5 ms·

The fact that they are opensource has very little to do with it. They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensou

by nudded 15y ago

The fact that they are opensource has very little to do with it. They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource. They are still in single control of the spec. This is not true with standard bodies where several companies can agree on it.

yanw 15y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594
jrockway 15y ago
They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Firefox does it too, right? Not everything works well via the standards model; first you have to experiment and test before you can write a good spec. That's what Chrome is; Google asking, "how can we make the web better"? (SPDY is a good example of this.) Ultimately, Google is like Microsoft in a lot of ways. They have a "platform" (the web via Chrome) that lets users use platform-specific applications in a variety of places. Apple is too; their platform is OSX and iOS. To provide the best user experience, you need to control the platform. Google is the only company that lets the Free Software community have the platform too.
- alexgartrell 15y ago
  You already disclose your employer in your profile, but you're probably going to want to do it in posts as well. As a counterpoint though, I would argue that Google Chrome using Google services (seemingly exclusively) for its sync functionality kind of looks like a business decision more so than experimentation with poorly defined standards.
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Yeah. I try to write as though I don't work for Google, because I know what the future looks like a few months out and am not supposed to tell anyone. Honestly, the culture of Google is very "write software for the sake of writing software". I promise you that anything that looks evil is a mere accident; sometimes programmers don't consider the ramifications of their actions. Google doesn't want to know who your friends and family are to sell your information to credit reporting agencies; they want to know so that when you type "photos" you get photos that are actually relevant to you. (Similarly, Google wants to know your travel history so it can tell that you prefer Oneworld carriers, and when you search for flights, display results in the order that's most relevant to you.) There's no way to prove this, though, and that's what's so frustrating. Come work for Google and you'll see :)
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      FWIW, I was actually pretty well convinced of this by reading Steven Levy's In the Plex.
    - BCM43 15y ago
      sometimes programmers don't consider the ramifications of their actions. And the google higher ups don't do anything about this because in the long run it makes them more money.
      - true_religion 15y ago
        Aren't the higher ups at Goolge also programmers?
      - jrockway 15y ago
        Yes, that's true. Google's goal is to organize the world's information for you. To organize it, they have to collect it. This makes them money because there's a lot of information out there, Google has a nice interface for searching it, and people will pay them (via their eyeballs currently) for that tool. The more information Google collects, the more convenient the product becomes, and the more value is generated. When you generate value, you generate money. "Don't be evil" is not just marketing copy.
    - timwiseman 15y ago
      Even if the programmer's intentions are purely about code, and even if we assume management right now is entirely benevolent, data like that is hard to take back. If it is handed over to a Google that wanst to provide "photos that are actually relevant to you" right now, it will still be there if Google morphs into one that "sell your information to credit reporting agencies" Overall I am a fan of Google's products and current policies, and I think some of the criticisms are overhyped. But with that said, I do think a "Google is benevolent, take our word for it..." statement should be taken with a grain of salt and an eye on possible futures.
    - luser001 15y ago
      > sometimes programmers don't consider the ramifications of their actions. Google doesn't want to know who your friends and family are to sell your information to credit reporting agencies I bet the execs and product managers realize the ramifications. If all of them profess to not realizing the ramifications, the following old quote probably applies. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23510.Upton_Sinclair http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23510.Upton_Sinclair
  - Kadrith 15y ago
    I like that Google does this and think it is in the best interests of the Internet and most people in involved. By creating opensource implementations and testing them we can move things forward faster; rather than letting people tie up standards in committee for years or creating something that can't be implemented well.
enjalot 15y ago
> They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource This is kind of a ridiculous statement, I'm sorry. The very definition of opensource precludes any kind of cover. The critical piece of "embrace, extend, extinguish" is the extinguish, and by being opensource that isn't possible. Google is pushing technologies in certain directions, as other commenters have noted, but it lacks a threat because the second Google does something evil with their proprietary tech, it either gets forked or replaced.
- ootachi 15y ago
  That's completely false. You, as a programmer who wants to fork Chrome, do not have the advertising power and reach that Google has. You do not have the Google.com home page. You do not have the ability to air ads during the Super Bowl. You do not have the Google brand. Instead, you have a pile of source code and a compiler. Despite what people would like to think, technologies do not generally win because of their technical superiority (although Chrome is a damn good browser). They win for innumerable other reasons unrelated to things that engineers do. The fact is, open source or not, Google has total control over Chrome. The fact that somebody with vastly inferior resources could fork it is not a credible threat to that control.
  - sherwin 15y ago
    What about a competitor with comparable resources? Not really challenging your claim, I'm actually just curious. Why don't Google's competitors just use Google's own OSS against them? Say Facebook acquires Rockmelt, which is based on Chromium. Rockmelt as an independent browser isn't much of a threat, but with Facebook's resources (money, engineering, publicity), they could easily bake in their own social stuff on top of an already amazing browser. Same thing with Amazon/Kindle and Android.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      Well, yeah, those competitors could (leverage Google's OSS against it). But an open source community, outside of some company control, not as easily if at all. Take for example Mozilla/Firefox. Well, didn't it do very well, and in many places, won over IE? It did. But it did it: (1) Starting with the branding/product/code made by a huge (at the time) company (Netscape). (2) Having mostly people from said company working on the Mozilla version. (3) When Netscape died, it almost took Mozilla with it. (4) Firefox revived the interest in the browser big time, but Firefox lives on a $100M a year Google subsidy. Would Firefox still be worked at a competitive pace without Google's money? I seriously doubt it.

by nudded 15y ago

yanw 15y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3456594

jrockway 15y ago

They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource. The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Firefox does it too, right? Not everything works well via the standards model; first you have to experiment and test before you can write a good spec. That's what Chrome is; Google asking, "how can we make the web better"? (SPDY is a good example of this.) Ultimately, Google is like Microsoft in a lot of ways. They have a "platform" (the web via Chrome) that lets users use platform-specific applications in a variety of places. Apple is too; their platform is OSX and iOS. To provide the best user experience, you need to control the platform. Google is the only company that lets the Free Software community have the platform too.

alexgartrell 15y ago
You already disclose your employer in your profile, but you're probably going to want to do it in posts as well. As a counterpoint though, I would argue that Google Chrome using Google services (seemingly exclusively) for its sync functionality kind of looks like a business decision more so than experimentation with poorly defined standards.
- jrockway 15y ago
  Yeah. I try to write as though I don't work for Google, because I know what the future looks like a few months out and am not supposed to tell anyone. Honestly, the culture of Google is very "write software for the sake of writing software". I promise you that anything that looks evil is a mere accident; sometimes programmers don't consider the ramifications of their actions. Google doesn't want to know who your friends and family are to sell your information to credit reporting agencies; they want to know so that when you type "photos" you get photos that are actually relevant to you. (Similarly, Google wants to know your travel history so it can tell that you prefer Oneworld carriers, and when you search for flights, display results in the order that's most relevant to you.) There's no way to prove this, though, and that's what's so frustrating. Come work for Google and you'll see :)
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    FWIW, I was actually pretty well convinced of this by reading Steven Levy's In the Plex.
  - BCM43 15y ago
    sometimes programmers don't consider the ramifications of their actions. And the google higher ups don't do anything about this because in the long run it makes them more money.
    - true_religion 15y ago
      Aren't the higher ups at Goolge also programmers?
    - jrockway 15y ago
      Yes, that's true. Google's goal is to organize the world's information for you. To organize it, they have to collect it. This makes them money because there's a lot of information out there, Google has a nice interface for searching it, and people will pay them (via their eyeballs currently) for that tool. The more information Google collects, the more convenient the product becomes, and the more value is generated. When you generate value, you generate money. "Don't be evil" is not just marketing copy.
  - timwiseman 15y ago
    Even if the programmer's intentions are purely about code, and even if we assume management right now is entirely benevolent, data like that is hard to take back. If it is handed over to a Google that wanst to provide "photos that are actually relevant to you" right now, it will still be there if Google morphs into one that "sell your information to credit reporting agencies" Overall I am a fan of Google's products and current policies, and I think some of the criticisms are overhyped. But with that said, I do think a "Google is benevolent, take our word for it..." statement should be taken with a grain of salt and an eye on possible futures.
  - luser001 15y ago
    > sometimes programmers don't consider the ramifications of their actions. Google doesn't want to know who your friends and family are to sell your information to credit reporting agencies I bet the execs and product managers realize the ramifications. If all of them profess to not realizing the ramifications, the following old quote probably applies. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23510.Upton_Sinclair http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23510.Upton_Sinclair
- Kadrith 15y ago
  I like that Google does this and think it is in the best interests of the Internet and most people in involved. By creating opensource implementations and testing them we can move things forward faster; rather than letting people tie up standards in committee for years or creating something that can't be implemented well.

enjalot 15y ago

> They are trying to push certain technologies into certain directions under the cover of opensource This is kind of a ridiculous statement, I'm sorry. The very definition of opensource precludes any kind of cover. The critical piece of "embrace, extend, extinguish" is the extinguish, and by being opensource that isn't possible. Google is pushing technologies in certain directions, as other commenters have noted, but it lacks a threat because the second Google does something evil with their proprietary tech, it either gets forked or replaced.

ootachi 15y ago
That's completely false. You, as a programmer who wants to fork Chrome, do not have the advertising power and reach that Google has. You do not have the Google.com home page. You do not have the ability to air ads during the Super Bowl. You do not have the Google brand. Instead, you have a pile of source code and a compiler. Despite what people would like to think, technologies do not generally win because of their technical superiority (although Chrome is a damn good browser). They win for innumerable other reasons unrelated to things that engineers do. The fact is, open source or not, Google has total control over Chrome. The fact that somebody with vastly inferior resources could fork it is not a credible threat to that control.
- sherwin 15y ago
  What about a competitor with comparable resources? Not really challenging your claim, I'm actually just curious. Why don't Google's competitors just use Google's own OSS against them? Say Facebook acquires Rockmelt, which is based on Chromium. Rockmelt as an independent browser isn't much of a threat, but with Facebook's resources (money, engineering, publicity), they could easily bake in their own social stuff on top of an already amazing browser. Same thing with Amazon/Kindle and Android.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    Well, yeah, those competitors could (leverage Google's OSS against it). But an open source community, outside of some company control, not as easily if at all. Take for example Mozilla/Firefox. Well, didn't it do very well, and in many places, won over IE? It did. But it did it: (1) Starting with the branding/product/code made by a huge (at the time) company (Netscape). (2) Having mostly people from said company working on the Mozilla version. (3) When Netscape died, it almost took Mozilla with it. (4) Firefox revived the interest in the browser big time, but Firefox lives on a $100M a year Google subsidy. Would Firefox still be worked at a competitive pace without Google's money? I seriously doubt it.