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Comment by tgv | Hacker News Reader

Did they provide a rationale for this change? Or is this more of a "middle manager's bonus depends on engagement KPI" kind of thing?

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Does Google ever provide a rationale for why they continue to twist Android internals to use More Google?

Oh, just wait a while. Google employees will be logging in soon, you’ll see the rationale on this very thread!

Waiting for the obligatory "Googler here, not on the Android team, but here's my totally personal opinion why this is actually a good thing..."

My guess is that people who juggle multiple browsers and who want actively want a null default are nonexistent but the people who are confused when opening links after installing a second app that works as a http handler changing the flow are.

I'm one of those nonexistent people. I have Firefox for personal use and then Chrome for work stuff. Depending on the app launching the link, I choose the browser myself.

The new work profile container stuff has somewhat reduced the utility of this but it's not gone for me yet.

Same story. Got four different browsers I work with.

I use MS Edge for trusted websites and the ones I want to be logged into and DuckDuckGo browser for random pages and news articles which are normally filled with ads and tracking code.

A better thing is the TWRP option to "format system partition."

In fairness, that easily can be an actual personal opinion; consider that "people who work at Google" is almost certain to be filtered to "people who aren't too bothered by Google's behavior" in the first place, and then they work in an environment that exposes them to the values that create Google's behaviors.

Also consider that people are more likely to vocalize what they think their company is doing well as opposed to what they think their company is doing poorly in a public forum.

"That's an excellent question...."

I always felt Google regards Android as a mistake. It is too open. Just look at how iOS is printing money for Apple with its walled garden. And Google's Pixel line smartphones are not selling.

If they could do it all over again things would be very different.

I'm happy with the Pixel line, so I hope they don't try to redo them. Google tried to turn the Pixel phones into Google's iPhones ever since they dropped the Nexus branding.

It certainly helped when they bought half of HTC's engineers in 2017.

I loved the LG made Nexus phones a lot back the day. But yes HTC did build nice, solid phones as well.

Alphabet simply does not want to invest enough in R&D to develop devices as solid as Apple’s, nor do they want the expenses of in person support. Nothing has stopped them for the past 15 years from spending money to develop a similar locked down device and building out a network of retail stores.

They would rather leave the expensive hardware business to other companies since it does not scale as cheaply as slinging ads via software. Microsoft is guilty of the same. They are happy with the high margin rent from Azure/Windows/Office licensing, so why bother rolling the dice on expensive hardware development and support.

Given the recent investment in a custom chip, the opening of a store in NYC, massive ad spend for pixel, and statements on earnings calls noting hardware investment I don’t think it’s lack of desire. Nest and sundry Google Home devices far exceed Apple’s equivalent offerings.

I think the truth may be Apple just makes it look easy, and it’s really hard - even with the resources at Google’s disposal.

Oh no no no. They executed the MS playbook perfectly. Now it's just the time to cash in. It's "Google - The Ballmer Years".

They seem to be adding very little wrt. useful features, and resorting to pointless churn as we're seeing here. Unfortunately the most workable "open" alternative is the mainline Linux stack, which has yet to reach "daily driver" usability on any device. Sailfish is a non starter as it's just a closed UX on top of vendor kernels and drivers, only the middle layers are open.

Because they will not be developing an operating system completely for free? It makes no sense.

They don't. I paid them good money for hardware that contains the OS with updates for 4 years.

> I paid them good money

You think it was a good money, but they disagree and want (much) more.

>completely for free

Yeah, yeah. And the money they spend on it doesn't come for a multibillion ad business.

It is possible that 98% of people aren't as familiar with digging through said menus, and that they would prefer having a default application, and that this is the way to force it.

I don't enjoy power-user features and functions being removed from a device, but I've come to expect it on mobile. I don't think it is always willful "evil". It may just be "this is how most people do it, this is a way to simplify code/UX/etc." and they pull the trigger without thinking about the HN or reddit thread with a few people complaining.

I'd make the point that previously when opening a link or document that could be used by multiple locations you got a popup asking which one to use and if it should always be used or as a one off.

No problems with defaults, but you should let the user pick.

That's a little hard to believe, because the prompt makes it very obvious what's happening. If you attempt to open a link and it prompts you to pick a browser, the options are (using my own phone as an example:

Open With

(Samsung Internet) (Chrome) (Firefox) (Firefox Focus)

Just Once | Always

Android already really wants you to click "Always" and just have something set. But I click "Just Once" every time, because I want the freedom to use Firefox Focus for the random clickbait article that shows up in my news feed that I don't want polluting my Firefox history. By its nature, it is already an intentional decision on my part.

This being removed from Android 12 is Google saying, "Yeah, we really don't want you to have that choice anymore, because you might not pick the right choice for us."

You say that this prompt is "very obvious" but I strongly disagree.

> Open With

> (Samsung Internet) (Chrome) (Firefox) (Firefox Focus)

> Just Once | Always

I'm an android developer and have been for more than 10 years. I get messed up at this kind of prompt sometimes, and just the other day I thought to myself, 'surprised google hasn't improved that yet '

I'm sure 99%+ global android users find the experience confusing.

Agree to disagree, I guess?

What would you propose as an alternative? To my mind, this is a pretty like-for-like experience with other operating systems, e.g. when you click an unknown file extension in Windows and it prompts you to pick the program to open it with. You'll get a prompt that says "How do you want to open this file?", you'll get a prompt to pick the program, and then there's a tick box that says "Always use program to open .XYZ files" It's reasonably intuitive to me.

And again, if you click "Always", the prompt never comes back again. I've unintentionally clicked Always once or twice and then had to spend some time in the Android System menu resetting defaults.

The only other option for using the non-default browser after you have one associated is to long-click the URL and then manually locate the browser you want to use in the Share menu. That is cumbersome AF. The present menu offered when a non-default browser is specified is much better, IMO.

Perhaps when you uninstalled a default third-party browser before, it was setting the default to None? Eg. install Firefox -> delete it -> now links take an extra click to actually open in a browser.

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