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Comment by engendered | Hacker News Reader

Is this a reasonable complaint? Why would you be browsing the play store from Android in a browser? If you try to open it in the Chrome browser, it just forces you to the play store app, which rather makes sense.

Every platform and browser requires support and attention, and in this case they chose not to support an edge case that really makes no sense, and simply causes usability issues (so how do you install an app from the Play Store in Firefox?). But cue the typical "don't be evil" sorts of comments.

EDIT: Wow, five downvotes within 2 minutes. The Google hate is strong in this case (and is probably a coordinated effort), where an app ignoring Android URL intents is used in a comically irrelevant fashion....don't be evil, hurr durr.

And the decline of HN continues.

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> Why would you be browsing the play store from Android in a browser?

Because you're browsing the web in your web browser (that's what I do with mine, anyway), you end up on a webpage with an app review, so you click the link to check out of the official screenshots and reviews, and all of a sudden you're browsing the Play Store in your browser! What a crazy random happenstance!

It's almost like that's how webpages work or something.

It's not crazy, it's Intent Filters [0], IMHO the Android killer feature as an open platform. As an Android user I love the ability to select my default app in order to open an image, share an image, share a text/link and, of course, open a Play Store app record. It's the Android way and Firefox is breaking it.

[0] http://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-filter...

As a recent iPhone switcher, yes, I love intents. It's great to be able to set what I open mailto: links in, etc.

Not sure I understand the connection here though, could you explain? What intent is Firefox breaking, and why is it OK that Chrome can go to play.google.com (in the browser, it doesn't bounce me to the Play Store app) while Firefox is blocked?

Hey, we talked about this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9027332

Apparently if you open a link to the Play Store, Firefox just opens it normally and lets you reopen it in the app if that's what you want, rather than immediately dumping you into the app and randomly breaking stuff like tab support in the process.

...in this case they chose not to support an edge case that really makes no sense.

There's a difference between "not supporting" (e.g. not caring that an icon is positioned wrong) and "completely turning it off". All those sites that used to catch hell for switching on user agent string and telling us to "please install IE in order to use this site", justifiably caught that hell. I'm normally as big a G fanboy as anyone, but how is this different?

Because you're on a device that is guaranteed to have a better mechanism of utilizing the Play Store. You can't install or update from the browser. You can't see that you even have it installed. If the site sees you are in Android in a browser, it uses a URL intent to redirect you to the app, which makes enormous sense but when some people want to cry it out.

And for all of the nonsense through this thread (again, this seems coordinated), Chrome on Android simply punts you to the Play Store app (despite people manufacturing a fiction to pitch their outrage). And, if you really care, you can set Firefox to desktop mode and happily browse it, even though it makes zero sense to do that.

Talk about much ado about absolutely nothing.

Chrome on Android simply punts you to the Play Store app

This isn't true at all.

Edit: It's interesting that you shout about coordinated anti-Google sentiment, then put forth obvious falsehoods in your posts.

There's some irony here. Chrome unpredictably punts you to the app when browsing the Play Store (actually I think it has to do with whether the link to the store involved a redirect, but that looks unpredictable from the outside). This is a mess.

Firefox, OTOH, lets you reliably browse the website and easily switch to the app (via the Android in the URL or via the Open in an app option in a link's long-press menu) whenever you want. This is much cleaner, but...

At least we have Phony.

You can install from the browser (the play store will push the apk to the selected device). You can see what you have installed on each device, not only on the current one. You can see compatibility for each device, not only the current one. And you can see info for apps, that Google for some reason blocks from you in the app (incompatible device, you happen to be in the wrong country, etc). For example, the only way for me to see Google Play Books description is to put in the link into the browser - the app will not show it.

It can also happen, that you are on device that lacks com.android.vending. With browser, you can at least have a look, what's there.

> But cue the typical "don't be evil" sorts of comments.

If this were an isolated incident, I could see your point. But Google has been steadily closing off services and putting up walls over the past couple of years. It's becoming a trend, and not a good one. In a time when even Microsoft is accepting and supporting open source, Google is increasingly looking like the bad guy with every move like this.

The even broader trend seems to be that the market leader does this. Microsoft did it with IE, Office, etc. Google is doing it with Chrome, Android, etc.

It's possible there'll be something else "more open than Android/Chrome" in ~5 years, and then ~5 years after that it will be getting locked down in the same way that Chrome & Android are now.

It might be a cyclic phenomena in the tech industry. Potentially startups can even exploit it by looking at what is in the process of being locked down and producing a more open competitor to it.

"So how do you install an app from the Play Store in Firefox?" Same way I install it from my desktop browser. The site displays a list of my android devices and I select a device to install it on. Sometime later, the Playstore app receives a push notification from google, downloads and installs it.

It works in Chrome browser on Android. Works in Chrome and Firefox on a desktop. It even works from Firefox on Android when requesting the desktop site. So why block just the mobile firefox user-agent? I think it's a perfectly reasonable way to install. If it's not, Google should block all browsers, not just mobile firefox.

There's more to the play store than apps. It annoyed me no end when trying to buy a Nexus 5 that it constantly tried to redirect me to the app... which doesn't sell them!

This. One thing I hate about app versions of webapps is that they aren't always full feature compatible (and sometimes there's no way to even get the desktop site)

Uh, I don't think Firefox actively ignores URL intents, it just prompts about them. Which is what it's supposed to do.

Many phones don't have the play store.

Android ones? Care to name a few?

Nokia X. Every Amazon device. Everyone running a custom ROM who didn't separately flash the "Google Apps" afterward.

All of those sold in China.

Some of those sold in Russia.

Many of those also sold in the United States, Canada, England, Germany, etc.

You can make your phone Google-free (as much as it's possible) with Cyanogenmod.

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