[HN Gopher] Google isn't happy with Microsoft over online news
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Google isn't happy with Microsoft over online news
        
       Author : dsr12
       Score  : 156 points
       Date   : 2021-03-13 09:07 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
        
       | notRobot wrote:
       | Both companies have tried to or successful broken "the way the
       | open web works" time and time again and both of them _should_
       | stop.
       | 
       | Will they? Of course not.
        
       | uncledave wrote:
       | Amp already did that.
        
         | uncledave wrote:
         | Replying to self. Typical HN:
         | 
         | America asleep -> upvote to 3
         | 
         | America (or Google) wakes up -> downvotes to -2.
         | 
         | Fuck this politik and fuck Google. Amp is just internet cancer.
        
       | whatever_dude wrote:
       | Tangential, but am I the only one who thinks that Google News is
       | _really_ bad nowadays? It used to be my main source of news, but
       | I can 't stand it anymore. It's clear that it's trying to drive
       | engagement by offering links more likely to be clicked. My custom
       | topics are hidden away, stuff I don't want to read about is
       | brought to the top... just overall bad in every way.
        
       | nojito wrote:
       | > News organizations have ad inventory to sell, but they can no
       | longer sell directly to those who want to place ads," says
       | Microsoft president Brad Smith. "Instead, for all practical
       | purposes they must use Google's tools, operate on Google's ad
       | exchanges, contribute data to Google's operations, and pay Google
       | money. All this impacts the ability of news organizations to
       | benefit economically even from advertising on their own sites."
       | 
       | I'm not too versed in the Australia news thing, but is this
       | statement true?
        
       | aemreunal wrote:
       | Microsoft acted pretty sleazy (IMHO) on the Australian law
       | situation but it's rich for Google to attack them since they
       | caved first and paid. I'm all for taxing companies (tech or
       | otherwise) in sensible ways but the Australian news law was far
       | from sensible.
       | 
       | Not to mention AMP and whatnot.
        
         | ehsankia wrote:
         | Google's move was clever because they were in a lose-lose
         | situation where they had to pay anyways. By doing a deal with
         | News Corp, they showed that the whole thing was a blackmail and
         | will the Australian government look bad.
        
         | markdown wrote:
         | > the Australian news law was far from sensible.
         | 
         | For those out of the loop:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU
        
           | gdsdfe wrote:
           | Haha one thing for sure australian have a good sense of humor
        
           | u678u wrote:
           | Lol. This bit sums up the whole thing for me. "Will that help
           | our ailing media?"
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqj2z3QaRyU&t=77s
        
         | PoignardAzur wrote:
         | Honestly, I'm with Google on that one.
         | 
         | I'm disappointed they caved in and paid the danegeld, but the
         | way Microsoft went "We fully support the extraction from the
         | danegeld, and if Google happens to lose any market share due to
         | its refusal to pay it, we would be more than happy to have
         | these customers use Bing instead. We fully support this law
         | that has no effect on us and actively harms our main
         | competitor" is just disgusting.
        
           | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
           | They would be fine with it as long as they aren't subject to
           | it. If they were subject to it, it would make it very
           | difficult to operate Bing. Unless they just aren't doing
           | algorithm changes very often, it would present a significant
           | burden to be required to report out such changes weeks before
           | deployment. Of course the forced "arbitration" for "fair"
           | payment to news organizations would also be onerous for them.
           | But fortunately for MS the law is highly selective in which
           | companies it targets.
        
             | Foe wrote:
             | Strangely, Microsoft is supporting a similar law in the USA
             | where they would be affected by it.
        
       | tester756 wrote:
       | Google Web Accelerator, Amp...
        
       | gerash wrote:
       | Some pretend Microsoft has turned into this benevolent
       | corporation lately with their "Microsoft <heart> Linux" and
       | adopting Android and Chrome. Well all those were done because
       | they'd lost market share in servers, mobile OS and desktop
       | browsers despite being the dominant player and forcing their
       | offerings the whole time.
       | 
       | Microsoft used to run smear campaigns (remember Scroogled?) when
       | they hired Hillary Clinton's strategist. This last case shows
       | they don't even care if it means everyone can be sued for not
       | paying for a hyperlink. Say whatever you want about AMP or Google
       | reader or whatnot but when was the last time Google spent their
       | money on smear campaign and negative ads on a rival?
       | 
       | Microsoft's corporate tactics have remained the same.
        
         | xahrepap wrote:
         | I try not to complain when proper competition causes improved
         | behavior.
         | 
         | I'm a fan of "the new MS". Do I trust them? Not any more than a
         | massive company.
         | 
         | But do I love all the open source software they're producing
         | now? Yes! Do I pretend that it's because MS has seen the light
         | and become penitent? No!
         | 
         | But at least this time when MS turns its back on their users,
         | we can fork .net, edge, and vscode and go on with our lives. MS
         | can't unmerge their contributions to the Linux kernel or other
         | open source projects they're selfishly contributing to.
        
           | gerash wrote:
           | I agree. If the outcome is a win for both Microsoft (or any
           | other entity for that matter) and the rest of the ecosystem
           | that's perfect.
           | 
           | But they have shown that as a corporation they are
           | comfortable playing nasty when it suits them.
        
             | buran77 wrote:
             | I never found much sense in this line of reasoning. MS as a
             | corporation is an abstract legal concept with a name. Every
             | action taken under this "umbrella" is an executive's
             | decision (or a group's), not the actual abstract
             | corporation doing it.
             | 
             | It's fair to assume most of the leadership from '90s MS has
             | moved on. So is your concern with the current leadership or
             | the abstract concept of the corporation? Is it that "they
             | did it once so they might do it again" the real worry? Do
             | we assume the corporation has hysteresis and the executives
             | of today will take similar actions to those of the past
             | because of operating under the same "umbrella" named MS? If
             | so how far back do you go with this record of bad or good
             | deeds?
             | 
             | I see a lot of people sort of bragging with being old
             | enough to remember evil '90s MS (so around 35+). How far
             | back do you look at a company to judge them? I can think of
             | a lot of companies who flip-flopped several times because
             | the leadership changed and the market demanded it. So once
             | they go bad do they stay forever bad?
             | 
             | Your worry should be MS's current leadership and their
             | ability to execute in the future, not what Gates did 20
             | years ago. Similarly you don't judge today's Google by
             | their actions of 20 years ago. Saying "I don't trust MS
             | because Gates in the '90s" tells me you might be stuck on
             | the actual name and that's the only aspect that will ever
             | matter to you (a simple "if MS then Bad").
             | 
             | You've seen Google go from do no evil to whatever they are
             | now. Apple from whatever they were to champions of user
             | privacy. MS from whatever they were to embracing open
             | source and such. None of it because corporations are
             | sentient beings with intentions but because of leadership
             | and market imposed necessity. If anything you (and I) are
             | more rsponsible for what MS, Google, Apple, etc. do than
             | those companies themselves. They do what we allow them and
             | what we reward simply because their leadership acts in the
             | interest of profits.
        
             | brokencode wrote:
             | Pretty much every large company will play nasty when it
             | suits them and if they think they can get away with it.
             | That's why they call it "corporate warfare", not "corporate
             | hugs and kisses".
        
           | hackerbrother wrote:
           | My interpretation of "Microsoft <3 Open Source" is that MS
           | has realized that their power in the tech industry is not
           | dependent on their source code being a secret, and that in
           | fact making your stuff open source makes you more popular and
           | influential.
           | 
           | In my opinion, MS didn't really cede much power to the
           | community when open-sourcing .NET, for example. It would
           | still be incredibly painful for a company to unhook itself
           | from Microsoft's version of .NET, and .NET is still
           | influential for all the same reasons is was before, because
           | of MS's position in the software industry. I think the move
           | was just MS moving the framework into the current paradigm of
           | software development. All(?) popular frameworks are open
           | source these days: React, Electron, ... It just doesn't fit
           | with the times to have .NET be closed source.
           | 
           | It think is interesting to think though about Google directly
           | providing the source code base for its competitors, Edge and
           | the other Chromium clones. Maybe the lasting message of US v.
           | Microsoft was that if you open-source your software, you're
           | less likely to be perceived as controlling. Or maybe your
           | software simply becomes more influential if it's open source!
           | Chrome being open source allows Google to be enormously
           | influential as far as web standards go. It would probably be
           | a lot less so if Chrome was closed source.
        
             | why_Mr_Anderson wrote:
             | Microsoft simply realized what current Open Source really
             | is -> free labor. People will willingly work for free in
             | their own free time using their own hardware on projects of
             | other people or corporations. And they are proud to do
             | that! Anyone not taking advantage of that must have brain
             | damage.
             | 
             | Original ideas of open source (free as in speech) are long
             | forgotten.
        
             | Rapzid wrote:
             | > MS has realized that their power in the tech industry is
             | not dependent on their source code being a secret, and that
             | in fact making your stuff open source makes you more
             | popular and influential.
             | 
             | It has been a huge boon for .NET as well. Serious
             | contributions started pouring in almost immediately. Code
             | from Mono being ported over; linux support. Fixes to really
             | old issues that were not getting attention because .NET was
             | essentially put "in a box".
             | 
             | C#, .NET and the CLR are pretty great tech that could have
             | been a true Java alternative if not for the fact the vision
             | for it was so narrowly scoped to Windows.
        
               | smegma2 wrote:
               | What's missing in .net core/standard for it to be a Java
               | alternative today? I work with .net on windows so I'm not
               | sure.
        
               | Rapzid wrote:
               | 25 years of momentum.
        
         | CharlesW wrote:
         | > _...when was the last time Google spent their money on smear
         | campaign and negative ads on a rival?_
         | 
         | That's a PR stunt. You should be Actually Concerned about how
         | much Alphabet is spending on lobbying.
        
           | gerash wrote:
           | Lobbying is like the prisoner's dilemma. If you don't do it
           | but your rival does then you'll end up with these extortion
           | laws that hands Murdoch free money as we saw in Australia
        
             | CharlesW wrote:
             | That's totally fair, and I understand that Google isn't
             | unique in that respect. My point is that just because
             | Google isn't doing flashy ad campaigns doesn't mean that
             | they're not surreptitiously doing everything they can to
             | continue to establish and cement their position as an
             | unavoidable toll-taker on the internet.
        
               | Siira wrote:
               | They provide much more value than what they capture, and
               | what they capture is pretty much necessary to serve those
               | services (in the search space, not Android etc). The only
               | way to make them capture less value is by tax, as we have
               | seen. Other big tech companies are much more rent-seeking
               | and can actually unlock swaths of value with proper
               | regulation.
        
           | SllX wrote:
           | If they're spending a lot of money and still getting raked
           | over the coals in various legislatures including Congress,
           | why should we be worried?
           | 
           | Lobbying only gets your interests on the table; it doesn't
           | get you a seat at the table.
        
             | RHSeeger wrote:
             | Because there is no real difference between lobbying and
             | bribing. And I think a lot of us have a problem with
             | companies bribing politicians to get laws passed;
             | especially companies that have enough money to bribe <the
             | number of politicians needed to pass the law regardless of
             | what anyone thinks about it> of them.
        
               | SllX wrote:
               | I question your premise that lobbying = bribery, but
               | let's let it stand unchallenged because it's irrelevant
               | here.
               | 
               | If Google, Apple and Microsoft are all competing with
               | each other and also doing business with each other in
               | different markets, and they're also all lobbying
               | legislators, whose metaphorical bag of money is the
               | winner and gets all of their hopes and dreams fulfilled
               | when Congress starts meddling?
        
               | dane-pgp wrote:
               | > [who] gets all of their hopes and dreams fulfilled
               | 
               | Well, not the citizens of the country, which is kind of
               | the point.
        
               | SllX wrote:
               | What, the Americans working at Apple and Google and
               | Microsoft and own stock in them suddenly aren't citizens?
               | What about the Board of Directors at each of them?
               | 
               | Legislative bodies is where politics is supposed to
               | happen, and legislators don't live in a vacuum. We don't
               | elect them and send them up to the top of an ivory tower
               | for two years to philosophize about policy with the
               | occasional edict sent down. So how do legislators know
               | what kinds of policies people actually want when there's
               | about 700K people in their districts (and 39M
               | constituents if you're a California Senator) unless
               | people show up and say, "Hey, this is what I want from
               | you, this is why I elected you."
               | 
               | You get a mixed bag because legislatures _are_ a mixed
               | bag representing a larger mixed bag, and sorry, newspaper
               | polls aren't a good stand in for showing up and putting
               | your name down for consideration. Your interests as a
               | citizen are not identical to the other 699,999ish of your
               | neighbors, and the guy or gal representing you is just
               | one person of a larger body.
        
             | ErikVandeWater wrote:
             | In what way do you see Alphabet getting raked over the
             | coals? They obviously are a monopoly in both search and in
             | the Android app market and should be broken up according to
             | antitrust law. That isn't even being considered.
        
               | SllX wrote:
               | How is calling the CEO to come testify before Congress so
               | members of the House and Senate can score talking points
               | not taking a company over the coals? Or passing
               | disturbing crony-handout legislation like the Australian
               | Parliament did to the clear detriment of specific
               | companies?
               | 
               | Or all the nonsense going on in the EU? Or the political
               | discussions to do as you suggest, breakup Alphabet, by
               | people with the power, though not the moral standing, to
               | do so?
        
               | ErikVandeWater wrote:
               | Making the CEO testify costs Google very little.
               | 
               | Could you provide links for this part?
               | 
               | > Or passing disturbing crony-handout legislation like
               | the Australian Parliament did to the clear detriment of
               | specific companies? Or all the nonsense going on in the
               | EU? Or the political discussions to do as you suggest,
               | breakup Alphabet, by people with the power, though not
               | the moral standing, to do so?
               | 
               | It's vague and confusing.
        
         | HPsquared wrote:
         | They're in the 'embrace' phase.
        
         | amarant wrote:
         | Agreed! I used to work for a Microsoft owned game studio a
         | while back, and during their Microsoft <3 Linux campaign, or
         | shortly after, I noticed that xbox.com wouldn't work on Linux,
         | unless I changed the user-agent to Chrome-windows or Chrome-
         | Macos
         | 
         | Loves Linux but blocks Linux by user agent. Nice.
         | 
         | They changed it tho when we contacted them, so I guess there is
         | some love, at least they were willing to change (when it
         | impeded their own developers).
         | 
         | Don't trust Microsoft!
        
           | Wowfunhappy wrote:
           | Microsoft loves Linux in a very specific context--on servers,
           | and as a development environment, in the latter case
           | preferably running as a container or virtual machine inside
           | of... well, you know.
        
           | prussian wrote:
           | >Loves Linux but blocks Linux by user agent. Nice.
           | 
           | Reminds me of Office 365. If your UA has Windows in it, all
           | of a sudden they offer SSO authentication as if Linux can't
           | be set up for it.
        
             | merb wrote:
             | ?! sso means no relogin between multiple
             | applications/platforms which works since day 1 on mac and
             | linux. what does not work is seamless sso over the os
             | (logon+browser+logged into office 365), but even that works
             | with a good configured kerberos, but it's wonky and not
             | supported. (only hybrid tough)
        
           | alpaca128 wrote:
           | Similarly, if you want to directly download the Windows 10
           | ISO on a Windows machine you need to fake the user agent. In
           | which case the site always claims that you're running an old
           | version of Windows, even if you actually loaded the site on
           | Linux.
        
           | f6v wrote:
           | > Don't trust Microsoft!
           | 
           | The fact that people might consider trusting ANY corporation
           | is sad.
        
             | edoceo wrote:
             | You can trust Edoceo, Inc. :)
        
         | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
         | > ...when was the last time Google spent their money on smear
         | campaign and negative ads on a rival?
         | 
         | Somehow, of all the abuses and injustices Big Tech commits,
         | this one is way, way, way down on the very bottom of my list.
        
           | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
           | Most people seem upset that they said / did mean things to
           | competitors or bundled IE with Windows. Meanwhile the FAAG
           | (facebook, amazon, apple, google) is being investigated for
           | antitrust not in the distant past, but right now.
        
         | ggambetta wrote:
         | Some people are too young to remember. I recently worked with
         | new grads in a startup, and for these 20-somethings Microsoft
         | has always been somewhat cool, and Bill Gates has always been
         | this benevolent old guy that cures diseases. They were very
         | surprised where I shared the articles where they were saying
         | literally LINUX IS CANCER.
         | 
         | With a mixture of time passing and billions of dollars, it
         | looks like they've successfully "cleaned" their image :(
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | High-end, (long-term) consistent PR management works very
           | well. (Remember how everyone used to hate George W. Bush with
           | the passion of a thousand burning suns?)
        
             | Salgat wrote:
             | It's not about PR, it's about some fundamental changes in
             | their business goals. Azure allowed them to embrace Linux
             | and open source in a way where they benefitted. Also they
             | are no longer ran by that shithead Steve Ballmer. Microsoft
             | isn't perfect but as far as massive corporations go they're
             | no where near that bad.
        
               | tpmx wrote:
               | I've learned from experience: There is no way on HN to
               | successfully comment negatively on something like that.
               | Good luck with whatever you are doing with the the
               | Microsoft platform.
        
             | bryanrasmussen wrote:
             | I think there might have been something else that helped
             | dim that hatred than just PR management. A sort of
             | comparative effect as it were.
        
               | tpmx wrote:
               | A key element of this long-term consistent PR is timing.
               | Time makes old criminal idiocy pale, and there'll always
               | be another clown.
        
             | benrbray wrote:
             | On a related note I'm 25 and am bitter about how older
             | generations lived through Watergate / Iran-Contra / etc,
             | and not only let everyone involved off the hook, but then
             | let them all pull the strings behind the scenes throughout
             | the 2000s and into the Trump era.
        
               | tpmx wrote:
               | Including during the Obama era? That would be a ballsy
               | statement. I might have misunderstood you though - I'm
               | not a native English speaker. (And also, we are drifting
               | off-topic.)
        
               | thatguy0900 wrote:
               | Obama continued being a middle east warmonger. He just
               | got a Nobel peace prize for it instead of being vilified
        
               | UnpossibleJim wrote:
               | Don't confuse politicians with "everyone". To be honest,
               | being an east coast transplant on the west coast, I was
               | shocked that no one remembered Trump during the Clinton
               | era, or when he was pulling real estate cons. Either way,
               | this isn't the place for me to get into politics. I hope
               | that isn't what this forum becomes.
               | 
               | P.S. Everyone is bitter about how the "older generation"
               | handled things without the lens of modern values. I'm Gen
               | X and we were angry all the time.
               | 
               | EDIT: phone changed east to easy. They are not equal.
        
         | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
         | The bulk of Microsoft's income is not from hoarding user data
         | and serving ads. Microsoft makes most of it's money by making
         | good products that people pay for.
         | 
         | I've got my eye on them, but they aren't the same company under
         | Satya.
        
           | gerash wrote:
           | This is a fallacy and doesn't make much sense to me.
           | 
           | Most big tech companies have been investing to diversify
           | their income sources. Whether those investments have had a
           | massive return to take over their original cash cow is a
           | separate concern. Google has been investing in hardware and
           | cloud, Apple in building online services, Amazon in pretty
           | much everything.
        
           | mupuff1234 wrote:
           | What good products are they making? Haven't used any of their
           | products in ages but I still get the impression that no one
           | really enjoys their products (excluding excel maybe?)
        
             | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
             | Windows, Xbox, visual studio, office, surface tablet,
             | hololens are no good?
             | 
             | I daily drive Linux and don't own an Xbox, but I'm also not
             | a hater. I like companies that build things.
        
       | bogomipz wrote:
       | I'm in no way defending the Australian legislation but It's
       | absurd to me that Google and recently Facebook have positioned
       | themselves as defenders of "the open web." Google with their AMP,
       | Project Dragonfly and Chrome dominance and FB with their walled
       | garden seem to reach for the "open web" argument whenever
       | something threatens their status quo.
        
       | mensetmanusman wrote:
       | Microsoft owns MSNBC, huge conflicts of interest.
        
         | Paianni wrote:
         | Microsoft hasn't owned any part of MSNBC since 2012.
        
         | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
         | "Microsoft divested itself of its stakes in the MSNBC channel
         | in 2005 and in msnbc.com in July 2012"
         | 
         | ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNBC
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | jimjimjim wrote:
       | everybody likes piling on google but i'm still thanking them for
       | killing ie. people have short memories
        
         | zargon wrote:
         | Mozilla killed IE. Google swept in after Firefox did the hard
         | work. (Ab)used their search monopoly to drive Chrome ads.
        
           | merb wrote:
           | thats a fairy tail. mozilla killed ie for home users, but on
           | the business side (a way bigger market) that was not true.
           | mozilla also basically did not target that market that much,
           | I meaan they had no adm/admx templates and msi files for a
           | very long time.
        
           | techrat wrote:
           | I stopped using Firefox because it was a bloated mess that
           | frequently ended up with memory leaks despite shutting down
           | the browser. Creating a new window with no history and
           | killing all other windows still didn't get Firefox.exe to
           | release all the ram it gobbled up.
           | 
           | Mozilla has a habit of taking a decent, slimmed down browser
           | (Phoenix, for those who remember that era), adopting it as
           | their primary because their previous became a bloated mess...
           | then taking the new fork, making it unwieldy and forcing
           | people to create yet another fork to reign it in.
           | 
           | Tell me again how this is Google's fault.
           | 
           | They simply made a better browser.
        
             | zargon wrote:
             | Even though I disagree with that perspective, it has no
             | bearing on the fact that Firefox had already dislodged IE
             | from a dominant browser position before Chrome even
             | appeared on the scene.
        
               | dontblink wrote:
               | Correct. But I also switched because chrome was better.
               | There was no abuse by Google that impacted my decision.
               | It was Chrome's per tab process that created more
               | stability and overall less bloat.
        
               | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
               | > I also switched because chrome was better.
               | 
               | Chrome was better for me for about 15 min until it
               | crippled uBlock origin - at the same moment Chrome took
               | action against non-Google advertisers, that Google didn't
               | like.
               | 
               | Meanwhile my memory issues with Ffx decreased while
               | Chrome's grew; I've no memory issues to speak of at all
               | now. Ultimately, FFx plugins wound up helping craft a
               | positive browsing experience on Ffx, that can't really be
               | duplicated in Chrome.
               | 
               | Now I use Chrome to open up a single, overseas website
               | because their native translation really is the best.
               | Firefox (95%), Opera, Brave even Edge all see more use,
               | however.
        
         | sildur wrote:
         | I think it was Firefox who killed IE. IE was declining in usage
         | way before Chrome appeared. What Google killed was Firefox.
        
           | croes wrote:
           | Chrome killed IE in the companies because it was manageable
           | and packable before Firefox was
        
           | fhd2 wrote:
           | With a combination of some actually good improvements over
           | Firefox, and incredibly shady bundling practices. There was
           | hardly anything you could install a few years back without it
           | forcing Chrome as a standard browser on you.
        
             | izacus wrote:
             | Chrome was beating Firefox way before any bundling because
             | it was just so much faster at browsing the web.
             | 
             | Please don't rewrite history with things that aren't true -
             | Chrome was significantly better browser for a long time
             | with significantly better developer tools which made tech
             | people prefer it early.
        
           | stormdennis wrote:
           | Just looked it up and find it hard to believe how low
           | firefox's share is, under 4% overall. I moved back to it
           | about a year ago from chrome and I think it's great.
        
           | techrat wrote:
           | Mozilla killed Firefox. Several times, in fact. How many
           | variants of regular and mobile Firefox have there been now
           | because the primary version always ends up a bloated mess?
        
           | jimjimjim wrote:
           | Firefox did hard hard work, all the way through the dark
           | ages, it kept the flame alive. I've used firefox since the
           | start, I still use firefox, in fact my progression was
           | netscape->mozilla->firefox, and i'll continue using firefox.
           | 
           | But chrome did the impossible, they shifted the Moms and Pops
           | and most unbelievable, the absolute holy grail, the corporate
           | desktop.
        
         | skinkestek wrote:
         | I'm thankful for that but now they've given us a new even worse
         | monster and we are right back to square one.
         | 
         | Remember: IE6 was the best browser for a while, the problem was
         | it did things slightly different and people targeted IE instead
         | of the web, exactly as they target Chrome instead of the web
         | today.
        
           | vanviegen wrote:
           | Yes, they didn't care much for standards. But the larger
           | problem was that they basically stopped implenting new web
           | standards the moment IE was dominant, protecting their
           | Windows monopoly.
           | 
           | I don't think many web developers who have really lived
           | through the IE 'glory days' would say the current situation
           | is even nearly as bad.
        
           | boublepop wrote:
           | Just curious, what is the best way to "target the web" these
           | days? I remember back in the xhtml days that you could
           | validate against standards. But as I understand it these days
           | with google eating up the standards development it seems like
           | html5 is synonomous with chrome.
        
             | skinkestek wrote:
             | Mostly it is really really simple:
             | 
             | Do test in Firefox (and Safari). If it works in FF it
             | mostly works everywhere, but Safari has some quirks I
             | think.
             | 
             | In fact as long as I test my code in Firefox I haven't been
             | caught with something that didn't work in all browsers any
             | of my customers supported the last 4 or so years.
             | 
             | There are a few Chrome-specific things one shpuld
        
           | Jonnax wrote:
           | I think you're misremembering.
           | 
           | IE6 was a broken implementation of the standards of the time.
           | 
           | And Microsoft decided that web browsing was done and did not
           | update their browser.
           | 
           | It was a scheme for vendor lock-in.
        
             | whywhywhywhy wrote:
             | End result is the same. I care a lot about cross browser
             | and the amount of aggravation I have to go to get the
             | developers I work with these days to even look at a site in
             | just safari and chrome, (Firefox is completely ignored) is
             | absurd and the amount of backchat and sarcastic comments of
             | "can't we just tell them to use chrome" is ridiculous.
             | 
             | My career started in the IE 6 era and even then people
             | tested in at least 2 browsers.
             | 
             | At most I've been lucky to have 1 team member who cares
             | about this stuff. Maybe other companies are better but this
             | is my experience the past 5 years or so.
        
       | hownottowrite wrote:
       | Half of Google's profits should be set aside to pay content
       | creators.
        
         | ttt0 wrote:
         | Somewhat relevant, content creators from outside the US are
         | going to be taxed by the US government.
         | 
         | https://twitter.com/YouTubeCreators/status/13693446469089361...
        
         | foobar33333 wrote:
         | Why? Content creators are free to negotiate with google
         | themselves. If they can't come up with a good deal they can use
         | robots.txt to remove their content from google.
        
           | kuschku wrote:
           | As long as Google only used links that was fine, but now with
           | the Knowledge Graph often just quoting all the content of the
           | site directly, and Google showing ads to profit from that,
           | we're seeing a situation where Google profits by scraping
           | content, but the creators never do.
           | 
           | None of this would've been an issue 20 years ago when 90% of
           | the web was noncommercial, but now it destroys an entire
           | industry.
        
             | daniellarusso wrote:
             | Parent's robots.txt solution would work in your scenario,
             | but they would not be listed at all on the results page.
             | 
             | If they are never going to get the traffic anyway, why be
             | listed?
             | 
             | Interesting.
        
           | daniellarusso wrote:
           | That is not the IP extortion model used by YouTube.
        
           | hownottowrite wrote:
           | If a better web experience is core to Google's interests,
           | paying for content should pay off in the long run. That's
           | what they're demanding of content creators anyway, so they
           | should put their money where there mouth is.
        
           | mar13032021 wrote:
           | Negotiate with a company that bans accounts randomly and does
           | not have a helpline? Nah, let government go after them, I bet
           | they will be taking _those_ phone calls.
        
       | saagarjha wrote:
       | If you haven't read the blog post already, give it a minute:
       | https://blog.google/products/news/google-commitment-supporti....
       | It's a mudslinging embarrassment.
       | 
       | I'm not a huge fan of the new rules, but it's clear that they've
       | scared Google to the point where their PR department is unable to
       | moderate themselves anymore, a trend I've noticed with every
       | large tech company when placed in a difficult position. Until you
       | see more companies doing this I think it's mostly safe to assume
       | that any regulations you're applying to them are toothless and
       | just a cost of doing business.
        
         | LegitShady wrote:
         | wow it's hard to believe that's official google messaging. It
         | looks like someone lost their cool and hit 'submit' without
         | giving it a day and re-reading it.
        
         | alpaca128 wrote:
         | > They are now making self-serving claims and are even willing
         | to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a
         | rival
         | 
         | That's rich coming from Google.
        
           | path411 wrote:
           | Yeah at first I read it the other way and thought maybe
           | microsoft was criticizing amp or something
        
         | bogomipz wrote:
         | Agreed. The following is particularly cringeworthy:
         | 
         | >"And it's no coincidence that Microsoft's newfound interest in
         | attacking us comes on the heels of the SolarWinds attack and at
         | a moment when they've allowed tens of thousands of their
         | customers -- including government agencies in the U.S., NATO
         | allies, banks, nonprofits, telecommunications providers, public
         | utilities, police, fire and rescue units, hospitals and,
         | presumably, news organizations -- to be actively hacked via
         | major Microsoft vulnerabilities."
         | 
         | What does the Solar Winds hack have to do with news publishing
         | regulation? Mentioning Bing here would have been logical but
         | this poorly written run-on sentence is just pure mud slinging
         | of the same type he is accusing MS of. Are there no corporate
         | PR officers at Google who need to approve such posts prior to
         | publishing? What an embarrassment.
        
           | cwyers wrote:
           | That is in such astonishing bad faith. It's one thing when
           | random Reddit commenters ignore that Microsoft is a massive
           | corporation that can, in fact, mulitask. A senior Google
           | official should know better, because Google can mulitask too.
           | Just a spectacular display of engaging in ad hominem instead
           | of engaging on the issue.
        
           | path411 wrote:
           | Could also be Google adopting the new political speech. This
           | is exactly how political "journalists" "slam" politicians on
           | the other side. It's worked well for politicians this long,
           | maybe it will work for these large walled corps?
        
       | kgeist wrote:
       | In 2021, it looks like Google is more predatory than Microsoft
        
       | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
       | I'd like to recap the issue here:
       | 
       | An Australian law was based on the premise that it was unfair for
       | Google to reap benefits from sending traffic to AU media sites.
       | The law also forced search engines to firehose user data (w/o
       | implementing privacy protections [1]) to Australian media
       | interests (eg: Rupert Murdoch).
       | 
       | Google said, "Ok. We'll comply with the law, forgo those benefits
       | and stop sending traffic." Oddly, this did not satisfy the
       | interests behind the law.
       | 
       | Microsoft stepped in and said "We're totally down with this law"
       | - including, apparently, the egregious gift of user data to AU
       | media interests.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200817/22554345133/googl...
        
         | moosebear847 wrote:
         | What is firehose user data? I've become an expert on 11,000kPa-
         | pressure hoses used to extinguish fires, but still have no idea
         | what you mean!
        
         | leereeves wrote:
         | You left out the part where Google changed their minds and
         | decided to pay for news in Australia. The whole "Ok. We'll
         | comply with the law, forgo those benefits and stop sending
         | traffic." bit was an empty threat.
         | 
         | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/business/media/australia-...
        
         | bfgoodrich wrote:
         | This is an absurdly biased and fact-free recap.
         | 
         | Any framing that posits that Google is benevolently "sending
         | traffic" betrays that it should be discarded at the outset.
         | Google (like Facebook and most other "make money on your
         | content" empires) desperately tries to send as _little_ traffic
         | as possible to anyone, which is why they have AMP, scrape
         | content and provide a dubious  "expert engine", and provided a
         | news dashboard where they summarized every news site.
         | 
         | I see this same ludicrous argument made re: Facebook. When
         | Facebook temporarily blocked news, downloads of news site apps
         | rose dramatically. It turns out that they weren't helpful
         | whatsoever to anyone. They are a desperate suckerfish just
         | trying to live off of the creation of other people.
        
         | QuantumGood wrote:
         | It was unfair for Google to reap benefits from: (1) Copying
         | story summaries from AU media sites, putting them on a Google
         | site, capturing visitor data from that site (2) Sending traffic
         | to AU media sites
         | 
         | It's more (1) than (2)
        
           | tengbretson wrote:
           | > Copying story summaries from AU media sites
           | 
           | I could be wrong, but aren't these summaries published
           | voluntarily as semantic metadata or a feed from the media
           | sites?
        
             | tick_tock_tick wrote:
             | They are, media sites are also free to opt out of google
             | indexing.
        
               | morelisp wrote:
               | Indexing in Google's search engine to be included in
               | response to user queries should be decoupled from being
               | excerpted in Google's pretend newspaper front page.
        
               | mjevans wrote:
               | I disagree about news.google.com being a 'newspaper
               | frontpage'. If I wanted newspapers I'd individually visit
               | each 'paper' online. What I value is a broad summary of
               | the different news topics that exist at any given moment
               | and links to more details. Through that generalized (and
               | if I provide keywords, more specific) lens on the world
               | Google's News offering provides value not found in any
               | single publisher's biased view of the world.
        
               | morelisp wrote:
               | If this was the intended use case Google would present it
               | as a tool to enter a news article and it would show you
               | all articles it believed were equivalent coverage. (i.e.
               | what is now hidden behind "View Full Coverage" and
               | without judgement about "Top Coverage" etc.)
               | 
               | Instead it is structured _almost exactly like a newspaper
               | front page_ , right down to the damn weather report.
        
             | nwienert wrote:
             | "but weren't they willingly paying the mob?"
        
               | Dylan16807 wrote:
               | In a situation where if you stop paying then the mob
               | responds by ignoring you.
        
         | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
         | Self-responding - adding my position.
         | 
         | I find most of these arguments against Google to be reasonable,
         | inc complaints of monopoly. Personally I strongly mistrust
         | Google and have mostly divested myself from their offerings.
         | 
         | What I see Google did here was to vet the law's claims of
         | fairness (Google gets money from our content so we should too)
         | by stopping that arrangement. Once done, that particular
         | unfairness was ended and the purported aim of the law was
         | satisfied.
         | 
         | The grumpyness following Google's action confirms the law's
         | intention is to create a new stream of tax revenue that AU Gov
         | would grant (for now, anyway) exclusively to AU media entities.
         | 
         | I could potentially be behind a tax->news. Maybe. If it were
         | constructed with more wisdom than this law is. I can not
         | support this law because of it's shoddy construction
         | (firehosing user data? srsly?) and because it's supplied
         | purpose (ending unpaid usage of content) isn't truthful.
         | 
         | A larger issue may be that snippet laws seem to serve to
         | further entrench Google's position by making news orgs
         | dependent on Google for their operating revenue. This seems
         | highly problematic.
         | 
         | It also grants new control over news funding to the AU Gov. If
         | that control can be misused - to forward (AU Gov or 'partner'
         | Gov) agendas - modern history tells us it will be.
         | 
         | Lastly, once this is normalized, who should pay next?
        
           | judge2020 wrote:
           | Another boneheaded provision on the law is the requirement to
           | give advance notice on upcoming changes to the algorithm to
           | the news publishers. This is broken for both the reason of
           | not being able to deploy 'algorithm changes' without delaying
           | them 14 days (PDF page 23), which might not even be possible
           | given machine learning's always-learning algorithm, and for
           | the reason of news outlets for some reason being entitled to
           | information on algorithm changes before everyone else in
           | order to get a leg up in search results over anyone not in
           | cahoots with the search partner.
           | 
           | Law text: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legis
           | lation/bi...
        
         | oezi wrote:
         | The monopoly powers Google holds over search have given them
         | such a strong position, that Google is more than reaping
         | benefits. It is in the public's interest to prevent such powers
         | to destroy the 4th column of balance in democracies that
         | journalism should strive to be.
         | 
         | This is not to say that Murdoch's news empire isn't bad as
         | well, but no country should sit back and watch while Google and
         | Facebook siphon money out of the countries.
        
           | koboll wrote:
           | The traditional way to do this would be something like
           | building a domestic search engine and levying steep taxes on
           | foreign ad buys, rather than this bizarre attempt at
           | backhanded protectionism.
        
             | morelisp wrote:
             | I don't know if you can say "traditional" so much as
             | "historical". It's extremely difficult for software
             | services to differentiate a domestic offering in the same
             | way as physical goods - let alone when both countries share
             | a language and the service has little cultural content per
             | se.
             | 
             | Has a second-mover service ever overtaken a first-mover via
             | on this strategy within in the Anglosphere? Or even within
             | "the west"? (Xing vs. LinkedIn maybe? But everyone I know
             | has both...)
        
         | nojito wrote:
         | Terrible recap.
         | 
         | The idea that Google is the one who gets to know who you are
         | despite not creating the content that they are exposing to you
         | is absolute nonsense.
         | 
         | Google is not the gatekeeper to the internet.
        
       | nix23 wrote:
       | This time Google is really going to far with the 1. April
       | jokes...oh wait..
        
       | sMarsIntruder wrote:
       | Says who invented and imposed FLoC.
        
       | rdiddly wrote:
       | Wow, quite the display of projective hypocrisy between the pot
       | and kettle.
        
       | sullyj3 wrote:
       | They're not wrong, but coming from the creators of AMP this is a
       | bit rich.
        
         | izacus wrote:
         | AMP was the defense against all content moving into native apps
         | like Facebook. Antithesis of open web, with completely locked
         | down content, applied DRM and no ability to contribute without
         | the review of platform owners.
         | 
         | It's that the endgame you'd have preferred? Ecosystem of apps
         | because news web developers refused to make their ad and
         | autoplay video ridden websites usable on the mobile devices?
         | 
         | Look at the trends and tell me if you'd have preferred to read
         | all your content in an Apple News walled garden instead?
        
           | fakedang wrote:
           | > AMP was the defense against all content moving into native
           | apps like Facebook.
           | 
           | Google: We will defend you but we'll also strangle you while
           | at it.
        
             | izacus wrote:
             | Of course, they're a corporation. The question is - why did
             | noone else step up and try to address the issue? Other
             | corpos just wanted to silo all data into their proprietary
             | platforms and opensource/openweb teams just pretended that
             | the issue never existed.
        
       | cturner wrote:
       | The Australian situation has created an incentive for tech
       | companies to consider getting into news-content production, a
       | sector that was previously not-lucrative.
       | 
       | Find a struggling newspaper to purchase for a song. That gets you
       | a masthead and a basic editorial pipeline. Then, use strong
       | salary packages to raid the content talent from the existing
       | participants. Alphabet could do this with pocket change.
       | 
       | This is similar to the play the media titans use to capture
       | sports broadcast rights - World Series Cricket in the 70s,
       | SuperLeague in the 90s.
        
       | walrus01 wrote:
       | That's a rather funny claim coming from google, considering we
       | are now back in the same situation as we were 20 year ago, when
       | people were designing websites to work 'best' on microsoft's IE
       | browser. Now a lot of things are being designed to work 'best' on
       | Chrome.
       | 
       | At least Microsoft has the benefit of the institutional knowledge
       | of having once been as dominant as Google is now.
        
         | mbar84 wrote:
         | I don't think that's a fair comparison. Today I develop mostly
         | on Chrome, but I don't dread testing for compatibility on
         | Firefox or Safari. The standardization is quite good across
         | vendors.
         | 
         | Add to that, back then Microsoft had no drive to move the web
         | platform forward. IE was not getting better, which is why it
         | was eventually eclipsed by Firefox and later Chrome.
        
         | threatofrain wrote:
         | Has Google been breaking the web with non-compliant
         | implementations of web standards?
        
           | walrus01 wrote:
           | More like it's been using its dominant browser market
           | position, and "Essential" nature as a search/cloud based
           | services operator, to wag the dog of the web standardization
           | process.
        
             | threatofrain wrote:
             | Which Google-pushed standards were most at fault for making
             | websites break on Firefox?
        
               | toyg wrote:
               | Have a read: https://mobile.twitter.com/johnath/status/11
               | 1687124330162585...
               | 
               | Google are just as bad as MS. End of story.
        
               | Datagenerator wrote:
               | Deliberately breaking the performance of YouTube on
               | Firefox is fine, because it shows how the non neutral net
               | degrades into a television show with lots of commercial
               | breaks. No way to opt out while trying to do work on your
               | personal computer using the information shared on our
               | Internet. None of that, if it's up to Microsoft and
               | Google.
        
           | prepend wrote:
           | They sort of killed DNT.
        
           | skinkestek wrote:
           | They
           | 
           | - break compability or make their sites slow in other
           | browsers, sometimes in so interesting ways that it makes it
           | hard to defend as just incompetence. Edit, example: didn't
           | they go out of their way to find a way to make YouTube crawl
           | in Firefox while performing well in Chrome a few months ago?
           | IIRC instead of doing it the new straightforward way that was
           | supported everywhere they went with a solution that was so
           | backwards that it was already deprecated in Chrome as well or
           | something?
           | 
           | - make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous
           | web property, urging people to change
        
             | hannob wrote:
             | I'm using Firefox and the only service that I have to use
             | on a regular basis that does not really work in Firefox is
             | actually Microsoft Teams.
             | 
             | This is quite ironic given all the "Google killed
             | Microsoft's own browser engine" stories.
        
               | happymellon wrote:
               | I find Excel in Firefox to be quite broken.
               | 
               | Google is much better at working than Microsoft.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | mmcnl wrote:
             | You're nitpicking. The situation is a night and day
             | difference compared to 10-20 years ago.
        
             | Snarwin wrote:
             | The YouTube thing was back in 2018:
             | 
             | https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-exec-says-google-slowed-
             | yo...
        
             | _flux wrote:
             | > break compability or make their sites slow in other
             | browsers
             | 
             | "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
             | explained by stupidity"
             | 
             | > make banners on the front page of the worlds most famous
             | web property
             | 
             | Well, can't argue with that!
        
         | mmcnl wrote:
         | This is not true at all. The web is at a much better state than
         | 20 years ago. There may be some thing going on that are not
         | ideal, but the it's a night and day difference. I don't know
         | why this gets so many upvotes.
        
         | prepend wrote:
         | It can be really stupid too, I've had sites not load and
         | suggest that I use "modern browsers like Chrome" when I'm
         | trying to load it in Safari or Brave. So I think we're back to
         | dumdums literally checking user agent.
         | 
         | For a little while, outlook and 365 web didn't work properly in
         | safari because of the third party cookies defaults, so the
         | suggestion was to use Chrome (rather than just adjusting cookie
         | settings).
        
         | Jiejeing wrote:
         | Well, considering that microsoft essentially designs their
         | websites (see also: teams) to only work on chrome, that is
         | rich.
        
         | pxi wrote:
         | This story is not directly related to chrome.
         | 
         | In the original version of the legislation, google and facebook
         | were required to pay up each time they served an <a> tag that
         | pointed news.com sites. That's what google meant by "breaking
         | the open web" - having to pay <a href> tax.
         | 
         | This was all fine by Microsoft. They apparently did some deal
         | with Murdock in 2019 so appear to have been behind this all
         | along. It's all echos of Gates era dealings.
        
           | mattrick wrote:
           | Chrome is tangential to the story, but Google calling
           | Microsoft out for trying "to break the way the open web
           | works" is super hypocritical. Its the pot calling the kettle
           | black.
        
         | michaelbrave wrote:
         | I can't tell you how many times I have problems with a site in
         | Firefox because they only designed it for chrome now, sites
         | owned by google are the biggest offenders.
        
           | lowercased wrote:
           | oddly enough, most of the time I hit issues with stuff not
           | working on safari, but fine on firefox or chrome. I just had
           | a bill pay request from someone using 'bill4time.com'
           | service. Broke in safari, worked in chrome. I seem to hit
           | these situation perhaps once a week or so, where moving to
           | chrome or firefox generally 'fixes' it.
        
             | patrickmcnamara wrote:
             | AWS is particularly bad with Safari. For some reason, AWS
             | asserts that U2F doesn't work on Safari so I have been
             | forced to remove 2fa from my account. Yay. And AWS Amplify
             | never loads on Safari either.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | nano-erud wrote:
       | bitch fight
        
       | codeulike wrote:
       | 'slam' is such a weird verb for this sort of thing, and it only
       | seems to turn up in headlines. It is supposed to be a wrestling
       | metaphor? Its such an odd mental image.
        
         | kthejoker2 wrote:
         | It's slang from around the turn of the 20th century.
         | 
         | No joke, it comes from birdsong hobbyists, when two birds were
         | "competing" they would insert deliberately off and loud notes
         | to intimidate and silence each other. They named those "slams"
         | like a door slam.
         | 
         | That became the slang for the patter of street hawkers when
         | they negged you or heckled someone else for laughs and
         | attention, and eventually became slang for any kind of insult
         | or put down.
        
           | codeulike wrote:
           | Wow, thanks. Had no idea.
        
       | EasyTiger_ wrote:
       | > Google has launched a scathing attack on Microsoft today,
       | accusing it of trying "to break the way the open web works in an
       | effort to undercut a rival."
       | 
       | That is some pathological levels of projection.
        
       | jimnotgym wrote:
       | "The Kettles are now making self-serving claims and are even
       | willing to break the way the open web works in an effort to
       | undercut a rival," says Mr Pot.
        
       | FridgeSeal wrote:
       | Pot calls kettle black.
       | 
       | Google has probably done more of this single handedly since the
       | advent of Chrome than Microsoft has.
       | 
       | Not that I'm absolving MS of any wrongdoing either, but google
       | has definitely been far more malicious, and for them to pretend
       | otherwise is unscrupulous at best.
        
         | dontblink wrote:
         | You must have missed the entire 90s. Microsoft hasn't changed,
         | it's just got better PR. Google has it's faults as well, but I
         | vastly prefer Google's contribution over Microsoft's.
        
           | supernovae wrote:
           | The 90s was 30 years ago.
           | 
           | I was an asshole to my parents in the 90s as an angsty teen.
           | If my parents held on to the 90s like I could never change,
           | grow or be something different my family would be torn apart.
           | 
           | Perhaps you just need to grow up yourself.
        
             | dontblink wrote:
             | Sounds like you're still pretty angsty
        
       | draklor40 wrote:
       | *cough* AMP *cough*
        
         | supernovae wrote:
         | I find it curious Google pushes amp, yet the new google
         | analytics 4 doesn't even support it.
         | 
         | I have a feeling AMP is really dead and now they're looking for
         | ways to get news back after forcing so many people to embrace
         | that terrible tech.
        
           | bogomipz wrote:
           | I'd be curious to hear why you are sensing that AMP is really
           | dead? It this just based on Google Analytics 4 or are there
           | other signs as well?
        
       | smaryjerry wrote:
       | Google, the company that actively tries to make YouTube not work
       | on any Amazon device simple because Amazon is a competitor, is
       | complaining about someone breaking the open web? Google refused
       | to build an app for Amazon devices and even when Amazon had a
       | working app that was essentially a browser that visited YouTube
       | on their Alexa devices with screens, YouTube changed their
       | website for the sole purpose of breaking it on Amazon devices.
       | Google has no right to complain here.
        
         | bqmjjx0kac wrote:
         | IIRC, Amazon built their own UI around YouTube which meant
         | YouTube was not monetizing those views.
         | 
         | Edit:
         | 
         | > A person familiar with Google's thinking on the matter told
         | Engadget that a big point of contention had been the fact that
         | Amazon implemented what was essentially a hacked version of
         | YouTube on both the Echo Show and Fire TV. Rather than work
         | with Google to build versions of its apps that work on Amazon's
         | devices, Amazon has been trying to do it itself -- a move that
         | cuts out features and also likely affects Google's ability to
         | collect on some of the ad revenue that comes from its videos.
         | 
         | https://www.engadget.com/2017-12-05-google-blocking-youtube-...
        
           | smaryjerry wrote:
           | The update at the bottom details amazons side of the story:
           | 
           | Amazon has responded, and its response points to the unfair
           | nature of Google effectively blocking access to the YouTube
           | web site based on the type of device being used to access it.
           | "Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of
           | YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube's
           | existing website," Amazon's statement reads. "Google is
           | setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking
           | customer access to an open website. We hope to resolve this
           | with Google as soon as possible."
        
         | trident5000 wrote:
         | They tried to make YouTube not work on Firefox as well.
        
           | jedberg wrote:
           | It still doesn't really work. When I load YouTube in Firefox
           | it kind of hangs for a while and then plays in low res. If I
           | grab the URL and jump over to Chrome, it instantly play in
           | the highest resolution.
        
         | yread wrote:
         | Exactly same situation with Windows Phone
        
         | HJain13 wrote:
         | > Amazon isn't without fault either. The company dragged its
         | feet for years in releasing a proper Prime Video app for
         | Android in the Google Play Store. Previously, you had to
         | install Amazon's own, separate app store and only then could
         | you install Prime Video. It was a sad, convoluted attempt at
         | luring users to the Amazon Appstore. Even now, Prime Video
         | still doesn't support Chromecast.
         | 
         | > And that's directly tied to Chromecast's absence on
         | Amazon.com. Since there's no easy way of watching Prime Video,
         | Amazon won't sell it. But it's Amazon's own fault that Prime
         | Video doesn't work with Chromecast. Amazon has the power to
         | make it happen. What's Google supposed to do in this scenario?
         | 
         | > Amazon's decision to remove popular, well-liked products from
         | its store over this spat -- or never sell them to begin with --
         | is an ugly example of the company throwing its weight and power
         | around. No one should be surprised that Google is crying foul.
         | Is the company under any obligation to sell Google Home -- the
         | chief rival to its own Echo? Of course not. Them's the breaks.
         | But the Chromecast situation is troubling, and Amazon's recent
         | halting of sales for certain Nest hardware (with no real
         | explanation) seems juvenile. Prime shipping is still a very
         | powerful incentive, and Amazon is well aware of that.
         | 
         | https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16738752/google-youtube-a...
         | 
         | Amazon is nowhere near innocent in their feud
        
           | unimpossible wrote:
           | I use Chromecast with Prime. Mine's from 2016 so I don't know
           | if they stopped supporting it on newer models. Everything
           | else though, I agree with. Big tech, like any monopoly, does
           | not play fair.
        
             | tbihl wrote:
             | This is old. They work now.
        
           | kuschku wrote:
           | > Amazon is nowhere near innocent in their feud
           | 
           | Amazon built the Fire stick to be compatible with Chromecast.
           | Google then changed the Chromecast protocols repeatedly to
           | prevent this.
           | 
           | Only after that did Amazon ban the Chromecast devices from
           | their store.
           | 
           | Tell the whole story, at least.
        
             | stopping wrote:
             | "Amazon built the Fire stick to be compatible with
             | Chromecast. Google then changed the Chromecast protocols
             | repeatedly to prevent this."
             | 
             | I don't believe this is true. Do you have a source?
        
             | ehsankia wrote:
             | But still according to your comment, amazon started the
             | feud first by banning chromecast, and it just escalated
             | from there?
        
             | drusepth wrote:
             | If I recall correctly, Google changed the Chromecast
             | protocols repeatedly to disable the Fire stick's
             | implementation because the Fire was wrapping direct video
             | links (e.g. removing all the official YouTube UI/features)
             | and stripping ad plays.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | Shadonototro wrote:
       | The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft
       | 
       | They used the same techniques for Stadia, they bashed it while
       | praising Xbox Cloud
       | 
       | The same with Team vs Zoom
       | 
       | And the same with AWS/GCE vs Azure
       | 
       | Hmm
        
         | throwaway53453 wrote:
         | The media is institutionally biased against Google and Facebook
         | because they are 'direct competitors' in their heads. Don't get
         | me wrong, there are issues with Big Tech, but I don't believe
         | the news industry's collapse to be one of them. It's like
         | arguing with the printing press or railroads galvanizing the
         | dinosaurs of their era.
        
         | supernovae wrote:
         | This entire thread is depression and responses like this are
         | pure depression. Why does any of this matter? All I see are a
         | bunch of apologists or a bunch of people making assumptions and
         | no one really discussing anything without their extreme bias
         | and prejudices in the way.
         | 
         | The first comments here are people bashing the Microsoft of 20
         | years ago..
         | 
         | And this one... "The Verge sounds very Pro-Microsoft" - for no
         | other reason than to perpetuate the bias here.
         | 
         | Why do we do this to ourselves people? This is absurd.
         | 
         | The Verge is very much in love with Apple, they're not in love
         | with Google. That doesn't make them Pro-Microsoft. The verge
         | DID hire a a fantastic Microsoft writer who knows Microsoft
         | inside and out, so they're not Oblivious to Microsoft - but
         | that doesn't make them "Pro Microsoft".
         | 
         | And for Christ's sake - NONE of what is mentioned here makes
         | Microsoft bad. They're a business making products and building
         | services doing what businesses do and its certainly not
         | Balmer's Microsoft anymore.
         | 
         | Who cares what Google isn't happy with when its painfully
         | apparent no one is is happy with anything around here...
        
       | threatofrain wrote:
       | > In the middle of all of this, Microsoft was very public about
       | its support of Australia's new law, and it even teamed up with
       | European publishers to call for online platforms to reach deals
       | to pay news outlets for content. Google isn't happy about
       | Microsoft getting involved and this is the first big public spat
       | we've seen since the Scroogled era.
        
       | gchokov wrote:
       | Serious question - does anyone at all still liking Google?
        
         | izacus wrote:
         | Liking has nothing to do with law prices about future of the
         | web.
         | 
         | We're not sampling chocolate here - think how propping up old
         | media with mandatory charges actually helps us and the open
         | web?
        
         | sMarsIntruder wrote:
         | Unfortunately a lot. I was one of them, loved the Android idea.
         | Then a couple of years ago I started migrating to privacy
         | oriented services (or at least alternatives), but it's a long
         | process.
        
         | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
         | Like might be too strong a word. I sometimes grudgingly use
         | Google for search because DuckDuckGo - unfortunately,
         | frustratingly, bizarrely - doesn't know what operands are.
        
       | onlyfortoday2 wrote:
       | ahahahahha funny
        
       | intricatedetail wrote:
       | This I don't understand. Why Google only has to pay for news
       | content? Why only big news corporations get rewarded but a guy
       | with a blog won't be?
        
         | ewindal wrote:
         | Because this law is literally just about letting Murdoch cling
         | to power. It's such an obviosly corrupt law.
        
           | intricatedetail wrote:
           | Where are the institutions that are supposed to protect us
           | from corruption that we pay dearly in taxes? This is just so
           | wrong. Strong towards the weak, weak towards the strong...
        
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