Hacker News Reader

Comment by robododo | Hacker News Reader

Bizarre.

I wonder if, in 10 years, WebKit will be viewed as the next IE6 when the latest/greatest HTML rendering engine comes along?

What happened to standards compliance?

View on HN

Honestly I think the title is just PR BS from Google. You can use WP8 browser to access maps.google.co.uk and it works perfectly fine [0]

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z8vfzurnKw

That's a video of the desktop UI, not the mobile UI. Users are complaining that they can't access the mobile UI.

Actually, I'm on wp8 and I can access neither. Maps.google.com just redirects me to the mobile version of google.com

WebKit is constantly moving forward, and is not stagnant like IE6 was. Many of its initially-proprietary web features have been standardized and adopted by other browser engines. The primary challenge is convincing web authors to support the standardized versions of the formerly-proprietary features alongside the browser-specific versions.

Personal bias much? I see you work on Safari at Apple.

How come it's OK for WebKit to extend the spec with non-standard features but it was not OK for IE 6? Sure, some of the features have been standardized and included in other browsers, but the same thing happened with IE! You can thank IE for the XmlHttpRequest after all.

I can literally see no difference between IE6 adding non-standard features vs. WebKit doing it. You just have personal stake in WebKit succeeding and don't want to admit it's basically the same thing.

When Firefox, Chrome, or Safari add new features, it's with an eye toward getting those features into the appropriate standard. The goal is to have as few proprietary features as possible.

Historically, IE's new features have been developed for IE and Windows only. Then when competition had been sufficiently smothered, development on IE was simply halted.

I'm all for innovation, but don't pretend that this is some altruistic plan by Google and Apple to move the web forward. It's about the same thing it was for Microsoft, keeping users tied to THEIR browser.

Let's take Google Chrome's NaCl. It's eerily reminiscent of ActiveX is it not? Sure, Google open sourced it, but Mozilla and others have repeatedly criticized it. The web is not about sandboxing native code and creating some kind of Frankenstein platform within a platform where one can execute "native" code in a web browser. I mean, it's friggin' stupid. But it's OK because Google open sourced it and proposed it as a standard, right?

Or how bout Dart? Let me rush out and build my next application in Dart, because it's going to be standardized right? I mean, Google open sourced it so everyone could implement it!

There are some good things (WebM, SPDY) that have come out of Google, but those were incremental improvements and they allowed for graceful degradation or were alternatives to existing things.

  > I'm all for innovation, but don't pretend that this is
  > some altruistic plan by Google and Apple to move the web
  > forward. It's about the same thing it was for Microsoft,
  > keeping users tied to THEIR browser.

If Google cared about keeping users tied to Chrome, I suspect they would do more to discourage use of their greatest competitor's browser (Safari).

  > Let's take Google Chrome's NaCl. It's eerily
  > reminiscent of ActiveX is it not? Sure, Google open
  > sourced it, but Mozilla and others have repeatedly
  > criticized it. The web is not about sandboxing native
  > code and creating some kind of Frankenstein platform
  > within a platform where one can execute "native" code
  > in a web browser. I mean, it's friggin' stupid. But
  > it's OK because Google open sourced it and proposed it
  > as a standard, right?

The difference between ActiveX and NaCl is that ActiveX can only be used on IE and Windows, by design, but NaCl could be implemented by any browser vendor and run on any OS (so long as the user has an x86 processor).

Also, NaCl is more of a prototype than a marketed product. Its obvious potential security issues prevent a more widespread adoption, and criticism from Mozilla (et al) are generally more on the technical aspects. The underlying goal of being able to safely execute native code is extremely important to the continued development of browsers as general-purpose operating systems (a goal I personally disagree with, but whatever). Someone needs to figure it out, and having an early first step proposed as an open spec is a good start.

  > Or how bout Dart? Let me rush out and build my next
  > application in Dart, because it's going to be
  > standardized right? I mean, Google open sourced it so
  > everyone could implement it!

I don't even know what you're arguing here; if NaCl is a prototype, then Dart is a tech demo, and one not even officially developed by Google. Chrome doesn't support it, and probably never will. You're essentially complaining that Google allows its employees to work on personal projects related to web browsers.

  > There are some good things (WebM, SPDY) that have come
  > out of Google, but those were incremental improvements
  > and they allowed for graceful degradation or were
  > alternatives to existing things.

Everything is an incremental improvement, or an alternative to existing things.

The major difference is that Microsoft wasn't actively working with the various web standards groups to standardize its various proprietary features. The majority of the non-standard functionality that's added to WebKit and Gecko is done with the intent of moving it on to the standards track if it is beneficial to the web platform.

Edit: If you can't see any difference between the approach to standards taken by Microsoft with IE 6 and by the people involved with WebKit, I'd suggest reevaulating your own biases.

The reason its not supported is not because of technological limitations. It's just anti competitive practices from Google.

There is nothing 'Anti-Competitive' about not providing your free service to customers of your competitor. If people want Google services they can choose Android.

It's worth remembering that Android was developed in the first place to be an Open alternative to prevent Windows phone from taking off. Why would they go to all the trouble of developing Android only to prop up Microsoft.

Of course it's anti-competitive! They took something that was working on a competitor's phone platform and intentionally caused it to stop working. It's probably not illegal, but if it's designed to harm a competitor it is by definition anti-competitive.

Not adding value to your competitor's products for free is simply competitive and part of normal business. "Anti-competitive" is a different thing and means using market power to suppress competition, whereas this move is about intensifying it.

First of all, forget "not adding value to your competitor's product" - this is about removing value that was already there.

Secondly, Google has market power in both the mobile device OS market and the online map market compared to MS, and is trying to leverage its position in the latter to hurt MS in the former. This seems like exactly your stated definition of anti-competitive behavior. How is this "intensifying" competition?

There are multiple players in the map market, Microsoft themselves being one of them. Google are competing against Microsoft by asking customers to choose between their integrated mobile offerings rather than supporting Microsoft by giving them a second maps option for free.

Can't you just install a different browser on WP8? Or is Microsoft locking down their platform to only the IE engine?

I'd say its just the opposite. It's anti-competitive practices from MS. They're trying to build their own walled in hardware/software garden. It would make more sense to me if MS was blocking Google stuff, not the other way around.

They probably figure if they let Google in on some things, then they open the door to supporting all of Google's apps like gmail, chrome, calendar, google docs, etc. Which goes against them wanting people to use outlook.com, their calendar, MS office and IE as their main browser.

> It's anti-competitive practices from MS.

I down-voted you because in this particular case this is not true, I'd say the opposite happens.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com