Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Plus, it seems like the author of the post fails to understand what Google wanted, and that Microsoft was being totally passive-aggressive in their blog post.
What are you talking about? It says that in the article right here:
>First, the advertising giant is demanding specifically that Microsoft rewrite the application to use HTML5. Microsoft doesn't elaborate on why Google has made this demand but points out that Google's own apps on iOS and Android do not use HTML5. The software company claims that this is a "manufactured" reason, invented only to ensure that the YouTube experience on Windows Phone is inferior to that on iOS and Android.
I agree that using an iframe is going to suck compared to directly playing the video. Do you disagree?
It's a 'simple' demand sure, but it's pointless, inconsistent with other platforms, and lowers quality.
Edit: Ugh, why is your comment still at the top when it is factually incorrect? Am I weird for compulsively downvoting factually incorrect comments?
If Microsoft can't write a browser with an acceptable video tag, it's their own fault, not an API provider's fault. Mozilla, Apple, and Google all seem to have been able to create browsers with good video tags, especially Apple and Google, who have great support on their mobile systems, which implies that Microsoft should be able to either write their own, or copy the Webkit or Gecko implementation.
It's not inconsistent with other platforms, because anyone who isn't Google is required to follow the same rules as Microsoft. The only difference between Android/iOS and Windows Phone in this instance is that Google isn't going to build a WP app. When they're making the application, they know when they're going to make a change to the entire system, nobody else does, unless they publicize it, and nobody has an incentive to make the switch unless Google is willing to be more proactive about making sure everyone follows more rules.
How does requiring one component, the video, lower quality? If Microsoft doesn't have a web view for WP, and requires applications to be entirely native or entirely web-based, how is that Google fault?
If Google let anyone use the same system they use for their own YouTube app, they'd have to have a grace period where applications could use the old system before updating to the new system, and they'd have to be proactive about making sure everyone uses the new system after their deadline. That's a whole lot more work than saying "follow our really simple rule of using a web view".
Google has every right to make their demand. Google has every right to enforce their rules. Google has every right to ignore their own rules. They have a good reason to have the video tag rule. If they weren't the ones actively developing YouTube, and the Android and iOS apps, they'd probably agree to following the video tag rule, because it makes sense.
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As for your quote from the article, it doesn't say Microsoft re-released their application after agreeing to follow the rules. It doesn't mention that they're not willing the follow the rules. It just says they didn't follow the rules because they didn't like them.
There are several iOS and Android apps for YouTube that aren't the official app. They all seem to be able to follow Google's rules, and don't seem to be doing poorly.
>Ars didn't mention that Microsoft didn't want to play by the rather simple rules of "put the video in a web frame"
Ars did mention it.
It's the same reason Twitter has these guidelines for how you can display tweets.
WP users be thankful you don't have either the MS port or an official Google one. From what I gather even if you had both, you'd still want to download Metrotube.
From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
"At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important."
..
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors."
...
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, while the old IBM made the mainframes expensive and the software ... expensive too. Either way, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don't have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won't."
...
"In other words, Google's future depends on the Internet staying an open system, and our advocacy of open will grow the web for everyone - including Google."
The entire thing is a good read.
I think Google is within their rights to put whatever limits they want in that area, even unreasonable ones.
And while 2/3 of HN is happy to swallow the open kool aid, last I checked MS wore big boy pants and surely they can do better than crying about their big unfair rival on their blog.
Is VLC a YouTube application or not? Because it doesn't use HTML[5].
[1] - http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/google-blocks-windows... [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6220233
Hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering effort and bandwidth go into Youtube. In reality Google is completely within its rights to no do anything to support any platform it chooses not to. Why allow a platform and company to leech off that if they're not willing to. Microsoft is just trying to win in the court of public opinion here.
(1) If you consider single digits market share to be significant.
There are good reasons for this very simple rule that everyone but Microsoft seems able to comply with. By definition, such a rule cannot be "arbitrary".
If you pride yourself and market yourself on openness any rule that flies in the face of said openness is entirely arbitrary, because there shouldn't be any rules limiting your openness.
It's also the only significant phone OS that doesn't ship with Google search as the default.
How is this any different than me releasing my code under something like the LGPL, which would allow those folks who dynamically link to not release source to their app, but force those who are required to statically link (due to platform or other reasons) to release source to their app?
Note that it's a similar situation. If I release code under the LGPL, i don't have to abide by it, only others do.
Twitter requires third party API users limit themselves to 100k users (or whatever it is), but, even though they use the same API, does not require it of itself.
They also have decided some folks don't have to abide by this.
How is this different?
None of this is "anti-competitive" behavior.
Would you think it anti-competitive behavior if Google provided no API and also told people finding ways to embed it to stop?
If Comcast wants to provide a digital network that provides connectivity between selected entities (such as end-users and companies that have elected to pay Comcast additional fees), that's fine. But they don't get to call it "Internet". They don't get to pass it off as something different from the AOL and CompuServe of old.
Neither Microsoft, nor owners of Windows Phone handsets, are customers of YouTube. The only people who are customers of YouTube are people who pay to have their videos hosted there.
That is actually the definition of being anti-competitive. Google is gaining an unfair advantage w.r.t. Android vs WP by manipulating terms of their extremely popular video service to make it not work on their competitors product.
It's nothing new, they have had so-called 'private' APIs since the early days of Windows.
Actually Windows ran perfectly fine over DR-DOS. Perhaps you're thinking of the beta version which included the code to not allow Windows to run on any dos other than MS-DOS. The reason obviously is purely technical. Because of the way Windows 3.1 worked it required access to internal MS-DOS undocumented data structures which could not be guaranteed to work on any other DOS clone.
In fact Windows crashed on MS-DOS 4.0 because the internal data structures changed. MS-DOS 4.0 contains special code for backwards compatibility to trick Windows into thinking its running on the older version.
The agreement has been public since 2009.
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/NovvMS-104-8.pdf
> Microsoft also debated the exact language the message should contain. In the end, senior vice president Brad Silverberg said in a 1992 email that the message needed to steer users away from DR-DOS. "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS," Silverberg wrote.
Point to a single "private" API. There is no such thing. Preemptive apologies if you're a non technical person as these things are obvious to most programmers so I don't really want to berate anyone for simply not having sufficient information.
Or search msdn for "This API is not intended to be used directly from your code" for examples of other APIs that are 'private' to Microsoft and will similarly get you booted.
Going back in time, there were (still are) a great many dlls and services in Windows with unnamed exports and not available to the general public (eg win32k, csrss, milcore etc).
Go back to the dark ages and as others have already mentioned there's the famous AARD example that used undocumented DOS data structures to distinguish MS-DOS from other variants.
Like I said, nothing new.
Um.. That is not a private API. Those are the terms of the STORE, not the OS. You can use the API from whatever app you want. Although as a programmer I personally dislike such restrictions, its no different from what Google or Apple are doing for their own stores.
>Going back in time, there were (still are) a great many dlls and services in Windows with unnamed exports and not available to the general public (eg win32k, csrss, milcore etc)
What the... What are you talking about? Those DLLs are internal OS DLLs. Nobody besides OS components has any use for those APIs.
>Go back to the dark ages and as others have already mentioned there's the famous AARD example
Which never shipped since it was part of a windows beta version.
>Like I said, nothing new.
You can say anything you want ofcource. You'll have to bring actual evidence if you want to be taken seriously though.
As for 'internal OS DLLs' I think it's subjective as to whether those APIs have any use outside of OS components (and indeed what constitutes an 'OS component'). I happen to think there's some really useful stuff in there. Anyway, I only brought it up to highlight that there are some things Microsoft has decided we can't use for whatever reason. Again, I think it's reasonable to consider them 'private', non-public, internal. I'm not saying any of this is good\bad or that they shouldn't have the right to do this sort of thing. Just that it exists.
As for AARD, technically it did 'ship' as the code was included in Win3.1 but was benign thanks to a runtime flag. Even in beta form it highlights that this sort of thing, relying on undocumented behavior, has been used at Microsoft for a very long time. Perhaps it's an insignificant example but it did cost them close to $300M in a settlement so seemed pretty relevant to me.
Anyway, I shall leave it to other readers to decide if any of this constitutes evidence of so-called private APIs by Microsoft.
Thanks.
So, first you make a claim about "since the early days of windows" OS APIs useful to others have been hidden that apparently only MS applications get to use. Yet you have failed to point out a single shipping microsoft application that benefited from those APIs or even actually mentioned what those APIs are or what they do. And now you're talking about some fringe windows 8 RT app store restrictions. Windows history spans from 1985 to 2013. Surely you should have hundreds of thousands of examples that you can google?
> Anyway, I only brought it up to highlight that there are some things Microsoft has decided we can't use for whatever reason.
Sorry. I still have no clue what are you talking about. Internal OS DLLs contain the implementation of the OS itself. Applications run on TOP of the OS. They don't re-invent what the OS already does.
I strongly suspect you're attempting to construct a non-technical argument about a purely technical topic. Anyway, I doubt you're going to present any evidence.. So, goodbye.
Let's play a sad song on a tiny violin for them.
Microsoft's YouTube app on Windows phone is actually really nice. It's a pity Google keep trying to stop it.