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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

From the article cited regarding the YouTube app developed by Microsoft:

> The problems with that, according to Google, are three: the app enables users to download YouTube videos, prevents ads from being shown, and plays videos whose owners have set to only play on certain platforms. Microsoft’s app, Google says, violates the YouTube terms of service, and uses the YouTube logo in a way that contravenes the company’s branding guidelines.

Is this just an excuse used by Google, or did they really have these features? Because I could understand why Google doesn't want a service to demonitize their service. Why wouldn't Microsoft just remove those features? It seems like a reasonable response.

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Since it would be trivial for Goog to expose all of this functionality in their API, I consider all of this BS PR by google.

It would also be trivial for google to make a basic app for the 3rd biggest phone OS.

But since Google makes an OS and doesn’t want other OSes, any actions they have other than support are suspect.

It’s like when MS said that it was possible for PC sellers to not bundle IE. Sure it’s possible, but it was just BS because it was completely MS’ prerogative.

They’re not obliged to spend resources on making native apps

But they’re obliged to spend resources making open APIs?

Any actions they have are suspect because they’re a big fucking corporation that vacuums up our data and lobbies government for beneficial treatment

Let’s not wrap it up in overly customized excuses for their shit behavior. A more generally phrased definition will suffice and probably be more beneficial

If it’s just market assholery, that’s the market

If it’s acceptance of the reality they control us through plain behavior of buying and selling our data and buying influence, that’s broadly more captivating

I’m not sure I understand. Do you mean that their api prevented Microsoft from creating a YouTube app that confirms to their guidelines (shows ads and respects uploaded guidelines as to device? Is this still the case?

The download feature certainly could have been pulled from Microsoft

Google does not expose an api that supports ads. So third parties can’t build apps that conform to goog.

It’s kind of a dick move all around because it means no one can build (popular) YouTube ads except google. And they don’t build for platforms that threaten them unless they must.

Not only would it be possible, it's being done in NewPipe without touching the API at all (except perhaps the device restrictions; not sure what the status is on that). I'm sure there's clauses somewhere for using the API that prevent you from doing dual purpose acting as a simple, if specialized, browser, and using the logo itself was just asking for trouble, but it's revealing how much Google hides away and just hopes you don't notice.

Can somebody breakdown which companies are on each side of this corporate war? Is it Microsoft + Facebook vs Google + Apple?

Just reminded me of the loss of Dark Matter. :-/

Why do you treat this as only having two sides?

In the "Platform" battlefields you have Microsoft, Apple and Google fighting for the end-users. On the infrastructure side Amazon is also making a play here with all of the AWS options and Google and Microsoft are also fighting there.

In the "Social" battlefield, you have Facebook, with Microsoft+LinkedIn+Xbox carving out some niches and Google flailing wildly at everything.

In the "Creepy Stalkering" battlefield (which overlaps some with Social) you have Facebook getting people to give up data and Google just silently watching .everything.you.do. muahahahaha. Facebook also watches as much as possible via website badges and sharing, but doesn't have near the reach of Google with searches + Analytics.

I'm sure there are other battlefields I'm not listing here including things like overlap into the offline world ("Political Influence" anyone?), but it's far from just a 2-sided battle.

I remember Microsoft updated the app and definitely at least removed downloading. I think they did their best on fixing the other issues too. Google still made excuses.

The other infamous Google move towards Windows Phone was blocking access in certain ways to Google Maps.

They released an update that fixed all these issues. Then Google banned the app again, and Microsoft gave up.

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