8 ms·

Agreed on your first two. I don't understand either of the second. Native app markets are not necessarily a threat to the open internet... only ones that are lo

Agreed on your first two. I don't understand either of the second. Native app markets are not necessarily a threat to the open internet... only ones that are locked-down "walled gardens." And WebM and WebP are openly licensed specs.

tedunangst 14y ago
Open specs controlled by one company are only kind of open, especially when they can iterate the spec faster than smaller competitors can keep up. Here's a doomsday scenario with WebM. Google 1) updates the spec, 2) releases a new version of Chrome, and 3) transcodes all the videos on Youtube to the new format. The question becomes, can Google accomplish those three things faster than Apple/Microsoft/Mozilla can release updated browsers? The spec is open, even the source is open, so all you have to do is recompile and push an update to all your users whenever Google says so if you don't want them to see the "Your browser is obsolete" warning message.
- ok_craig 14y ago
  Is this seriously something people think would happen? Wouldn't the internet at large be up in arms at Google for this kind of behavior?
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    Like I said, it's a sort of doomsday scenario. Then again, I've seen comments here on HN calling IE obsolete specifically because it didn't implement some HTML5 subspec that had been updated less than 48 hours before. It's hard to predict what will or will not enrage the internet.
- zobzu 14y ago
  While a horde of zombies voted you down I quite agree with that point of view. Even if it's not as black & white Google already attempts a lot of this. They basically want to be the ones to decide. There's no "consortium" it's just "lets push feat ZZ on our websites, web clients, and say its the new feat everyone has to support. Plus its open source anyway we're the good guys!" If others disagree well, so far it's been pretty much a grey area. Google keeps pushing the technologies others refused. But when Google controls even more of the market, let's say with 50%+ Chrome (they have the market already, website wise, except for FB.), there won't be a need to push anymore. It'll be Google's way or, well, nothing. Even if it's features that are released within 48H.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  This is absurd scenario on top of infeasbily-expensively-absurd scenario. Google has no desire to do this, it would completely fly in the way of WebM's original goals. Further, the idea that YouTube could retranscode content in any sort of timeline like that...
taligent 14y ago
It's from the article, "Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”" When you run the second biggest app market in the world it makes you sound like just a bit of a hypocrite. And my issue with WebM/WebP is that Google just seems to release these standards with a complete disregard for what the rest of the industry is doing or has done. True openness happens when you have established open standards that everyone uses.
- magicalist 14y ago
  > It's from the article, "Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”" He didn't say that though. It seems like Wired added the Apple part. The only quote in the Guardian article (which I don't think includes the full interview, unless I'm missing the link), just says '"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."' Which in most cases is a true statement. > And my issue with WebM/WebP is that Google just seems to release these standards with a complete disregard for what the rest of the industry is doing or has done. You only see the "established open standards that everyone uses" when you ignore the long painful sausage-making process.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    > "For example, all the information in apps – that data is > not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."' > Which in most cases is a true statement. Is it? Not crawlable does not mean non searchable. Google cannot crawl my messages too (I hope so!), but I can search in them.
    - magicalist 14y ago
      Yes, and private messages should remain private (and hopefully searchable). Balkanized data isn't necessarily bad, and there are lots of shades of grey there. As two examples, though, if the only way to search Twitter is Twitter, and Twitter won't let you search for tweets older than a week or two, then you're out of luck. More hypothetically, if most people used Wordpress for blogging for the last 15 years, and Wordpress didn't allow indexing by search engines, but only searching on Wordpress.com, we would not have the internet we have today.

tedunangst 14y ago

Open specs controlled by one company are only kind of open, especially when they can iterate the spec faster than smaller competitors can keep up. Here's a doomsday scenario with WebM. Google 1) updates the spec, 2) releases a new version of Chrome, and 3) transcodes all the videos on Youtube to the new format. The question becomes, can Google accomplish those three things faster than Apple/Microsoft/Mozilla can release updated browsers? The spec is open, even the source is open, so all you have to do is recompile and push an update to all your users whenever Google says so if you don't want them to see the "Your browser is obsolete" warning message.

ok_craig 14y ago
Is this seriously something people think would happen? Wouldn't the internet at large be up in arms at Google for this kind of behavior?
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Like I said, it's a sort of doomsday scenario. Then again, I've seen comments here on HN calling IE obsolete specifically because it didn't implement some HTML5 subspec that had been updated less than 48 hours before. It's hard to predict what will or will not enrage the internet.
zobzu 14y ago
While a horde of zombies voted you down I quite agree with that point of view. Even if it's not as black & white Google already attempts a lot of this. They basically want to be the ones to decide. There's no "consortium" it's just "lets push feat ZZ on our websites, web clients, and say its the new feat everyone has to support. Plus its open source anyway we're the good guys!" If others disagree well, so far it's been pretty much a grey area. Google keeps pushing the technologies others refused. But when Google controls even more of the market, let's say with 50%+ Chrome (they have the market already, website wise, except for FB.), there won't be a need to push anymore. It'll be Google's way or, well, nothing. Even if it's features that are released within 48H.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
This is absurd scenario on top of infeasbily-expensively-absurd scenario. Google has no desire to do this, it would completely fly in the way of WebM's original goals. Further, the idea that YouTube could retranscode content in any sort of timeline like that...

taligent 14y ago

It's from the article, "Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”" When you run the second biggest app market in the world it makes you sound like just a bit of a hypocrite. And my issue with WebM/WebP is that Google just seems to release these standards with a complete disregard for what the rest of the industry is doing or has done. True openness happens when you have established open standards that everyone uses.

magicalist 14y ago
> It's from the article, "Smartphone apps, as led by Apple: “all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it”" He didn't say that though. It seems like Wired added the Apple part. The only quote in the Guardian article (which I don't think includes the full interview, unless I'm missing the link), just says '"There's a lot to be lost," he said. "For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."' Which in most cases is a true statement. > And my issue with WebM/WebP is that Google just seems to release these standards with a complete disregard for what the rest of the industry is doing or has done. You only see the "established open standards that everyone uses" when you ignore the long painful sausage-making process.
- rimantas 14y ago
  > "For example, all the information in apps – that data is > not crawlable by web crawlers. You can't search it."' > Which in most cases is a true statement. Is it? Not crawlable does not mean non searchable. Google cannot crawl my messages too (I hope so!), but I can search in them.
  - magicalist 14y ago
    Yes, and private messages should remain private (and hopefully searchable). Balkanized data isn't necessarily bad, and there are lots of shades of grey there. As two examples, though, if the only way to search Twitter is Twitter, and Twitter won't let you search for tweets older than a week or two, then you're out of luck. More hypothetically, if most people used Wordpress for blogging for the last 15 years, and Wordpress didn't allow indexing by search engines, but only searching on Wordpress.com, we would not have the internet we have today.