Hacker News Reader

There's no problem with banning products that use your service but violate your Terms of Service; it just doesn't jibe with what is usually understood by "open". "We're open"/"we encourage openness"/"our platform is open" implies acceptance, transparency, a warm welcome, permissiveness even.

It kind of makes "open" another doublespeak term: we're Open, but terms and conditions apply...

Of course we can have debates on the semantics of the word "open": should it be assumed to mean tolerance?

Semantics aside, Google's "open" is marketing artifice, akin to Apple's many pompous adjectives for mundane or even inferior things ("beautiful", "revolutionary", "insanely great" etc.) or Microsoft's old message of empowerment ("where do you want to go today?") to sell an unremarkable but popular OS and productivity suite.

Prerogative or not, it's still douchey of Google to outright block Microsoft. The original Apple version of YouTube only shows videos that do not want advertising (granted a smaller and smaller # of videos).

>Prerogative or not, it's still douchey of Google to outright block Microsoft.

Why? The two customers are competitors and Microsoft has a history of just ripping off Google's services.

http://www.wired.com/business/2011/02/bing-copies-google/

Do two wrongs make a right?

No, but Google doesn't owe Microsoft any favors.

I genuinely don't get this line of thinking. This isn't about Google or Microsoft, rather it's about the end user who is essentially a customer of both parties. IMHO, Google aren't just screwing MSFT, they are screwing users, which doesn't really hold with the image that they like to portray. It's actually rather spiteful.

How is it spiteful to the 7 people who own Windows phones?

This is Google saying "because of their behaviors, we don't want to allow them to consume our services." Microsoft is trying to weasel this into good PR for themselves, but the fact is this: Google has no obligation to people that are not making them money. It is not their responsibility to keep people buying Microsoft phones.

> "How is it spiteful to the 7 people who own Windows phones?"

That is a snide comment that reveals much.

> 'This is Google saying "because of their behaviors, we don't want to allow them to consume our services."'

That right there. That is spiteful. It's not Microsoft that they are restricting, it's Google users; the very people that use YouTube. It's certainly not the behaviour of the company that Google projects itself to be. I totally agree that Google owe Microsoft nothing, but this has the potential to do much harm to their image. A good check is to switch the protagonists around and ask yourself how you would react then. I'm not suggesting for one minute that were Microsoft to do the same it would be OK (or that indeed it is or was OK). I'm suggesting that there appears to be a double standard being applied to Microsoft from more that a few parties. Google cannot have their cake and eat it, as the saying goes...

Edit: Cleaned up my shameful grammar and spelling...

>That is a snide comment that reveals much.

How so? It's not that popular a device.[0] If you work at Microsoft or have a significant interest in them not failing, you might want to divulge your bias here.

>That right there. That is spiteful. It's not Microsoft that they are restricting, it's Google users; the very people that use YouTube.

You're treating YouTube as if it's water. It's a business.

>A good check is to switch the protagonists around and ask yourself how you would react then.

If Microsoft cut off access to Bing from Android Phones (and if, for this example, if Bing was as ubiquitous and useful as Google Search) due to Google flagrantly violating ToS, I'd understand and be mad at Google for selling me a device and then fucking me over by locking me away from a good service through their posturing.

Microsoft is becoming less relevant, but they're still trying to act like the big bully of yesteryear.

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_operating_system#Market_...

> How so?

If you can't see it, there is no point explaining. There are significantly more than 7 users.

> You're treating YouTube as if it's water. It's a business.

You are semantically correct. 2 issues though. If it's business, surely developing a version for the device is worth the ad revenue. Also doesn't this directly contradict the benevolent and altruistic business image that Google like to project. Microsoft are trying to provide access to a popular service. Google are blocking it on frankly extremely spurious grounds and refusing to develop an app of their own (that I don't take issue with). For the final time; it's about users.

>If you can't see it, there is no point explaining. There are significantly more than 7 users.

I can see it. But you're acting as if Google just blackholed orphans from getting food.

>Microsoft are trying to provide access to a popular service. Google are blocking it on frankly extremely spurious grounds and refusing to develop an app of their own (that I don't take issue with). For the final time; it's about users.

Microsoft is trying to access a popular service while breaking the terms of service. What guarantee does Google have that Microsoft won't try to pull more shit in the future, requiring Google to take action in response (at a cost to themselves)? Everything is opportunity cost; why should Google spend any more time on Microsoft's phone's relatively small user base?

Edit: Also, Microsoft phone users could just open a webbrowser.

And if it'd been Microsoft (or for that matter Apple) doing the blocking there would've been an enormous outpouring of indignation and scorn from the Open Source crowd. Suggesting otherwise is disingenuous.

> "But you're acting as if Google just blackholed orphans from getting food."

I disagree. My indignation is firmly rooted in Googles bare-faced hypocrisy. http://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/ This is hypocrisy. This is what Google want you to believe. Their behaviour suggest that this is marketing bullshit on their part.

From where I'm standing Google are essentially harming their own users for what seems like nothing more than malicious reasoning masked as T&C's. It is they and no-one else who are getting fucked in all of this. I couldn't give a shit about Microsoft. Do they deserve it? Yeah probably, karma and all of that. I do give a shit about the utter hypocrisy exhibited by Google and their fans however. The double standards on display in this and other threads on the 'net are astounding.

> "Also, Microsoft phone users could just open a web browser."

Indeed they could (funny, but when that was the response to the lack of Flash on iPhones, it was mocked...). Or Google could just stop being hypocrites and practice what they preach. We'll see snow in Hades first.

Microsoft used to distribute a YouTube app that did not show videos with advertising. This lasted for, if I remember correctly, several years.

The current fight started when Microsoft released an update that showed all YouTube videos, without ads, ignoring the advertising-requirement flag.

I love it how they never really say that Android == Google in the article and instead play it like the Youtube apps were somehow made by iPhone and Android OS/platform engineers.

The original iOS YouTube app was done by Apple. Google also has a YouTube API with easy code examples and resources for iOS developers, today.

I have to agree with Microsoft here. It seems they are doing everything they can and getting no clear responses. It's funny because this is the same type of junk that happens to small dev companies submitting to app stores in general, however that doesn't make it right. And when you are talking YouTube, which pretty much has a monoppoly on many different types of video content online, it's quite ridiculous to say its ok for Google to do this in the long term.

> It seems they are doing everything they can and getting no clear responses.

... except complying with Google's terms for displaying YouTube videos.

> And when you are talking YouTube, which pretty much has a monoppoly on many different types of video content online, it's quite ridiculous to say its ok for Google to do this in the long term.

It's definitely OK for google to do this for as long as they want, and then some. Windows Phone users are not blocked from accessing YouTube, so it's perfectly OK (and even if they were, it might arguably still be ok, but that's not even the case). They just have to spend 3 more seconds waiting for the first page to load.

You missed the news. Android is mostly owned by Samsung now.

There are native apps, like Jasmine, on other platforms, but they use an embedded HTML5 video thing to show the actual video.

>It seems Google will allow them to build an HTML5 app

Isn't it more like Google is forcing them to write an HTML5 app by refusing to allow native app?

Google cannot force them to make anything; they are separate companies.

Google is allowing them to make an HTML5 app, and forbidding them from making a native app. They are not forcing them to do anything.

Sophistry. Users expect a Youtube experience on an average mobile device, and by dictating the language it must be written in (WHY? What possible legitimate reason does Google have to do this?), they are effectively forcing Microsoft's hand.

> WHY?

Well, because apparently there isn't a soul at Microsoft who knows how to read a ToS...

Why do you think Microsoft are resorting to a smear campaign? They don't have a leg to stand on.

Just because it's in a ToS doesn't mean it's reasonable or immune from complaint or criticism. I can require in my ToS that everyone who uses my Awesome(C) API to do a headstand on first access, that doesn't make it reasonable.

It's completely unreasonable, to the point of being WTF-worthy, to require the app which accesses the API to be in a certain language.

Seriously. I'm having trouble phrasing how dumb this is. As long as the app can generate the appropriate requests and serve the appropriate data, who cares? What possible legitimate reason does Google have to decide if the app is written in HTML5, Java, INTERCAL, brainfuck, or lolcode? Why provide an API at all if you're going to do platform restrictions?

Microsoft are lucky Google isn't cutting them off entirely. If I were Google, that's what I would do.

At least that would be more defensible than what they're doing now.