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Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

Google cannot block Gmail and YouTube. These are and will be accessible through web browser. What Google can do is not spend engineering time to build a special version of mobile app to support the platform, and block other apps that access them that don't conform to Terms and Conditions.

(disclaimer: I work for Google on GCP)

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> Google cannot block Gmail and YouTube. These are and will be accessible through web browser.

Well, through web browsers that Google chooses to support, given at least Gmail uses UA whitelisting (and, at various times, various non-Chrome Chromium based browsers have been excluded). If Google chooses not to support any browser that runs on the given system and blocks access to any other browser, then Google absolutely can block access to them.

Email is an open protocol. Anyone can write a client. All major ones work with Gmail. For YouTube, see newpipe. The main missing piece is Google maps (at least the navigation bit) which you can't legally get without explicit cooperation from Google.

Until Google deprecates IMAP for @gmail accounts. It's already disabled by default for new accounts.

It's been disabled by default for years, as far as I know. Not sure why they'd deprecated it now.

EDIT: A quick search shows it was always disabled by default, since 2007, when it launched.

Doesn't that support GP's argument? Seems like they really don't want anyone to use it, since the beginning.

The Gmail concepts do not really map very well to IMAP and traditional mail clients. They do provide a custom API that does mirror their semantic for that.

Not today, I agree. It was just an ordinary email up until a few years ago though.

Gmail's labels have always been an arse to map on to normal IMAP-based email.

The replacement API that GMail offers (which reflects their different approach) is open and free to use, so it's not really an issue, as third-party apps can support it. And many, in fact, do.

That's not the case for YouTube, though, which is exactly why it's a problem when GMail isn't.

They also have a regular alert which nags you to "improve your security settings" if you use 'insecure' IMAP. I'm glad I don't use gmail any more.

I don't know people here noticed but they are already doing so by bringing "confidential email", etc to all users which explicitly require WEB VERSION or Gmail app.

@bubblethink

Maps is a tricky beast. Given Google Maps has been around for so long, there may be a lot of licensing going on with the images. You also have to comply with various government requests to be able to host images of specific areas.

They backed down almost immediately, but after Google removed the YouTube app for Amazon's Fire TV, Google also blacklisted the Fire TV web browsers from accessing the YouTube webpage that had been optimized for televisions.

>As discovered by The Verge, the TV-optimized web version of YouTube is no longer accessible on the Fire TV. Instead, visitors using both Amazon’s Silk browser and Firefox for Fire TV are being redirected to the full desktop client.

https://9to5google.com/2018/01/22/google-blocks-youtube-tv-o...

Google services being refused on the windows mobile platform contributed greatly to its death.

Who would ever make an app for something that doesn't even have youtube--when trashy tv boxes do?

Who would get and keep a phone that doesn't have the apps they and their friends use?

Maybe I’m weird, but I probably use YouTube even less than twice a month.

You are. 18-34 year olds in the US spend an average of 19 hours per month watching videos on YouTube. https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-still-watch-tv-d...

YouTube not being on Windows Phone is really Microsoft's fault. They wrote their own "YouTube" app that removed ads and allowed downloading videos. Google rightfully was like "No way" and Microsoft continued to be belligerant.

Google didn't want to let Microsoft develop their own YouTube client because Google frequently changes how the YouTube client works. Microsoft could have wrapped the web client, but after they acted stupidly Google didn't want to further cooperate.

Ah, YouTube API's do not supply ad's. Google refused to make an app for Windows Phone. MS created an app with the available API. Google didn't want to work with MS to address any issues Google had with it.

YouTube website is not a replacement for a web app, and anyone who used the app on, say, Android would know. The most basic thing I expect from any YouTube mobile app is being able to play things in the background. Mobile browsers don't allow websites to do that, and for very good reasons.

As for "don't conform to Terms and Conditions" ... well, if you guys don't offer an API to build a conforming app, then such a complaint is misleading, because there's no way to build one. So what you're really saying is that you will block all apps except your own, or made with your blessing. And then we're back to square one - your refusal to grant such a blessing to an app on a competing platform is abuse of your monopoly position wrt YouTube.

>Mobile browsers don't allow websites to do that

Mobile browsers do allow that, YouTube just breaks that functionality for reasons unknown. They do it on mobile only as well, videos do play in the background when I use the desktop site.

> They do it on mobile only as well, videos do play in the background when I use the desktop site.

Or if you use a browser that supports add-ons and install something like https://addons.mozilla.org/android/addon/video-background-pl... to block Youtube from accessing the APIs it uses to detect when a tab has been backgrounded.

And the reasons aren't that unknown - if I'm not mistaken background playback is one of the selling points of a Youtube Premium (formerly Red) subscription.

If the terms and conditions were onerous enough that Microsoft could not conform to them then I feel like this rounds to "Google can effectively block the native consumption of YouTube and Gmail."

It's probably tied to the play store. If they want to have it in their version of Android, they should be able to install Youtube on those phones. If they want to roll their own, they'd probably end up in a similar situation as WP.

Didn't google block various Amazon devices (like Echo Show) from accessing Youtube?

YouTube without an app is just not the same.

It’s better.

I deleted the YouTube app from my iPhone and iPad because I would rather use the website and if you click on a YouTube link it will launch the app. The YouTube app doesn’t support background playback without paying for YouTube Red and it doesn’t support picture in picture mode on the iPad - I use a third party app.

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