> Without Chrome, we’d be at the mercy of Internet Explorer or other web browsers when users want to get to Google.
How so? Is Matt (or Google) afraid that other web browsers would block Google properties?
I never saw Chrome as the way for Google to ascertain that the general public can have unfettered access to Google properties, I saw - and see - Chrome as a way to extend the Google eco-system onto the end users device, and to gain access to URLs that otherwise would remain hidden from Google to reduce the 'dark web' as seen through Google as well as a way to track users on pages that don't have Google Analytics installed. When technically speaking it really shouldn't matter what browser the users uses, as long as it is standards compliant it should simply work.
Killing off reader didn't do much to level the playingfield either, RSS is so much more open than everything that tries to replace it.
On the whole, Matt is on the ball that Google would be a better company ('less evil') if they were willing and able to play on a level playingfield but I don't see Google as a company willing to do either. They could if they really wanted to, but they are definitely not doing that.
Between the corporate newspeak about how every change that violates consumer privacy even more that gets hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread and Googles abuse of their muscle when it comes to such things as copyright violation on an unprecedented scale Google, if anything, seems to be totally allergic to level playing fields.
Anyway, props to Matt for making public his call on Google to be nicer (especially during his leave), let's see what will happen because of this.
> Is Matt (or Google) afraid that other web browsers would block Google properties?
No, they're afraid that other web browsers will fail to implement features that Google needs unless Google has a significant say in the standardisation process by means of having a web browser. They'd be at the mercy of other web browsers for those features otherwise.
What about all those other companies not being Google, Apple and Microsoft?
Do they not get a 'significant say in the standardization process' because they don't have a web browser? And if not why should those who have a web browser get a say? Much less a significant one? The only way this matters is if you extend the capabilities of your browser outside the standards process. So if everybody would follow the standard then that wouldn't be a problem.
No more Microsoft sites that only work with IE (remember Active-X/COM objects?) no more Google using features that are only present in Chrome to cripple Google docs on Firefox.
The implementers, sad as it is, get the final say on what they implement. Standards organisations can standardise whatever they want, but if the implementers don't want to implement stuff they won't. Hence we don't have XForms and all the rest of XHTML 2.0, nobody's implemented Persona despite that being a standard, etc etc.
Google can pressure others to agree to follow a standard by being an implementer, and they do. (There is practically nothing accessible from a general web page on Chrome that isn't defined in a standards document or draft standards document.)
We, unfortunately, don't live in a perfect world where web developers can unilaterally force browser implementers to implement standards - Google is a large company that heavily depends on the web, and needs to be able to do that. For the most part, other companies can contribute to Firefox to get that, but Google likely decided the politics and potential bad PR of that ("Google are taking over Firefox") were not worth it for them.
If everybody merely followed the standard and didn't extend their browser, progress and innovation would slow down quite a bit. At the very least, with Chrome Google put some fire under javascript performance and encryption/SPDY.
Google Chrome adds a competitive edge in the browser market. We need that competition. You want them to be nice? They're being nice to consumers. Do they collect data about which sites we go to? Well I'm pretty sure that they have opt-in programs for that but that's not by default. Unless you can show otherwise.
>I never saw Chrome as the way for Google to ascertain that the general public can have unfettered access to Google properties, I saw - and see - Chrome as a way to extend the Google eco-system onto the end users device, and to gain access to URLs that otherwise would remain hidden from Google to reduce the 'dark web' as seen through Google as well as a way to track users on pages that don't have Google Analytics installed. When technically speaking it really shouldn't matter what browser the users uses, as long as it is standards compliant it should simply work.
Agreed, things like Chrome and Android appear to be moats against a new search engine not being able to compete on a level playing field. For example, on Android, in order to get access to the Play Store and other Google APIs, OEMs are forced to ship only Google as the default search provider.
>The agreement is basically a laundry list of "dos and don'ts" for licensing Google apps. The terms at the time covered the "Set-up Wizard, Google Phone-top Search, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, YouTube, Google Maps for Mobile, Google Street View, Contact Sync, Android Market Client (not products downloaded from Android Market
>The most important clause states that "Devices may only be distributed if all Google Applications... are pre-installed on the Device." Google apps are an all-or-nothing affair. If you want Google Maps or the Play Store, you must also take things like Google+ and Google's network location provider
>Google's Network Location Provider must not only be included, but set as the default network location provider; this is no doubt the clause that triggered a lawsuit from rival location company Skyhook.
60fps video works in Firefox Nightly, though it still has issues if the connection has troubles. The about:config property is media.mediasource.enabled.
As Google has come to dominate the browser market, they've slowly made Chrome more and more integrated and reliant their own propriety services. They've done away with the concept of a homepage and exclusively control what the new tab page looks like. There's no way for users to set a competitor's site as the new tab page.
Each have their own definitions and ethic (or maybe aesthetic is a better description). Google have a strong advantage in discovery. They have more influence on "discovery" of everything from podcasts, books, applications, journalists, and everything else than any other company. They certainly use that weight. They can get users to any of their products. But, it is true that these products are not usually very lock-in. Search is very easy to switch from. Gmail is pretty easy. Network effect products like Wave, talk, circles, hangouts are actually the products Google has had trouble getting traction with. They got users, but not the lead in their markets.
MS have "weight" with OEMs and decision makers at companies from one man shows to fortune 500. They use that, which creates a nasty distance between liking the software you personally use and the decision to keep using it. Even Berkshire Hathaway's website is made with frontpage.
Apple have an interesting version of this. It may be their achilles heel, but it's also made them bold and creative. Apple products sell to the public, not to businesses and not through businesses. They don't rely on deals with OEMs, retailers, distributors, corporate buyers or telcoms to make sales. They don't even rely on discounts and competitive pricing. They definitely don't chase price/feature niches. More than any other company they rely on sheer consumer demand for their products. That means they would find it very hard to survive a "Windows Vista" period of ambivalence about their products. The trait is probably a long term liability. But, it is a version of level paying field, win by winning approach that produces bold product decisions.
All three are "cheats" by some standards, including (probably) the standards of the other two.
> There's no way for users to set a competitor's site as the new tab page.
I just tried setting my default search provider to Bing under settings, and it shows up on the new tab page just as Google does. I'm one version behind latest stable, on OS X... does this not work in your version of Chrome?
It seems the other three search engines in the dropdown don't do this, though, but my reading of the link is that they all have the option to provide Google with some UI.
> They've done away with the concept of a homepage and exclusively control what the new tab page looks like. There's no way for users to set a competitor's site as the new tab page
Huh? This isn't true at all. There are a ton of new tab page extensions and all the functionality you'd want that's in the default one (like most visited sites) is available through the extension APIs.
Google throws its weight around just as much as Microsoft ever did, they just smile while they do it.
I think it's less a matter of attitude and more a matter of being really, really good at doing it either unobtrusively or at least in a way that people won't mind or won't understand.
With so many years of experience with how users interact with information, they have the potential for unprecedented insight into the realities of UI interaction.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, and I agree that Google isn't doing us as users any favors in this regard (any more than Microsoft ever did or does), but there's more behind the fact that they're getting away with it among less user outrage than simply public image.
I run my own XMPP server (prosody), yet use google apps for my domain; due to an annoying chain of dependencies, this means I can't use Google Photos.
To allow other google users reach you at your non-google server, Talk+Hangouts have to be disabled in the google apps admin console -> Google+ doesn't work without Hangouts enabled -> Google Photos doesn't work without Google+ enabled.
The fact this happens seems to mean that google does not want to play on a level field; but wants to build a walled garden.
Google Apps have always been a tack-on for many of Google's smaller services. Google+ was completely unavailable for Apps at first. Now Inbox is unavailable.
It's a fairly conservative product targeted primarily at organizations who value stability over new features. "A personal account with vanity address," while popular with geeks, is not really the intended use.
Do you have any suggested alternatives for free email hosting with BYO domain?
I don't entirely trust myself to run an email server.
Even if I do, are there trustworthy secondary MXs?
I also really like google voice; and am sad I can no longer call from inside gmail.
I don't know of any other reliable services for completely free calls to USA.
How are you trying to do it? If I hit the search icon on the chat pane, I can type in a number and call from Google Voice. It opens a new Hangouts window, but that's what it's been doing for as long as I remember, and certainly the last year at least.
> How are you trying to do it? If I hit the search icon on the chat pane, I can type in a number and call from Google Voice. It opens a new Hangouts window, but that's what it's been doing for as long as I remember, and certainly the last year at least.
If you run your own XMPP server, you have to disable google Talk, which disables the calling from gmail (in addition to much more)
Personally, I use Google Apps with a vanity domain :) That's how I know. The only (free) alternative left seems to be Yandex[1] which comes with its own host of privacy issues.
You don't really need a secondary MX when running your own mail server. Senders will keep retrying for a week or so when your server is down.
Secondary makes the whole setup much more complicated because then you need to synchronize anti-spam and other configuration between them. And move data back when the primary server comes back online.
[1] https://pdd.yandex.ru/domains_add/ You need a regular Yandex Mail account first. The domain panel is in Russian only but works with Google translate. Webmail is decent and available in English.
> Do you have any suggested alternatives for free email hosting with BYO domain?
I've been using hotmail/livemail/outlook.com with a custom domain (dns hosted elsewhere) for free for the past 10 years. I have enabled two factor authentication and also use this account as my primary Windows login. I'm not sure if this is still available (i consider it almost too nice to be true) but this has always worked very well for me. The place I set this up was https://domains.live.com
Edit: it is indeed not available anymore for free, I can continue using existing accounts, but cannot manage/add accounts using my domain unless I upgrade to Office 365.
I just use my domain registrar's mail server and forward my vanity email to a standard gmail address - then you can set your default From: to be your vanity address in your gmail and enjoy the benefits of having a completely standard gmail account.
Even if you don't use Google Apps it's also not possible to have own XMPP address that happens to look the same as an e-mail address that Google knows about (even if it's non-Google address and non-Google XMPP). When they see it they route GTalk users' messages straight to GMail chat, bypassing XMPP.
> Even if you don't use Google Apps it's also not possible to have own XMPP address that happens to look the same as an e-mail address that Google knows about (even if it's non-Google address and non-Google XMPP). When they see it they route GTalk users' messages straight to GMail chat, bypassing XMPP.
> [A specific company I won't call out explicitly] sucked contacts out of Gmail but refused to export contacts back out.
I'm guessing everybody read [A specific company] as "Facebook", but I know for sure of at least one other company, and possibly two, that it could refer to :-) In fact, now that I think about it, I can think of several candidates.
But let's talk about reciprocity. Who owns your contacts? You, or Google? If you want to export contacts out of Google's services, why should Google stop you just because the other service does not reciprocate? Sure, Google makes it easier than most, but isn't that also what their users wanted? If the user truly wants the other service to also export contacts as easily, that's between the user and that other service.
Now consider that Gmail is in the top 3 biggest email providers next to Yahoo and Hotmail/Live/Outlook/Whatever-it's-called now. Very likely it is now the biggest, and so they have the biggest set of contacts data in the world. If any 3rd party service wants access to those contacts, Google wields a disproportionate amount of power over them, and as this post shows, is willing to apply it by "requiring reciprocity".
Interestingly, I see here a very similar spirit to the one of GPL - you only get to use our stuff if you share yours on the same terms. Many people avoid GPL exactly because of that. There are arguments though that this feature of GPL is what safeguards freedom, and I think one could try and make similar arguments in case of reciprocity here.
> The desire for a level playing field also partly explains why Chrome and Android are so important. Without Chrome, we’d be at the mercy of Internet Explorer or other web browsers when users want to get to Google
Except that Chrome download notices appear at the bottom of Google's homepage for non chrome users, or at least have in the past.
I see where Matt is coming from here but when you are dealing with Google as a competitor, rivals are going to try everything to get back market share. If Google is going to use its competitive advantage in search to push its other products why shouldn't anyone else?
Google's attitude towards Windows Phone shows nicely how much they strive for leveling the playing field. Or we could look at Google Maps on mobile IE -- in WP 8, it is horrible, in GDR1 it works very well, all that's changed is the user agent.
The list of weird google bugs on WP8 is pretty long. If I search for a video on youtube sometimes the first result is an ad. It loads about 0.2 seconds later than the other results. If you click the first result before the ad loads it takes you to the ad instead of the first result! This has been the case for at least 6 months
The biggest 'improvement' they did to IE in GDR1 is faking user agents so mobile sites think it's an Android browser so the site appears correctly. At the moment, IE on WP does 100/100 in ACID3. It does not support HTML5 as well as Chrome on Android though - but I really doubt that that's the main reason why Google stuff does not work well on it (as the previous example shows it as well).
Well put, Matt. I take it it fell on deaf ears, given that Google users stopped communicating with me over XMPP before that and it has never worked again?
Can anyone tell me how many things in this list are about a "level playing field" or "do no evil". If Apple or MS did even half of the things in this list, people would be screaming about it from rooftops a couple of decades later, but as Assange noted, Google seems to get a free pass.
Most of the Google search page area is now occupied by ads, or ads disguised as content
Decreasing contrast in the background of ads, this especially hurts older people as ability to see contrast decreases with age, and the FTC found that almost half the people fail to notice that there are ads on the page, thus forcing products that are first in the organic results to pay Google for ads.
Tracking the emails in the free Google Apps for Education and even paid Google Apps for Business to build ad profiles, making misleading statements to the public that they're not doing so, and then when it finally came to having to make statements to federal court, having to tell the truth about it and then claiming the consumer Gmail policy applied to Apps for Education data.
Tracking the physical location of Android phones for ad purposes without properly informing users and disabling things like Google Now if you disable the tracking.
Google employee accesses personal information of others. Google says it has fixed the issue, but how do we even know? Is there any legal safeguard against someone at Google reading your email?
Stopping Acer from shipping Aliyun OS by threatening to pull the Play Store and Android beta access. Bonus points for enforcing this by the duplicitous moniker 'Open Handset Alliance' doublespeak
Making people literally cry with the forced Google+ integration into Youtube and making confusing UX to make people share more than they want to, in order to compete with Facebook.
I think most of these are probably pretty weak, but I have ranted about the contrast one before and tested it myself on my own laptop. I think they finally changed it. And I suggested admission of wrongdoing in the employee poaching fiasco too.
Why can't Matt say that? Effectively he is saying that. And saying it from his now-extended-to-2015 leave. It's a pretty powerful statement. And it makes me wonder if he's going to return to Google or move on.
If they want to level the playing field they should properly support oauth and openid. That means letting me log into Google services with an external provider.
>"Without Android, phone makers could shut Google out of mobile phones completely. Chrome and Android help ensure that users can get to Google without interference; they protect our users from other companies’ potentially unlevel playing fields."
Isn't this just saying that Google won't block its own services on Android? There's no guarantee that Google won't block some other search engine. FWIW, I think the App Store / Google Play stores are the biggest obstacles to openness. They are literally determining what users can and cannot be run on their respective platforms.
Yes, but there's a second-order effect. By having Android be a compelling platform, iCloud (or whatever) can't be as easily competitive in the marketplace as a data silo. If my only option for a cell phone were iOS, I'd probably be a lot more willing to buy into Continuity and some of the other Mac-and-iOS-only features.
On the subject of platform curation, it's worth noting that Android lets you sideload apps with a checkbox, and the most generous interpretation is that Apple wants you to pay $99 for the privilege. But I also think it's possible to run an app store ethically and fairly, on a "level playing field" if you will, and in fact Google and Microsoft are both top developers on Apple's.
>"Without Android, phone makers could shut Google out of mobile phones completely. Chrome and Android help ensure that users can get to Google without interference; they protect our users from other companies’ potentially unlevel playing fields."
This quote just rings so incredibly hollow.
I challenge anyone to name one mobile-OS (or OS in general) who has blocked Google servies ever. And no, not being the default is not blocking. First one to do so would be facing widespread consumer outrage, so I doubt anyone is even considering this.
Now turn it around, and ask if Google has ever blocked anything for its competitors (XMPP, apps on WP, non-Chrome browser access to Google-services, blocking non-Chrome browsers with Google-only DRM, non-Google advertising on Android, etc etc).
I think it's pretty obvious which one is need of having its playing field leveled, and it's not Google. Not by a mile.
> I challenge anyone to name one mobile-OS (or OS in general) who has blocked Google servies ever.
Google Chrome on iOS uses a different engine because Apple controls what engine can be used by browsers. That's a restriction placed on Google - although the fact that Google happily uses a different engine on that platform is a pretty big hint that when they want the user data they'll compromise on stuff like this.
To me, the biggest problem I have in my interactions with Google (and it's growing over time) is that I never feel like their customer. I don't pay them anything (now that they've sold Motorola, they don't make phones, and they don't seem to charge for the OS on the phone), they don't have products I can buy. They just... put stuff out for me to use, and make money off ads. So there's this rather disquieting mismatch between what I as a user want from them and what they do, because their money doesn't come from me, it comes from people who buy ads. And they need to put SOME effort into user satisfaction, because they need users to have someone to look at the ads that they sell, but there's still a mismatch between user wants and Google offerings. Google Reader is probably the canonical example -- yeah, it wasn't a widely used service, but the users it did have were devoted, and might even have paid to keep using it. But it didn't matter, as Google Reader didn't line up with how Google wanted to sell ads now. So it got the axe. And it's in those moments of powerlessness -- where you have no say over what Google does, because you're not its customer, you're just its user -- that Google loses its appeal. It's not evil, it may even be a level playing field. But that sort of user powerlessness makes me uncomfortable using Google stuff going forward.
Google used to care about an open and interoperable web. Not any more. Most of their web apps suck in browsers that aren't Chrome and with no good reason considering most other browsers are completely capable. Google continues to advertise Chrome on www.google.com while not opening that same lucrative advertisent spot to anyone else. Level playing field my ass.
When he actually does something to level the field, I'll tune in. Until then it seems like Matt is ittle more than a PR drone these days.
> When he actually does something to level the field, I'll tune in. Until then it seems like Matt is ittle more than a PR drone these days.
I think you are completely missing the point here. Matt is setting this thing out for the world to see, that is the employee equivalent of displaying your dis-satisfaction with how the company and its management reacted to your previous pleas. It's a pretty brave thing to do and it definitely is not good PR for Google to have this thing out there.
What it does is make me respect Matt a bit more, rather than less.
I would imaging reciprosity and level playing field would require Google's robots.txt to be an open free-for-all. I mean, since we're talking about embracing the open web. I Googled "is Google crawlable" and similar and that doesn't seem to be a thing. I checked the robots.txt and that seems to disallow a lot of stuff. Search, news, groups, images, etc. [1]
Google does a great job of taking the open web, repackaging it, slapping it up behind a (crawling) wall, extracting maximum cash from the result. It will always be able to suck in your content "think of the users!" but that'll generally be a 1-way street. Yes there are API's, but that's still a different relationship to "we crawl whatever we want, we put any content we want in our search results, because users".
Unrelated: Chrome (which I use and love) also had the added benefit of reducing the amount of money they'd be paying to Firefox for the search deal. Not a terrible outcome. It might even have paid for itself right there, but that's utter speculation.
The comments (amazingly) have some insights - including someone who used his chat history to analyse his changing vocabulary and more - quite a fascinating idea for those who will live digital lives for decades.
But what seems to be missing is simpler - googles core function is search and until that is a level playing field we are all at the mercy of Google. I am not a reactionary "nationalise everything" but the biggest uses of global data surely surely must be public goods and treated as such?
While i like the approach described by that post, many things are hardly something that is applied by them or others in RL, money is what drives decisions.
After all is said and done, Google is still the fairest company and the Google ecosystem is the most open. Seriously, can you imagine a world with out Google? Can you imagine a world were we're at the mercy of Apple & Microsoft? I just can't stomach that with Apple & Microsoft you have to pay to program your own device! You can dislike and criticize Google all you want this doesn't change the facts.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-chro...
> Without Chrome, we’d be at the mercy of Internet Explorer or other web browsers when users want to get to Google.
How so? Is Matt (or Google) afraid that other web browsers would block Google properties?
I never saw Chrome as the way for Google to ascertain that the general public can have unfettered access to Google properties, I saw - and see - Chrome as a way to extend the Google eco-system onto the end users device, and to gain access to URLs that otherwise would remain hidden from Google to reduce the 'dark web' as seen through Google as well as a way to track users on pages that don't have Google Analytics installed. When technically speaking it really shouldn't matter what browser the users uses, as long as it is standards compliant it should simply work.
Killing off reader didn't do much to level the playingfield either, RSS is so much more open than everything that tries to replace it.
On the whole, Matt is on the ball that Google would be a better company ('less evil') if they were willing and able to play on a level playingfield but I don't see Google as a company willing to do either. They could if they really wanted to, but they are definitely not doing that.
Between the corporate newspeak about how every change that violates consumer privacy even more that gets hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread and Googles abuse of their muscle when it comes to such things as copyright violation on an unprecedented scale Google, if anything, seems to be totally allergic to level playing fields.
Anyway, props to Matt for making public his call on Google to be nicer (especially during his leave), let's see what will happen because of this.