smoothly as for the company's employees. There's loads of things that pile up, like reusing internal CI systems for testing, requiring API keys and passwords for access to resources that are required or highly useful for development (eg. testing a redshift environment), and so on. All those things are fixable, but take a huge amount of time to fix, and why would you fix it if nearly nobody external to the company is contributing anyway? It's not like making the experience easy is a guaranteed win either.
Things like product design, project management, etc... it's not obvious how to make those open processes. It's not like you can do part time project management contributions to any random open source project out there. And when the processes aren't open, the barrier of entry to contribution is that much higher.
And quite frankly, certain people (who will recognize themselves) make it extremely unappealing to spend a lot of efforts on keeping the entire project open. The kind of people who will complain about every little detail of how you're trying to open up the project, until its name is prefixed with GNU/. "All or nothing" is an atrocious approach to open source and actively harms the ecosystem.
Point is, don't blame Google for making Android and Chromium hard to contribute to. It's not like it's on purpose, it just takes a huge investment for it to be possible. I mean fuck, Firefox isn't exactly easy to contribute to, and Mozilla is one of the most open companies out there, and in many ways a role model of how an open source company should be run.
There's a simpler way to put this:
In open source, there's invariably an "in-track" and an "out-track." The in-track consists of people who will get their concerns pretty quickly addressed and can make their patches known and reviewed fairly quickly. The out-track is those who can't do that.
The strengths and weaknesses of open-source models is in how easy it is to make it into the in-track, and how stark the in/out dichotomy is. My experience with Mozilla is that they do a fairly good job at speeding people from out-track to in-track (although I suppose it depends on what areas you work in--Thunderbird was ridiculously easily, but I can imagine Gecko or SpiderMonkey is going to be much harder), but the in/out dichotomy remains somewhat stark. I've seen other places, like LLVM, where the in-track is much harder to break into, but the in/out dichotomy is not so stark.
In open source, there's invariably an "in-track" and an "out-track." The in-track consists of people who will get their concerns pretty quickly addressed and can make their patches known and reviewed fairly quickly. The out-track is those who can't do that.
The strengths and weaknesses of open-source models is in how easy it is to make it into the in-track, and how stark the in/out dichotomy is. My experience with Mozilla is that they do a fairly good job at speeding people from out-track to in-track (although I suppose it depends on what areas you work in--Thunderbird was ridiculously easily, but I can imagine Gecko or SpiderMonkey is going to be much harder), but the in/out dichotomy remains somewhat stark. I've seen other places, like LLVM, where the in-track is much harder to break into, but the in/out dichotomy is not so stark.
Kubernetes is relatively easy to contribute to, but that almost seems incidental. IMO The reason why Kubernetes sees lots of outside contribution is because Red Hat, Microsoft & IBM et al recognize that it's in their best interest to contribute to Kubernetes and to apply technical and business pressure to ensure that Kubernetes doesn't become a silo.
I have no idea why this didn't happen for Android. Samsung & LG have spent a fortune on Tizen & WebOS, and would have been a lot better off with a truly open Android. Whether that's their fault or Google's is hard to tell, but I suspect that answer is "both".
I have no idea why this didn't happen for Android. Samsung & LG have spent a fortune on Tizen & WebOS, and would have been a lot better off with a truly open Android. Whether that's their fault or Google's is hard to tell, but I suspect that answer is "both".
Chromium has a ton of external contributors. Have you read the AUTHORS list? Sure, it’s not all on GitHub but a number of its parts are.
It’s a pretty hackable project.
It’s a pretty hackable project.
> certain people (who will recognize themselves)
They probably won't.
They probably won't.
Call me naive but I disagree with the points about Kubernetes. While they did make Kubernetes specifically for their GKE offering, it was before Docker Swarm even existed, so it didn't directly compete with Docker. I doubt Swarm was doomed to failure; more, it felt like the priorities were off (it was simpler than Kubernetes at the cost of being less useful.)
Further, Google has been taking the Google bits out of Kubernetes. They declined to call their own offering "Google Kubernetes Engine" officially until the playing field was level and they had a certification program. Amazon, Azure, DigitalOcean and others are implementing their own managed Kubernetes solutions.
Google doesn't have to cheat here. Speaking as someone dealing with Google Cloud directly, they are mainly hitting on the point that Google Cloud offers better network and disk performance, in a more flexible manner, for significantly less money. And honest to God they're right. The CPU performance is worse in some cases, but we're saving money on workloads so far.
On the flip side, as long time AWS users, the Kubernetes experience has been pretty good since Kubernetes 1.3. New features typically support AWS pretty early in, with the main exception being Ingress controllers (for good reason: ALBs weren't even released when that became a thing.)
Google is one of those companies big enough to make it easy to feel like they have evil ulterior motives, but I'll be honest: in my dealings with them, I've felt that the opposite is true and generally the intentions are good.
Further, Google has been taking the Google bits out of Kubernetes. They declined to call their own offering "Google Kubernetes Engine" officially until the playing field was level and they had a certification program. Amazon, Azure, DigitalOcean and others are implementing their own managed Kubernetes solutions.
Google doesn't have to cheat here. Speaking as someone dealing with Google Cloud directly, they are mainly hitting on the point that Google Cloud offers better network and disk performance, in a more flexible manner, for significantly less money. And honest to God they're right. The CPU performance is worse in some cases, but we're saving money on workloads so far.
On the flip side, as long time AWS users, the Kubernetes experience has been pretty good since Kubernetes 1.3. New features typically support AWS pretty early in, with the main exception being Ingress controllers (for good reason: ALBs weren't even released when that became a thing.)
Google is one of those companies big enough to make it easy to feel like they have evil ulterior motives, but I'll be honest: in my dealings with them, I've felt that the opposite is true and generally the intentions are good.
I wouldn't trust my business to Google Cloud Platform because they have a habit of abandoning services that aren't related to their core business - search and ads.
I have more confidence in Amazon and Microsoft.
I have more confidence in Amazon and Microsoft.
Really? Do not think they would walk away from over $4B of business a year.
Google sticks with things that are core. Google reader was obviously not core.
Glasses moved to enterprise and continue to be used in that setting.
Google sticks with things that are core. Google reader was obviously not core.
Glasses moved to enterprise and continue to be used in that setting.
It's not about abandonment as much as it is about focusing on it. Take Apple as an example, the Mac is an $6 billion+ A quarter business for Apple but only 11% of their business. No one would say that Apple focuses on the Mac.
Google is really focused on GCP and suspect they will continue to be. Constantly adding new capabilities.
I'm sorry you feel that way, because Google Cloud is really nice and if nothing else, it provokes a lot of thought. It's worth evaluating in my opinion.
I'm not saying it's better than other offerings - It's not all around - but the building blocks are really nice.
I'm not saying it's better than other offerings - It's not all around - but the building blocks are really nice.
It's not about being "better". It's about trusting Google to have the same focus as Amazon and Microsoft. Besides, no one ever got fired for choosing AWS....
What I'm saying isn't "migrate a critical part of your workload to Google" - just suggesting that it's worth evaluating Google Cloud, merely for your own reference, even if you are sure you aren't going to use it. They offer a pretty good free trial to do so.
If I were starting a business in 2018 or consulting with someone who was doing an infrastructure migration, I couldn't in good conscience tell them to go to GCP. The support infrastructure isn't as good - ie people who have experience.
There is a lot to be said about choosing the default. I've been a .Net developer for over a decade, but when I started looking into Lambda for instance and saw that it looks like most people were using Node and to a lesser extent Python, I begrudgingly started learning Python. In hindsight, I'm glad I did. I'm actually starting to like Python and I usually hate scripting languages.
Besides, for my own selfish reasons, why would I spend time on the cloud platform that is the least marketable? Companies are asking for AWS and to a lesser extent Azure experience. Very few are asking for GCP experience.
There is a lot to be said about choosing the default. I've been a .Net developer for over a decade, but when I started looking into Lambda for instance and saw that it looks like most people were using Node and to a lesser extent Python, I begrudgingly started learning Python. In hindsight, I'm glad I did. I'm actually starting to like Python and I usually hate scripting languages.
Besides, for my own selfish reasons, why would I spend time on the cloud platform that is the least marketable? Companies are asking for AWS and to a lesser extent Azure experience. Very few are asking for GCP experience.
Fifteen years ago this was the same with Linux. Everyone was asking for MCSE certified professionals. And yet, my Linux experience has been invaluable over the years and supply and demand for highly specialized skills have worked to my advantage.
If everyone is going one way, it's not necessarily a bad decision to take a slightly different path. I've been able to build a career and a business on the alternate path.
If everyone is going one way, it's not necessarily a bad decision to take a slightly different path. I've been able to build a career and a business on the alternate path.
I don't remember a time where some variant of Unix wasn't the preferred server operating system.
Well, I remember when servers were some variation of VAX, IBM and Unisys mainframes and most small business were happy using Novell Netware.
During those days UNIX based systems were just yet another option, mostly on government and university departments.
I learned UNIX thanks to our OS teacher carrying around a single PC tower (remember those?) with Xenix on it, where we would take 30m turns to try out our C programs, prepared in advance with Turbo C on MS-DOS.
80's and early 90's, before Linux and BSD actually took off as a free way (free beer) to get access to UNIX.
During those days UNIX based systems were just yet another option, mostly on government and university departments.
I learned UNIX thanks to our OS teacher carrying around a single PC tower (remember those?) with Xenix on it, where we would take 30m turns to try out our C programs, prepared in advance with Turbo C on MS-DOS.
80's and early 90's, before Linux and BSD actually took off as a free way (free beer) to get access to UNIX.
Kubernetes experience is very marketable, I believe.
Kubernetes isn't tied to hosting on Google' cloud. Amazon offers EKS and Microsoft offers a hosted service.
Which is why nobody is advertising for GCP skills and why Kubernetes skills are going to be much more valuable than AWS and Azure skills.
Kubernetes is just a really small part of knowing AWS infrastructure. I would go as far as saying that k8s is just another level of complexity that most implementations don't need. Serverless Docker solutions like AWS Fargate and native AWS services on top of it are a lot easier to set up and maintain.
Google completely gave away K8s including even the brand. So not sure what you think Google will do?
They are giving away everything they learned with Borg and you somehow take it as a negative? Really?
Do think from a business standpoint not sure why Google would give up the K8s brand but it is good for everyone.
I really worry that Google will stop opens sourcing and more important sharing so much through papers when people b*tch so much.
Starting to be hard to see why they even do it any longer. Who else have a huge competitive advantage with something like Borg and just gives it away to the industry?
But I am someone super curious and just probably spend more time on
https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
Read most of the paper. But then what they presented at NIPS. My favorite paper right now is
https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01208
Bigger example is how much they give away in terms of AI/ML.
They are giving away everything they learned with Borg and you somehow take it as a negative? Really?
Do think from a business standpoint not sure why Google would give up the K8s brand but it is good for everyone.
I really worry that Google will stop opens sourcing and more important sharing so much through papers when people b*tch so much.
Starting to be hard to see why they even do it any longer. Who else have a huge competitive advantage with something like Borg and just gives it away to the industry?
But I am someone super curious and just probably spend more time on
https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
Read most of the paper. But then what they presented at NIPS. My favorite paper right now is
https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01208
Bigger example is how much they give away in terms of AI/ML.
> Bigger example is how much they give away in terms of AI/ML.
You think they are publishing all these papers and open-sourcing TensorFlow for the good of the community solely?
No... if the entire ML community publishes papers with TensorFlow as code, then now Google can sell that many more TPUs and that much more access to their cloud systems to run the models...
You think they are publishing all these papers and open-sourcing TensorFlow for the good of the community solely?
No... if the entire ML community publishes papers with TensorFlow as code, then now Google can sell that many more TPUs and that much more access to their cloud systems to run the models...
No not solely. But often it is mutual benefit. But the one that seems most crazy is giving away Borg.
I was shocked they gave away the K8s brand. Now that was ballsy and surprised necessary.
I was shocked they gave away the K8s brand. Now that was ballsy and surprised necessary.
>Do think from a business standpoint not sure why Google would give up the K8s brand but it is good for everyone.
Because with Borg they only had an advantage with their own products' operations. That's nice, in that they are able to maintain a decent amount of technical superiority and have their product reliability be leading or tied for first, but it's not a clear line between this and them generating more revenue. They want their cloud offering to compete with AWS and Azure, which is why they want K8s to gain mindshare. GCE has huge potential for growth and significant switching costs; meaning they need to get new products on it sooner rather than later, and developer mindshare is the way to do that.
Because with Borg they only had an advantage with their own products' operations. That's nice, in that they are able to maintain a decent amount of technical superiority and have their product reliability be leading or tied for first, but it's not a clear line between this and them generating more revenue. They want their cloud offering to compete with AWS and Azure, which is why they want K8s to gain mindshare. GCE has huge potential for growth and significant switching costs; meaning they need to get new products on it sooner rather than later, and developer mindshare is the way to do that.
I listen to a interview with a higher level Googler that explained why and it made a ton of sense to me.
They were tired of writing something up as a paper and then someone implemented as OSS and then companies and engineers knew the OSS implementation instead of their own.
So instead do a OSS version and then drive what everyone learns.
I found this a bit funny. One solution would have been to not write the papers. But so glad Google does. Spend a lot of time on their research site.
https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
They were tired of writing something up as a paper and then someone implemented as OSS and then companies and engineers knew the OSS implementation instead of their own.
So instead do a OSS version and then drive what everyone learns.
I found this a bit funny. One solution would have been to not write the papers. But so glad Google does. Spend a lot of time on their research site.
https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
Still not as much as Microsoft Research.
Quantity != Quality though. Arguably, a lot of Google published research papers have spawned entire software categories.
The original papers on Map/Reduce, Bigtable, Dremel, Dapper, Spanner, directly spawned a bunch of successful open source implementation projects as well as companies.
The original papers on Map/Reduce, Bigtable, Dremel, Dapper, Spanner, directly spawned a bunch of successful open source implementation projects as well as companies.
Google papers have fundamentally changed the industry.
I have always felt that, in a "typical" open-source project, I could approach the community, join it, build some rapport, and eventually help with the decision-making process (assuming I was any good and people in the community liked me).
But with Google-run (or other company-run) open-source projects, it's a completely different story. Want to be a TensorFlow maintainer? Great, sure, you can contribute, but you'll never get to make any decisions about the direction of the project itself unless you're inside Google.
To me it's a disappointing semi-abuse of the term "open source"... it doesn't mean what I think it should...
But with Google-run (or other company-run) open-source projects, it's a completely different story. Want to be a TensorFlow maintainer? Great, sure, you can contribute, but you'll never get to make any decisions about the direction of the project itself unless you're inside Google.
To me it's a disappointing semi-abuse of the term "open source"... it doesn't mean what I think it should...
This is true of any large project. Do you think you’ll be able join Linux and make decisions about Linux kernel architecture?
The larger and more important a project, the more bureaucratic it will be, and the more people you’ll be competitive with for attention.
The larger and more important a project, the more bureaucratic it will be, and the more people you’ll be competitive with for attention.
> assuming I was any good and people in the community liked me
...you could always find other people who think the same way and create a fork.
...you could always find other people who think the same way and create a fork.
If you are good enough to contribute to Tensorflow and be able to come up with new directions, why not just get a job at Google so you can do that?
This isn't unlike any other open source project ran by people who don't want to consider all input from others. Not all suggestions are worth serious consideration, after all. Open source doesn't mean I'm beholden to your every whim just because you've contributed. That's what forks are for.
This isn't unlike any other open source project ran by people who don't want to consider all input from others. Not all suggestions are worth serious consideration, after all. Open source doesn't mean I'm beholden to your every whim just because you've contributed. That's what forks are for.
> why not just get a job at Google so you can do that?
Don't want to move to California? Can't pass the interview? Salary too low in the offer? There could be lots of reasons.
I agree with your other points, but what I'm saying is not exactly that. What I'm saying is that TensorFlow is not a community-led project in the way that other open-source projects are. It's Google-led, and if you don't like it, you can go away or fork it (...and if you fork it, it's unlikely you'll get many users given the Google marketing machine).
(The same complaints have been and are being regularly made against Red Hat, and also Fedora, given that Fedora is basically "experimental" Red Hat.)
Don't want to move to California? Can't pass the interview? Salary too low in the offer? There could be lots of reasons.
I agree with your other points, but what I'm saying is not exactly that. What I'm saying is that TensorFlow is not a community-led project in the way that other open-source projects are. It's Google-led, and if you don't like it, you can go away or fork it (...and if you fork it, it's unlikely you'll get many users given the Google marketing machine).
(The same complaints have been and are being regularly made against Red Hat, and also Fedora, given that Fedora is basically "experimental" Red Hat.)
Convince Google it's better as a community-led project. Maybe they will have some convincing counter-points about why it's better the way that it is that we're not considering. They've likely already been through this debate.
Consider if Tensorflow were half as useful as it is today if it was community-led and it was led by a shitty community.
Consider if Tensorflow were half as useful as it is today if it was community-led and it was led by a shitty community.
You don't necessarily have to move to California - see https://www.google.com/about/locations/
I don’t understand your XMPP example. Google didn’t and doesn’t decide the fate of XMPP. Most developers who targeted it only cared about where the users were, and features supported by the most popular servers and clients.
Would you have preferred that those developers reverse engineer something closed source Google developed instead? Libpurple has advanced messaging not at all, only been great for interoperability.
Would you have preferred that those developers reverse engineer something closed source Google developed instead? Libpurple has advanced messaging not at all, only been great for interoperability.
I've worked on XMPP.
Google talk / now hangouts once was an XMPP pusher. XMPP is decentralized. As with mail servers you can advertise your own XMPP servers, see https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/SRV_Records , you can even publish a per-user DNS record with an OTR key.
I shut down my XMPP endpoint a few monthes ago because Google had stopped supporting XMPP bridging to hangouts. Now that everybody uses hangouts (coders) or slack (teams/corporates) or whatsapp/messenger/skype (everyone else) there is no incentive to support it anymore (I speak now only IRC with coders)
They gave their support and a lot of traction to the protocol, and removed it on a second step (once advocates of XMPP, _yes, like me_ said to everyone, "yes you should prefer gmail+talk, they are supporting open standards")
Looks like an approaching-with-good-intentions and then disrupting strategy to me. Even if you disagree on the responsibility of XMPP rise and fall, they are the bull in a china shop : don't drink the kool aid, you'll end up broken.
Google talk / now hangouts once was an XMPP pusher. XMPP is decentralized. As with mail servers you can advertise your own XMPP servers, see https://wiki.xmpp.org/web/SRV_Records , you can even publish a per-user DNS record with an OTR key.
I shut down my XMPP endpoint a few monthes ago because Google had stopped supporting XMPP bridging to hangouts. Now that everybody uses hangouts (coders) or slack (teams/corporates) or whatsapp/messenger/skype (everyone else) there is no incentive to support it anymore (I speak now only IRC with coders)
They gave their support and a lot of traction to the protocol, and removed it on a second step (once advocates of XMPP, _yes, like me_ said to everyone, "yes you should prefer gmail+talk, they are supporting open standards")
Looks like an approaching-with-good-intentions and then disrupting strategy to me. Even if you disagree on the responsibility of XMPP rise and fall, they are the bull in a china shop : don't drink the kool aid, you'll end up broken.
Gmail/Google was one of the biggest platforms that supported XMPP. Then they removed it completely, with of course made supporting XMPP less meaningful/attractive for others.
Uhm... Google wasn't the first to use XMPP. XMPP is also as open as a project can be. It's still going strong, providing a modern, mobile friendly IM protocol - it just happens without Google now. XMPP never was a Google project of any kind. They just played EEE by having the biggest server and making it incompatible with the rest of the network. That's a completely different story that what it seems from your post - no external development happened to progress Google's service in any way.
Google backstabbed XMPP, sure, but it's healing pretty well. I don't see how any time spend by developers on XMPP is wasted just because Google backed off. They took their userbase with them, sure, but if you want modern, open, federated IM network, XMPP is a sane choice. The only proper alternative these days is Matrix, but that's more of an IRC replacement.
Google backstabbed XMPP, sure, but it's healing pretty well. I don't see how any time spend by developers on XMPP is wasted just because Google backed off. They took their userbase with them, sure, but if you want modern, open, federated IM network, XMPP is a sane choice. The only proper alternative these days is Matrix, but that's more of an IRC replacement.
In 1998, Brin and Page admitted that the future Google would biased and poor quality:
“The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.”
“We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”
“Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”
“Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who “deserves” to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed.”
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
“The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.”
“We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.”
“Advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”
“Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who “deserves” to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed.”
http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
One thing I would add is constantly pushing the web standards forward with little regard to other players. They are adding features so fast that only the biggest structures can keep up. Many of these seem to exist just so ChromeOS can actually be considered a real OS.
Writing a secure and up to date HTML rendering engine from ground up is now almost impossible (kudos to Mozilla to actually doing that).
Writing a secure and up to date HTML rendering engine from ground up is now almost impossible (kudos to Mozilla to actually doing that).
Have you noticed how <custom-elements />, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Components, have become google web fundamentals, see https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/web-component....
Nobody discusses v1 vs v2, x-tags vs webcomponents polyfills even though mozilla had it right (all-in-one js vs typed sub-sections like shadow DOM)
Having worked on both XMPP and CustomElements I couldn't agree more.
Gosh, I've even already written on the quasi-impossibility to use Android as a non-google open-source system, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14516538&p=2#14526788
So kudos to Mozilla once again, they're the one pushing real FOSS
Nobody discusses v1 vs v2, x-tags vs webcomponents polyfills even though mozilla had it right (all-in-one js vs typed sub-sections like shadow DOM)
Having worked on both XMPP and CustomElements I couldn't agree more.
Gosh, I've even already written on the quasi-impossibility to use Android as a non-google open-source system, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14516538&p=2#14526788
So kudos to Mozilla once again, they're the one pushing real FOSS
The problem is that they push "standards" but the implementation of the standards often does not function as written.
Typically standard bodies avoid this by requiring two independent implementations, but the market situation really means that the standard is what Chrome implements, and nothing else.
Typically standard bodies avoid this by requiring two independent implementations, but the market situation really means that the standard is what Chrome implements, and nothing else.
They also ignore many things they push.
Yeah, web standards and the whole Chrome browser is a prime example of embrace, extend, extinguish strategy from Google.
In the case of browser it would become: embrace, extend til no one else can keep up without expending a lot on it, kill competitors that do not have the pockets to follow up and monopolize
Google's approach to open source does feel very much like virtue signaling rather than constructive adherence to the ideology. The build system for any Google project is notoriously terrible. I recently attempted to build Skia; even after rereading the scant instructions, I could not get it to do anything better than a compilation error.
I think this stems from their internal monorepo culture, e.g. they care about building everything in one go, not in isolation. This can also explain the issues with golang dependencies, it's hard for them to see problems of most regular developers as they use a unique toolchain (custom SCM, custom build tools etc.)
Not Invented Here (tm) seems like a large part of the cultural problem with being better open source contributors.
It's great they open source a lot of their stuff, but just because you're big enough as a company to rewrite {component of build chain} for yourselves... doesn't mean you should.
Caveat: I know parts of Google are awesome with contributions and using standards.
It's great they open source a lot of their stuff, but just because you're big enough as a company to rewrite {component of build chain} for yourselves... doesn't mean you should.
Caveat: I know parts of Google are awesome with contributions and using standards.
Not invented here? Seems like the exact opposite at Google and it surprises me all the time.
Purchased a Google WiFi for example and the license agreement is pages long of using open source software.
https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/7359345?hl=en
Google uses the Linux kernel for everything. From Google Home to Chromecast to their cloud and Android and ChromeOS.
Only now working on their own kernel, Zircon but suspect just experimentation.
Google tends to use off the shelve if something exist to use. They tend to focus on new things.
Another great example is using Intel processors but did the TPUs as nothing available to meet their needs.
Then we get speech to text using a NN at 16k samples a second at a reasonable cost.
Purchased a Google WiFi for example and the license agreement is pages long of using open source software.
https://support.google.com/wifi/answer/7359345?hl=en
Google uses the Linux kernel for everything. From Google Home to Chromecast to their cloud and Android and ChromeOS.
Only now working on their own kernel, Zircon but suspect just experimentation.
Google tends to use off the shelve if something exist to use. They tend to focus on new things.
Another great example is using Intel processors but did the TPUs as nothing available to meet their needs.
Then we get speech to text using a NN at 16k samples a second at a reasonable cost.
From my experience: they fork every lib and they don't contribute back. Just look at the list of libs that are built into Chrome.
Well if does not fit their needs makes sense to fork. But Google has the money to have an attitude to re-create the wheel and that does not appear their approach.
Biggest problem I think is googlers can't use code if it's licensed under AGPL.
edit: GPL -> AGPL
edit: GPL -> AGPL
The license we (I am an engineer at Google) cannot use is the AGPL.
Well of course. The popularity of web-based SaaS is in no small part due to the fact that having AGPL dependencies is a much more avoidable situation than having GPL dependencies. (cf LLVM) If only the AGPL had been invented along with the GPL, we wouldn't have this problem.
Not true. Ex-googler.
Many devs use the C# version just to avoid going through that experience themselves.
> even after rereading the scant instructions, I could not get it to do anything better than a compilation error
To be honest, that's my usual experience with any open source project, especially with something based on C/C++ (modern languages usually have much better and stable tooling).
To be honest, that's my usual experience with any open source project, especially with something based on C/C++ (modern languages usually have much better and stable tooling).
> it’s infamous for having an extremely strict spam filter for incoming emails from people who run personal or niche mail servers.
I run my own mail server and I have zero problems with reaching Google Mail users. Google – like other big mail providers – just expects you to set up DMARC and DKIM authentication for your server, which is not hard to do. Linode already provides a convenient guide to setting this up for any Ubuntu or Debian installation.
I run my own mail server and I have zero problems with reaching Google Mail users. Google – like other big mail providers – just expects you to set up DMARC and DKIM authentication for your server, which is not hard to do. Linode already provides a convenient guide to setting this up for any Ubuntu or Debian installation.
There are also a view counterexamples, for example that Google abandoned its native client in favour of webassembly when the standard took form. The same with progressive web apps which will replace the "web apps" in Chrome.
I was also sad when Google Talk was shutdown for Hangouts but to be honest, XMPP was going nowhere. The quality of available clients was very different. You had awful clients like Apple iChat (which is still awful), complete client like Psi which stopped at some point, clients which wanted to be everything like Adium/Pidgin, etc. pp.
Google Reader was indeed sad and really weird, they could have build on top of their social networks they already had but they wanted something new and shiny. I still look for a good replacement.
I was also sad when Google Talk was shutdown for Hangouts but to be honest, XMPP was going nowhere. The quality of available clients was very different. You had awful clients like Apple iChat (which is still awful), complete client like Psi which stopped at some point, clients which wanted to be everything like Adium/Pidgin, etc. pp.
Google Reader was indeed sad and really weird, they could have build on top of their social networks they already had but they wanted something new and shiny. I still look for a good replacement.
W.r.t. XMPP have you seen https://Conversations.im or https://dino.im? I'm using the former daily and the experience is very good, it's a modern messanger. Hangouts is stuck in the past.
I know Conversations, I like it but I lost all my Jabber contacts over the years (also due to the fact that the server I was using shut down). So, my list is empty. I have not tried Dino (I don't use Linux at the moment).
The Google Reader one is so baffling and love to hear the real story at some point.
Boring story. Vic Gundotra, the clueless jackass from Microsoft that Google made SVP for Social did not think RSS fit into his idiotic vision so he shut it off.
Google Reader was a product in decline with low usage numbers and revenue, and it really wasn't aligned with the way the world/web was headed, this made it hard to retain engineers on the project since it was a career dead end.
We all have a soft spot in our hearts for Reader, but the world has largely moved on to algorithmic feeds, because that's what most users want. Most users are intimidated by the fact that you have to find people to follow on Twitter, let alone find RSS feeds.
We all have a soft spot in our hearts for Reader, but the world has largely moved on to algorithmic feeds, because that's what most users want. Most users are intimidated by the fact that you have to find people to follow on Twitter, let alone find RSS feeds.
> These days, Microsoft seems to have turned the other leaf, contributing to a huge amount of open source and supporting open standards, and is becoming a good citizen of the technology community.
In some cases, but not in others. MS never joined the Vulkan working group, instead insisting on its DirectX lock-in. MS's Outlook / ActiveSync is still not an open standard which makes it a major pain to use. exFAT isn't an open standard despite MS pushing it on SD cards storage. And so on and so forth.
And XMPP story isn't any better either. Google should be blamed of course for deserting, but so is MS who never joined the effort to begin with.
In some cases, but not in others. MS never joined the Vulkan working group, instead insisting on its DirectX lock-in. MS's Outlook / ActiveSync is still not an open standard which makes it a major pain to use. exFAT isn't an open standard despite MS pushing it on SD cards storage. And so on and so forth.
And XMPP story isn't any better either. Google should be blamed of course for deserting, but so is MS who never joined the effort to begin with.
I think Google are just terrible at product, plain and simple.
I just looked at the new YouTube Creator Studio interface, and it's literally the biggest UI and UX abomination I've seen from a major tech company in recent memory. It's worse than the iOS 7 redesign.
I just looked at the new YouTube Creator Studio interface, and it's literally the biggest UI and UX abomination I've seen from a major tech company in recent memory. It's worse than the iOS 7 redesign.
I recently saw a relative yell at their computer, as the chromecast popup menu grabbed the mouse focus and they couldn't pause the youtube video. I'm not impressed with their decisions in regards to UX.
Depends on the product. We just got YouTube TV and just love it and same with Google Photos. But then there are other Google products that are poor and been for years.
They are now a pretty big company with a lot of different teams so not surprising some good and some bad.
They are now a pretty big company with a lot of different teams so not surprising some good and some bad.
It’s weird, because Google clearly have great designers and do some great work, but YouTube (as an uploader) is just the worst.
It’s great that YouTube for PS4 sorta works now, though.
I do wonder why there’s this crazy variance in quality.
It’s great that YouTube for PS4 sorta works now, though.
I do wonder why there’s this crazy variance in quality.
Must use difference teams for YouTube versus YouTube TV.
YouTube TV is excellent.
YouTube TV is excellent.
This article reminded me of an old quote from J Allard, a former exec from Microsoft. Replace Microsoft/Windows with Google, and the result is scarily accurate.
"In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we've used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): all participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community — determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community. Phase 3 (Innovate): move into a leadership role with new Internet standards as appropriate, enable standard off-the-shelf titles with Internet awareness. Change the rules: Windows become the next-generation Internet tool of the future."
"In order to build the necessary respect and win the mindshare of the Internet community, I recommend a recipe not unlike the one we've used with our TCP/IP efforts: embrace, extend, then innovate. Phase 1 (Embrace): all participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community — determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems. Phase 2 (Extend): establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community. Phase 3 (Innovate): move into a leadership role with new Internet standards as appropriate, enable standard off-the-shelf titles with Internet awareness. Change the rules: Windows become the next-generation Internet tool of the future."
Any company that grows this big will behave the same. The only solution for consumers is to not create companies this big. Always also buy from competitors.
i.e., not really a solution, because a consumer doesn't have that much influence. Without a government devoted to pursuing antitrust cases it just won't happen.
Any company this big needs to have some outside control. They are clearly monopolizing. I thought the US had a law against monopolies, or does it only apply to the railroads?
Monopoly on what? google.com? Android?
Google's power comes from its (a) technical prowess and (b) popularity of some of its products. Many of their products get a large advantage just from being on their own internal platform.
But I can't think of a product of theirs that doesn't have a strong competitor. Search is the strongest they have, and the underlying problem's getting a bit simpler (I believe it's substantially cheaper now to pay for the infrastructure for a good-enough web crawler than it used to be), and competitors give pretty good results as well. I'm a bit surprised Apple hasn't tried going after this beachhead yet.
Android can be avoided by using an iPhone.
I can get an email account for free nearly anywhere. Every ISP I've had in the last 20 yrs has given me one (that I don't use).
Google's got a lot of influence, and I think AMP is quite the overreach, but they don't fit in the monopoly bucket. If you want, it's pretty easy and reasonable to avoid using them. At least as consumer -- I can't speak as an advertiser. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for advertisers.
Google's power comes from its (a) technical prowess and (b) popularity of some of its products. Many of their products get a large advantage just from being on their own internal platform.
But I can't think of a product of theirs that doesn't have a strong competitor. Search is the strongest they have, and the underlying problem's getting a bit simpler (I believe it's substantially cheaper now to pay for the infrastructure for a good-enough web crawler than it used to be), and competitors give pretty good results as well. I'm a bit surprised Apple hasn't tried going after this beachhead yet.
Android can be avoided by using an iPhone.
I can get an email account for free nearly anywhere. Every ISP I've had in the last 20 yrs has given me one (that I don't use).
Google's got a lot of influence, and I think AMP is quite the overreach, but they don't fit in the monopoly bucket. If you want, it's pretty easy and reasonable to avoid using them. At least as consumer -- I can't speak as an advertiser. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for advertisers.
Google have monopoly on search (up to 90% in some markets). So anything they do with AMP is anti-competitive, for example.
Google have monopoly on business email, close 85% if you trust reports from Datanyze [1]. And now they are pushing AMP for email with exactly 0 external input [2][3]
[1] https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/email-hosting/gmail-fo...
[2] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13597
[3] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13623
Google have monopoly on business email, close 85% if you trust reports from Datanyze [1]. And now they are pushing AMP for email with exactly 0 external input [2][3]
[1] https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/email-hosting/gmail-fo...
[2] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13597
[3] https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/issues/13623
Dominant market share != Monopoly.
> the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. "his likely motive was to protect his regional monopoly on furs"
> the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. "his likely motive was to protect his regional monopoly on furs"
> I thought the US had a law against monopolies,
It's more complicated than that. US law tries to only target "bad monopolies" that engage in anti-competitive practices or hurt consumers: https://www.investopedia.com/insights/history-of-us-monopoli...
It's more complicated than that. US law tries to only target "bad monopolies" that engage in anti-competitive practices or hurt consumers: https://www.investopedia.com/insights/history-of-us-monopoli...
In reality, monopolies like Google have repeatedly demonstrated anti-competitive practices and consumer harm. The unspoken reality is: We simply don't do antitrust anymore.
Two things different in the US. First, monopolies are defined by harm to a consumer.
Second, monopolies in the US are NOT illegal but certain behaviors when you have a monopoly are.
Second, monopolies in the US are NOT illegal but certain behaviors when you have a monopoly are.
The conception of antitrust regulation has gradually evolved into the idea that if it doesn't directly lead to higher prices for consumers it's harmless, which is a much stricter standard than was applied in periods of vigorous trustbusting.
Exactly in the US. Both Dems and Repubs base on the consumer being harmed.
That would have to change first. I have my doubts. Repubs do NOT want regulations. Dems and SV are pretty tight.
That would have to change first. I have my doubts. Repubs do NOT want regulations. Dems and SV are pretty tight.
You'd probably have to have different people in office, yes.
Think it will take more than new people. Take a fundamental change in the US.
Unfortunately Google and Microsoft tend to make their money from solving hard tech problems, which results in natural monopolies or duopolies.
I would argue Google and Microsoft make their money out of making tech problems seem hard. As noted: In the 90s your Pentium III could do speech recognition, but now nobody believes you can do speech recognition without the cloud.
And plastering ads over everything also is not super hard.
And plastering ads over everything also is not super hard.
Google's approach to open source may be about as transparent as North Korea, but I do appreciate their contributions. VP8 and VP9 never really had any competition in their category, and their collaboration with the AOM to ship AV1 appears to have been fruitful.
Could you expand on this a bit? We've tried to be very transparent with how we approach and think about open source by publishing all of our internal documentation at https://opensource.google.com/docs/. Is there something that's missing from that? Or are you thinking about certain specific projects being opaque in terms of how their managed?
The default google approach to open source is unidirectional source dumps after all the work is done. On some products you do a bit better, but still keep your cards incredibly close to the vest, and maintain very tight control. Even when you're trying not to, you can't break from that mold.
I've got this comment saved on my reddit account because it was so funny:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/53gb56/why_lea...
I've got this comment saved on my reddit account because it was so funny:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/53gb56/why_lea...
> The default google approach to open source is unidirectional source dumps after all the work is done.
I can definitely say that is not our default approach to open source; in fact it's a very small minority of projects that actually operate in that fashion. However, I can understand that it could feel that way to some people.
We've long said and continue to believe that there is no one way to do open source. That's true of nearly every aspect of a project including licensing, governance, community management, etc. Project are released for different reasons, with different motivations and goals, and so the way they are managed often differs.
One area I know we could do better is to set better expectations for projects around many of these topics. How is the project managed, how are decisions made, how committed to this are we (ie. are we using it in production), etc? If those aspects of a given project were clearer, would that address some of your concern (with the understanding that some projects may be be held closer to the vest than others) ? Or are you objecting to the tighter control in general?
I can definitely say that is not our default approach to open source; in fact it's a very small minority of projects that actually operate in that fashion. However, I can understand that it could feel that way to some people.
We've long said and continue to believe that there is no one way to do open source. That's true of nearly every aspect of a project including licensing, governance, community management, etc. Project are released for different reasons, with different motivations and goals, and so the way they are managed often differs.
One area I know we could do better is to set better expectations for projects around many of these topics. How is the project managed, how are decisions made, how committed to this are we (ie. are we using it in production), etc? If those aspects of a given project were clearer, would that address some of your concern (with the understanding that some projects may be be held closer to the vest than others) ? Or are you objecting to the tighter control in general?
I jumped into this thread just to answer your question, I don't have a personal objection to how Google approaches open source. You can be as private as you want or have whatever project governance you want.
I posted because I find it alternatingly funny and frustrating that Googlers don't understand (or can't publicly admit) what Google is to the outside. I'm willing to believe that your comment is your own words. The problem is that you might as well have copy/pasted it from a social media playbook.
It's Google's prerogative to run the business however they want. But you pretend not to be a black hole. All companies are black holes, and that's fine. It's the dishonesty in external posturing that gets to me. Sometimes it's acting like a given opensource development process is more externally accessible or transparent than it is. Other times it's pretending like the youtube appeals process isn't a fake website to con the dumb people. Everyone knows the real appeals process is to work your professional contacts until you find someone who can reach out to a real human in google to check if they should over-ride the automated system (and/or the hourly drones that DGAF about doing their jobs well). -- That was weird tangent, but it's the thing least tied to software development process I could think of.
I know you can't admit it outloud on Hacker News, but I hope you would have had a different response if we had this conversation at a bar rather than in front of everyone like this. As long as you can admit that to yourself, privately, you're alright with me.
I posted because I find it alternatingly funny and frustrating that Googlers don't understand (or can't publicly admit) what Google is to the outside. I'm willing to believe that your comment is your own words. The problem is that you might as well have copy/pasted it from a social media playbook.
It's Google's prerogative to run the business however they want. But you pretend not to be a black hole. All companies are black holes, and that's fine. It's the dishonesty in external posturing that gets to me. Sometimes it's acting like a given opensource development process is more externally accessible or transparent than it is. Other times it's pretending like the youtube appeals process isn't a fake website to con the dumb people. Everyone knows the real appeals process is to work your professional contacts until you find someone who can reach out to a real human in google to check if they should over-ride the automated system (and/or the hourly drones that DGAF about doing their jobs well). -- That was weird tangent, but it's the thing least tied to software development process I could think of.
I know you can't admit it outloud on Hacker News, but I hope you would have had a different response if we had this conversation at a bar rather than in front of everyone like this. As long as you can admit that to yourself, privately, you're alright with me.
I would advise first and foremost: Communication on what governance and community management looks like needs to be clearly disclosed and publicly broadcast.
When a few of us tried to find out what was up with AMP 4 Email, despite Malte Ubl repeating the phrase "well lit" like his life depended on it, we managed to suss out the reality that while AMP 4 Email was a mere "proposal" in the AMP project, that Gmail team was doing it the way they wanted internally with no community feedback whatsoever, and that they were committed to making this proprietary format of email without anyone else's input.
It was suggested that AMP was "open" and "well lit", but it was actually an entirely internal project to an entire different team at Google, and no outside feedback was wanted or accepted. And it took repeatedly asking the question to get a clear answer on it.
Questions like governance (in AMP's case, "benevolent" dictator for life) were hard to get answers to and sometimes came with subtle threats to "enforce the CoC" if they didn't like the topic of conversation, despite it being respectfully inquired.
When a few of us tried to find out what was up with AMP 4 Email, despite Malte Ubl repeating the phrase "well lit" like his life depended on it, we managed to suss out the reality that while AMP 4 Email was a mere "proposal" in the AMP project, that Gmail team was doing it the way they wanted internally with no community feedback whatsoever, and that they were committed to making this proprietary format of email without anyone else's input.
It was suggested that AMP was "open" and "well lit", but it was actually an entirely internal project to an entire different team at Google, and no outside feedback was wanted or accepted. And it took repeatedly asking the question to get a clear answer on it.
Questions like governance (in AMP's case, "benevolent" dictator for life) were hard to get answers to and sometimes came with subtle threats to "enforce the CoC" if they didn't like the topic of conversation, despite it being respectfully inquired.
To my memory Gmail has always had a very strict spam filter. At what point did it turn into "extinguish"?
The complaint is that they're extending the email standard by sending single-URL bodies instead of the messages inline. I can see the point, but sending URLs is still fine in my book, and this is a useful feature that's trying to get parity with Outlook.
> The complaint is that they're extending the email standard by sending single-URL bodies instead of the messages inline.
Someone needs to write a client to recognize the gmail, single-URL, bodies and archive the content with the messages.
Someone needs to write a client to recognize the gmail, single-URL, bodies and archive the content with the messages.
Including not being able to read them when using a 3rd party client?
If it's just a URL, why wouldn't that work in other email clients?
(Though personally I'm not a fan of the idea itself)
(Though personally I'm not a fan of the idea itself)
Outlook has a way to send such messages that you only see a Webmail.dat attachment when using other clients, hence why I was jokingly asking if that was also part of achieving parity.
Ah, missed that sorry. Thankfully haven't received such a file yet.
This does feel like a familiar turning point for google- how long until they are the slow moving incumbent in the market and ripe for disruption?
If you’re thinking about taking on google in a specific product area, now is probably a good time to start.
If you’re thinking about taking on google in a specific product area, now is probably a good time to start.
An ad blocker + reader view could very well take care of most slow loading web pages. What are the chances that Google will build an infrastructure that allows third party ad blockers to work with Chrome on Android? Yes I know that you can download other browsers,but embedded web views still use Chrome.
Google is experimenting with putting ad content seamless together with regular search results so an ad-blocker will not help you at all.
It's not about as blocking on Google. It's about the ads on third party sites (including Google ads) that make the web so obnoxious.
This is true, not just for technical side, but also on business side.
Google just did it again on the Ads business:
https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/googles-gdpr-cons...
Google just did it again on the Ads business:
https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/googles-gdpr-cons...
Does Gmail still cause trouble with vanilla IMAP clients? I remember something about how "tags" in Gmail showed up as folders in the client, but since emails could have multiple tags it caused lots of problems.
(I use Fastmail, an email service that's much better and standards compliant.)
(I use Fastmail, an email service that's much better and standards compliant.)
It does. Deleting things in an IMAP client usually means "removing the tag corresponding with that folder" in Gmail. There's a hilarious tendency for things you delete in IMAP to just be in "All Mail" with no labels in Gmail, for instance. I used to use Gmail on a Windows phone for a while, and the issues were painful.
Note that FastMail is developing JMAP, a replacement standard for IMAP. And even though FastMail itself doesn't support labels, they've made sure their new standard can support Gmail's currently proprietary way of handling mail correctly. Hopefully JMAP will take off and we'll see better email clients in the future.
Note that FastMail is developing JMAP, a replacement standard for IMAP. And even though FastMail itself doesn't support labels, they've made sure their new standard can support Gmail's currently proprietary way of handling mail correctly. Hopefully JMAP will take off and we'll see better email clients in the future.
You need to configure your client to do expunge in addition to delete.
I wonder if their attempt to force HTTPS everywhere (by shaming HTTP-only sites as insecure in Chrome) fits into this strategy.
It would put net neutrality violators like US ISPs out of the mass surveilla- ..eeeh advertising business, so I guess that is a good thing.
It would put net neutrality violators like US ISPs out of the mass surveilla- ..eeeh advertising business, so I guess that is a good thing.
I feel this one is highly positive enough to give them leeway. There are many types of browsing data, my porn habits as an egregious example, that I would prefer be constrained to a minimum number of entities.
Think driven to keep people safer and the same with Project Zero. A safer digital world and people will use more and Google then makes more money.
My gripe with the broader industry is that Google is finding a lot more of the big vulnerabilities than their competitors.
Should be a lot more balanced. I can not even think of one major one found by Apple. Yet Google has found so many of the really big ones. Today see an article they found additional.
My gripe with the broader industry is that Google is finding a lot more of the big vulnerabilities than their competitors.
Should be a lot more balanced. I can not even think of one major one found by Apple. Yet Google has found so many of the really big ones. Today see an article they found additional.
What exactly should Google do differently here, when they find bugs in other companies products?
The point is spending the money to find them.
I personally believe MS should have done this years before Google.
I personally believe MS should have done this years before Google.
On open source and standards Google has been a leader. Contributions:
1. VP8, VP9 and 90% of av1
2. WebRTC
3. Nacl/Pnacl that was killed by W3C for no technical reason, in favor of an inferior wasm
4. SpyDy inspiring http2
5. V8 js runtime
6. Angular js
7. ProtoBuf and grpc
8. Android
9. Huge contributions to the looking kernel, and many many open source libraries, like boring ssl
10. Brotli compression and other related tech
11. Go language
12. Tensorflow
13. ...
It's a bit sensationalist to label Google an "extinguisher". If anything, they're a huge enabler in software.
Now, all the above doesn't make itself. A company pays competent software engineers to work on this full time. I'm in complete support of Google's attempts to monetise Gmail, one of their largest services. After all someone needs to pay for those engineers, and most of all, Google is a for profit enterprise
You're free to transition to any of the other million standards compliant providers, there's no data lock-in. You can download your email via imap, another standard that was pushed by Google when the competition was only offering web-email
1. VP8, VP9 and 90% of av1
2. WebRTC
3. Nacl/Pnacl that was killed by W3C for no technical reason, in favor of an inferior wasm
4. SpyDy inspiring http2
5. V8 js runtime
6. Angular js
7. ProtoBuf and grpc
8. Android
9. Huge contributions to the looking kernel, and many many open source libraries, like boring ssl
10. Brotli compression and other related tech
11. Go language
12. Tensorflow
13. ...
It's a bit sensationalist to label Google an "extinguisher". If anything, they're a huge enabler in software.
Now, all the above doesn't make itself. A company pays competent software engineers to work on this full time. I'm in complete support of Google's attempts to monetise Gmail, one of their largest services. After all someone needs to pay for those engineers, and most of all, Google is a for profit enterprise
You're free to transition to any of the other million standards compliant providers, there's no data lock-in. You can download your email via imap, another standard that was pushed by Google when the competition was only offering web-email
> 8. Android
Have you tried to build pure AOSP lately? Hint: you pretty much can't, it's broken. Google plays super dirty with manufacturers that want to use Android.
Have you tried to build pure AOSP lately? Hint: you pretty much can't, it's broken. Google plays super dirty with manufacturers that want to use Android.
>and contributing to Chromium as a non-Googler is notoriously difficult.
so fork?
so fork?
Forking a big, fast moving, security critical piece of software like a browser is totally impractical unless you have a sizable company behind you to maintain it.
So what? Lots of things are impractical for individuals.
It's not just individuals. If people can't contribute to the project it is hard to build or maintain knowledge about that technology so another party can use it at all. Sharing code that few people de facto can use shouldn't give you much credit, or at least not as much as the alternative. Unless it is, as someone suggested, about signaling.
It's probably easier to just keep a set of diffs.
Even maintaining a patch against a rapidly changing codebase takes work, and then you've got to make builds. This is why people contribute changes upstream rather than everyone maintaining their own modified version of every application and library.
[edit: Moved here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16994356]
Microsoft...is becoming a good citizen of the technology community
By displaying deceptive ads about competitors in their flagship product?
Get out.
By displaying deceptive ads about competitors in their flagship product?
Get out.
To be fair, Google did the same thing. When chrome was new, they had banners on google.com suggesting you “upgrade” to Chrome for a better experience. And the banners weren’t only shown on outdated/old browsers (say, IE); they were shown on Firefox too.
They also show for Edge, of course. And don't go away no matter how many times you dismiss them. Firefox is currently my main browser, and there are only two things left on the Internet which truly annoy me.
- "Upgrade to Chrome?"
- "Subscribe to YouTube TV?"
No matter how many times you say "No", they'll both come back. And you know that's not bad code, because YouTube literally said it was part of business plan to annoy people until they pay up.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/21/17147800/youtube-streamin...
- "Upgrade to Chrome?"
- "Subscribe to YouTube TV?"
No matter how many times you say "No", they'll both come back. And you know that's not bad code, because YouTube literally said it was part of business plan to annoy people until they pay up.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/21/17147800/youtube-streamin...
Write more AGPL licensed code ;)
This is a very goofy article. Google has open source so many things that it is a bit crazy they give away. But who else open sources their OSs? Both Android and ChromeOS.
But the craziest one is giving away Borg. Probably the most incredible technology Google has created and just opens sources it.
For me personally the biggest contribution from Google is
https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
Kind of the opposite of what this article suggests.
I get some of the alt right has a problem with Google firing Damore but this article is ridiculous, IMO.
But the craziest one is giving away Borg. Probably the most incredible technology Google has created and just opens sources it.
For me personally the biggest contribution from Google is
https://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html
Kind of the opposite of what this article suggests.
I get some of the alt right has a problem with Google firing Damore but this article is ridiculous, IMO.
> Both Android and ChromeOS.
Which are only kind of open sourced.
Google only makes the lower levels available and both are designed in such a way that using Linux as kernel is largely irrelevant for anyone using the OS SDKs.
ChromeOS is mostly a Web browser juggler and as such the only way to develop for it is with the standard Web platform APIs.
Android is all about Google's version of Java, with plain ANSI C, C++ and a couple of native APIs on the NDK, everything else is not white listed as official NDK API and as of Android 7 trying to link to them will cause an application termination.
Which are only kind of open sourced.
Google only makes the lower levels available and both are designed in such a way that using Linux as kernel is largely irrelevant for anyone using the OS SDKs.
ChromeOS is mostly a Web browser juggler and as such the only way to develop for it is with the standard Web platform APIs.
Android is all about Google's version of Java, with plain ANSI C, C++ and a couple of native APIs on the NDK, everything else is not white listed as official NDK API and as of Android 7 trying to link to them will cause an application termination.
First, How does this have anything to do with the alt-right?
That's just a distraction from your argument that we shouldn't criticize the actions of Google because they give away some research. Google, and others, have turned open source into a free marketing campaign. Most of it is only open source in the "source available" sense.
You could fork it, but the sheer size and magnitude of insider contributions makes it as useful as packaged software that came with source code.
That's just a distraction from your argument that we shouldn't criticize the actions of Google because they give away some research. Google, and others, have turned open source into a free marketing campaign. Most of it is only open source in the "source available" sense.
You could fork it, but the sheer size and magnitude of insider contributions makes it as useful as packaged software that came with source code.
It appears a lot of the negative Google stuff I read is driven by emotions upset with the alt right thinking they are against them. Seems to have started with firing Damore.
I have ZERO problem criticizing anyone. But if we look at all the tech companies there has never been any tech company that give away more IP than Google. Nobody even close.
So my post is a lot more about removing the social politics emotions and look at actual data.
It is crazy giving away Borg and the K8S trademark. But Google has open sourced so much stuff. We have five OSs today. iOS, OS X, Windows, Android and ChromeOS.
Two are open source. Yes I realize there was a OSS of Apple OSs but that is NOT what is used today.
But then Chrome and well so many other things. But look at giving away Map/Reduce and GFS and so many other things in papers.
I tire a bit of the bitching on HN and really worry Google will end giving away stuff. It is hard to see why they continue. There is little in it for them.
I have ZERO problem criticizing anyone. But if we look at all the tech companies there has never been any tech company that give away more IP than Google. Nobody even close.
So my post is a lot more about removing the social politics emotions and look at actual data.
It is crazy giving away Borg and the K8S trademark. But Google has open sourced so much stuff. We have five OSs today. iOS, OS X, Windows, Android and ChromeOS.
Two are open source. Yes I realize there was a OSS of Apple OSs but that is NOT what is used today.
But then Chrome and well so many other things. But look at giving away Map/Reduce and GFS and so many other things in papers.
I tire a bit of the bitching on HN and really worry Google will end giving away stuff. It is hard to see why they continue. There is little in it for them.
> We have five OSs today. iOS, OS X, Windows, Android and ChromeOS.
> Two are open source.
Did you just ignore the likes of Linux & BSD? :D
(I mean, there are plenty more OSes of course, saying "we have 5 today" is incredibly far from the truth; but I expected at least these 2 to sound familiar for most HackerNews readers)
> Two are open source.
Did you just ignore the likes of Linux & BSD? :D
(I mean, there are plenty more OSes of course, saying "we have 5 today" is incredibly far from the truth; but I expected at least these 2 to sound familiar for most HackerNews readers)
have ZERO problem criticizing anyone. But if we look at all the tech companies there has never been any tech company that give away more IP than Google. Nobody even close.
Google only "gives away" IP that isn't part of their core business - just like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Where is the code for Google crawler and search algorithm? Gmail? Google Play Services? The back end for Google Docs?
Google only "gives away" IP that isn't part of their core business - just like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Where is the code for Google crawler and search algorithm? Gmail? Google Play Services? The back end for Google Docs?
Would argue nothing is more core than Borg. So would disagree.
I do think they are holding back some stuff and a big one is SDC stuff.
Plus we do not get the info until next release. So we got gen 1 TPUs after Gen 2. We will probably get gen 2 details with gen 3 release.
But Google shares so much more than any other tech company. I think possibly ever?
I do think they are holding back some stuff and a big one is SDC stuff.
Plus we do not get the info until next release. So we got gen 1 TPUs after Gen 2. We will probably get gen 2 details with gen 3 release.
But Google shares so much more than any other tech company. I think possibly ever?
That would be like saying nothing is more core to Microsoft than .NET, which they also gave away for free.
In reality, this is nonsense, because both are backend technical tools, NOT core products. Google is not going to open source Google Search any more than Microsoft is going to open source Windows: Google is a closed product company and they're not going to give away what actually makes them money.
Microsoft has actually been topping GitHub's contributions graph for a while. Even Apple's been opening a bunch of stuff up lately. And apart from some licensing squabbles, nearly everyone's been moving their frontend web code to a framework made by Facebook.
Of course, again, none of those companies open source their actual products, just like Google doesn't open source any of theirs. The closest place they come is open sourcing Android, but it's basically useless without the proprietary half of the OS, and Google uses a hilariously draconian contract to control everyone who uses Android, and they actively punish anyone who dares to fork it, because you're not actually supposed to fork Android.
In reality, this is nonsense, because both are backend technical tools, NOT core products. Google is not going to open source Google Search any more than Microsoft is going to open source Windows: Google is a closed product company and they're not going to give away what actually makes them money.
Microsoft has actually been topping GitHub's contributions graph for a while. Even Apple's been opening a bunch of stuff up lately. And apart from some licensing squabbles, nearly everyone's been moving their frontend web code to a framework made by Facebook.
Of course, again, none of those companies open source their actual products, just like Google doesn't open source any of theirs. The closest place they come is open sourcing Android, but it's basically useless without the proprietary half of the OS, and Google uses a hilariously draconian contract to control everyone who uses Android, and they actively punish anyone who dares to fork it, because you're not actually supposed to fork Android.
What has Google open sourced that would put it at a competitive disadvantage if a competitor uses it? Android? Earlier on they really didn't have a choice if they wanted to compete with Microsoft with the OEMs. When they became basically the only game in town for device manufacturers, they closef off much of what made Android Android to most people. Even Apple open sources stuff when they want to gain traction in a market as does Microsoft.
How is Google's strategy any different from Microsoft's and Netflix's? It would have been unthinkable a few years ago that MS would open source .Net and make it cross platform or gone through the trouble of creating Visual Studio Code that supports almost every popular language.
How is Google's strategy any different from Microsoft's and Netflix's? It would have been unthinkable a few years ago that MS would open source .Net and make it cross platform or gone through the trouble of creating Visual Studio Code that supports almost every popular language.
Android and Amazon using for the Echo and much of their hardware?
Google didn't have a choice but to "open source" Android to compete for OEMs against Microsoft. But as soon as they gained dominance, they started closing off more and more of what makes Android what it is to most people. Look at how many of Google Services are not only not available on Amazon devices, Google actively blocked YouTube from being on Amazon devices.
Besides, Android itself doesn't make Google money - advertising and to a lesser extent Google Play does. Why else would Google pay Apple $2 billion a year to be the preferred search provider on iOS?
Besides, Android itself doesn't make Google money - advertising and to a lesser extent Google Play does. Why else would Google pay Apple $2 billion a year to be the preferred search provider on iOS?
There are so much more OS out there than a plain 5.
"Android is open source".
So let’s take a look at it.
If I buy an Android device from Google today, can I use it just with the open source version of the OS? No, I can’t. Is there any device I can use just with the open source version? No.
So, what is in the proprietary version that isn’t in the open source version?
The Dialer is proprietary (since somewhere between 4.4 and 5.0), the Calendar is proprietary (since 4.4), the Contacts app is proprietary (since 4.4). The on-device search is proprietary (since 3.0), the homescreen app is proprietary (since 4.4).
The drivers are proprietary, the firmware is proprietary, the libraries to use recent openssl on older versions are proprietary, the only way to do wifi geolocation is proprietary, the only way to run in background is proprietary.
Android is as much open source as macOS is: Darwin is open source, and webkit is open source, but everything inbetween is proprietary.
I suggest you read https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on... to learn about why your statements about Android are deeply misleading
So let’s take a look at it.
If I buy an Android device from Google today, can I use it just with the open source version of the OS? No, I can’t. Is there any device I can use just with the open source version? No.
So, what is in the proprietary version that isn’t in the open source version?
The Dialer is proprietary (since somewhere between 4.4 and 5.0), the Calendar is proprietary (since 4.4), the Contacts app is proprietary (since 4.4). The on-device search is proprietary (since 3.0), the homescreen app is proprietary (since 4.4).
The drivers are proprietary, the firmware is proprietary, the libraries to use recent openssl on older versions are proprietary, the only way to do wifi geolocation is proprietary, the only way to run in background is proprietary.
Android is as much open source as macOS is: Darwin is open source, and webkit is open source, but everything inbetween is proprietary.
I suggest you read https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on... to learn about why your statements about Android are deeply misleading
Sure parts of Android are open source, but what makes Android what it is to most users is the open source part + a bunch of closed source Google parts. Google has been closing more of Android over the years....
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on...
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Android is becoming more closed source every year up til the point that they basically forked it without officially forking it. Apple has open sourced Darwin but the real goodies are in the closed source part of macOS.
>The “extinguish” with GMail is also well underway - it’s infamous for having an extremely strict spam filter for incoming emails from people who run personal or niche mail servers
And thank God for that. That's why their antispam is sooo good.
And thank God for that. That's why their antispam is sooo good.
You will never know or be able to judge until you get on the other side of it. The worst are companies who use gmail to accept unsolicited email from job applicants.
It's not a great first impression if you are asked to write something up (on a Careers page) and send it to some address and then are 5xx rejected and your email is blackholed and not even delivered to a SPAM folder.
Funny thing is that the 5xx message tells you to contact their gsuite admin to change some settings. :D I guess to get blackholed again.
It's not a great first impression if you are asked to write something up (on a Careers page) and send it to some address and then are 5xx rejected and your email is blackholed and not even delivered to a SPAM folder.
Funny thing is that the 5xx message tells you to contact their gsuite admin to change some settings. :D I guess to get blackholed again.
Google didn't invent the reputation-based antispam, or the DNS blacklisting, or all the annoying antispam features that make running your own email server difficult. The only thing Google added to the mix was applying its famous quality of customer service (or rather, lack thereof) to the problem.
At the time I signed up for Gmail they had by far the best antispam filter I'd seen (online or local). I would regularly have ~1000 spam emails per month in my spam box and false positives or negatives were extremely rare (~1/year?)
They invented using those things right, so I don't get spam.
Exactly. Because enforcing monopolies like that is a good thing? Isn't it?
Letting people spoof emails by ignoring SPF records isn't ideal either.
Gmail won because it fixed the biggest pain points with HTML email and spam. And so many years later nobody has come even close. That's not their fault.
And because Google realised they could afford to give you 1GB space when everyone else was offering ~10-20 MB, and because they launched it cleverly, with restricted signups making a gmail.com address a desirable thing.
But the complaint isn't about how GMail got to a dominant position, it's about what it does with that position.
But the complaint isn't about how GMail got to a dominant position, it's about what it does with that position.
And now you get to wonder what ideas people might have come up with, that you'd have loved, but got shut down immediately because Google doesn't let people break in with new ideas.
Being the best available option is good. Using a dominant position to try to ensure nobody is ever allowed to compete with you again in the future is bad, and in theory illegal.
Being the best available option is good. Using a dominant position to try to ensure nobody is ever allowed to compete with you again in the future is bad, and in theory illegal.
How would this play out in email? Users can have more than 1 email account, and even just forward from their old acct to their new one.
How would what play out?
If Google blackholes mail coming from new ("untrusted", therefore "spammy") providers, how does a new provider gain traction in the market?
They already do this with other services. YouTube is probably the single most-DMCA'd site on the internet, for example, but still gets prime search-result real estate. But if you try setting up a competing video site, Google will count how many DMCA notices it gets to take down links to your site, and penalize you in search results for being a no-good horrible copyright-violation-enabler.
Google is very very good at setting up situations where the rule for their property is different from the rule for everyone else, and for some reason it always favors the Google property...
If Google blackholes mail coming from new ("untrusted", therefore "spammy") providers, how does a new provider gain traction in the market?
They already do this with other services. YouTube is probably the single most-DMCA'd site on the internet, for example, but still gets prime search-result real estate. But if you try setting up a competing video site, Google will count how many DMCA notices it gets to take down links to your site, and penalize you in search results for being a no-good horrible copyright-violation-enabler.
Google is very very good at setting up situations where the rule for their property is different from the rule for everyone else, and for some reason it always favors the Google property...
Youtube surely does get a lot of DMCAs, but the vast, vast majority of copyright disputes are handled with a system meant to preclude DMCAs.
Secondly, do you have any evidence that DMCA claims are a ranking factor? Google search actually goes out of its way to point to sources showing takedowns, implying they do not agree with them.
Thirdly, Youtube has millions of incoming links. It's going to do pretty darn well in ranking no matter what.
Secondly, do you have any evidence that DMCA claims are a ranking factor? Google search actually goes out of its way to point to sources showing takedowns, implying they do not agree with them.
Thirdly, Youtube has millions of incoming links. It's going to do pretty darn well in ranking no matter what.
YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs, because it's a Google property. So it gets to live way up top.
And yes, Google has admitted that DMCA notices received for results to your site is something they'll factor in to rankings for non-Google properties:
https://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googl...
And yes, Google has admitted that DMCA notices received for results to your site is something they'll factor in to rankings for non-Google properties:
https://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googl...
I've never heard of that signal before, but it is interesting. I'm guessing it's designed to reduce the visibility of pirate stream websites.
However, "YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs" is still an unfounded claim. There are hundreds of signals. Failing at one does not prove collusion.
However, "YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs" is still an unfounded claim. There are hundreds of signals. Failing at one does not prove collusion.
Google properties, and certain special programs like new sites that use AMP, get preferred placement at the very top of the results page.
This is not some sort of weird way-out-there conspiracy theory. You can test it yourself by going to Google, typing in something likely to have a video result, and observing how Google showcases a YouTube result at the top.
Here's what I see, in a private/incognito tab, searching for the name of a recent popular music song and the artist, for example:
https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg
Literally everything in that box is a link to a Google property, or to further Google searches that will promote Google properties.
Below the fold (it's a large box) is a carousel of news stories about the topic, promoting Google News as a news aggregator.
The actual search results don't start until below that.
This is not some sort of weird way-out-there conspiracy theory. You can test it yourself by going to Google, typing in something likely to have a video result, and observing how Google showcases a YouTube result at the top.
Here's what I see, in a private/incognito tab, searching for the name of a recent popular music song and the artist, for example:
https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg
Literally everything in that box is a link to a Google property, or to further Google searches that will promote Google properties.
Below the fold (it's a large box) is a carousel of news stories about the topic, promoting Google News as a news aggregator.
The actual search results don't start until below that.
You're talking about verticals here, but it sounded like you were accusing them of manipulating organic results. That's what I was skeptical of.
It's worth mentioning though that vertical videos will pull from other sources as well. Here is an example of a vertical video result pulling from Vimeo.
https://i.imgur.com/9q7HavK.png
It's not specially hardcoded for Youtube. Youtube is just extremely popular in comparison to other video sites - especially for music queries like yours above.
Re: News, Google News is their index and engine for news results but those are still links to non-Google sites.
It's worth mentioning though that vertical videos will pull from other sources as well. Here is an example of a vertical video result pulling from Vimeo.
https://i.imgur.com/9q7HavK.png
It's not specially hardcoded for Youtube. Youtube is just extremely popular in comparison to other video sites - especially for music queries like yours above.
Re: News, Google News is their index and engine for news results but those are still links to non-Google sites.
Google's mobile support was horrific when they started penalizing other sites for a bad mobile experience.
Desktop and mobile searches are indexed separately, so they could hold high desktop rank even if mobile faltered.
Though I'm not sure which service you're referring to specifically. In most cases I would still expect inbound links to be very high, offsetting any mobile penalty.
Though I'm not sure which service you're referring to specifically. In most cases I would still expect inbound links to be very high, offsetting any mobile penalty.
Ask MailChimp or sendgrid, among a variety of others?
Isn't their HTML/CSS support atrocious? I mean, it might be a bit better than Outlook, but as far as HTML emails are concerned, it's more mobile browsers which have made it actually usable again:
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/email-client/gmail/
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/email-client/gmail/
I sure hope mail will not end up like chat, e.g. in a number of isolated services.
Having federated e-mail is more important to me than the feature of spam filtering.
Having federated e-mail is more important to me than the feature of spam filtering.
Yup. Between the spam filtering and their Inbox mobile app, I now actually have an email experience that doesn't make me dread incoming messages.
Google gets 97% of its income from selling ads and analytics, everything else they do or produce exists only to serve this goal and to strengthen their monopoly and entrench their position even further. A browser to dictate internet standards so they can push towards more surveillance, a mobile operating system so they can control most of the world's mobile devices with an iron fist, email service and cloud storage platform so they can get better profiling data and so on.
Any code that is shared for free under the guise of "open sourcing" is most of the time either a byproduct of their internal research that will not lose any value by sharing it (or will actually make non-employees extend it and work on it for free for Google's benefit), or something so specific to the company that nobody stands to gain anything from adopting it.
Google is first and foremost an advertising and user profiling company, it is useful to think about them from this perspective as it explains most of their actions with perfect clarity.
Any code that is shared for free under the guise of "open sourcing" is most of the time either a byproduct of their internal research that will not lose any value by sharing it (or will actually make non-employees extend it and work on it for free for Google's benefit), or something so specific to the company that nobody stands to gain anything from adopting it.
Google is first and foremost an advertising and user profiling company, it is useful to think about them from this perspective as it explains most of their actions with perfect clarity.
Actually 88% but close.
At their size it's hard to estimate but it's definitely in the 90% range. I've seen estimates of 85-99% of revenue coming from advertising.
You don't have to estimate it. They put the actual number in their earnings report.
They do on revenues but not for earnings.
Am I missing something here? Just seems like moaning. And the irony of the link on the side of the page to a Minecraft clone that's been embraced, extended and then abandoned because the author just can't be bothered any more (but you can send him money and maybe he'll change his mind) isn't lost on me.
> link on the side of the page to a Minecraft clone that's been embraced, extended and then abandoned
I'm not sure how a person doing a clone of something owned by a billion dollar corporation (Microsoft)...and then giving up on it...is the same thing. At all.
I'm not sure how a person doing a clone of something owned by a billion dollar corporation (Microsoft)...and then giving up on it...is the same thing. At all.
I don't think TrueCraft's history is at all comparible to embrace/extend/extinguish, nor does it make Google's behavior excusable if it were.
Agreed, this seems like moaning and does not contribute anything.
slander. Attack the content, not the author.
AMP's point isn't to "reward" faster pages. The mobile web is garbage and 80% of pages are hot dumpster UX fires that take several second to load.
AMP's point is to help standardize the excellence of the few pages that actually are performant. Any rankings boost was a carrot for early adopters. In july, page speed will have greater importantance ranking for pages generally.
AMP's point is to help standardize the excellence of the few pages that actually are performant. Any rankings boost was a carrot for early adopters. In july, page speed will have greater importantance ranking for pages generally.
The main externality of this open source EEE strategy is developer opportunity cost. When google swept into the chat market, they used their size and first mover advantage to push an open standard, XMPP. So developers who might have worked on other projects/standards naturally gravitated toward XMPP and contributed their time there. If those developers had known the future of XMPP, they likely would not have worked on it. They could have invested time in a competing, more open project instead.
This to me is the real danger. It’s bad enough that google gets to benefit from thousands of free contributors to its “open source” code. It’s even worse that they are taking those developers away from other projects, so that when google moves to the third phase of EEE, there are no viable alternatives.