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Comment by gsnedders | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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...

@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.

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.

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