Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#1

Post by msh » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch
shaneosullivan.wordpress.com

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#2

Post by arthurcolle » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 5:57 AM UTC

That so many smart and talented people choose to work on AdTech or systems that support AdTech is such a shame. That being said, I love these little anecdotes, they are super fun to read.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#3

Post by elcomet » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:26 AM UTC

Very interesting story!

The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#4

Post by supermatt » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:27 AM UTC

TLDR: Facebook built the app responsible for their entire ad platform on a chrome-only tech (WebSQL), and when it was deprecated, instead of dropping in a widely-used polyfill, they decided to do a major 3yr rewrite risking 25% of their revenue in the process.

I guess this is the stupid shit that being "too big to fail" permits.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#5

Post by arthurcolle » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:29 AM UTC

elcomet wrote: post #3

Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

that would have made builds massive, unless you're referring to just the desktop experience...

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#6

Post by dvfjsdhgfv » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

arthurcolle wrote: post #2

That so many smart and talented people choose to work on AdTech or systems that support AdTech is such a shame. That being said, I love these little anecdotes, they are super fun to read.

There are so many aspects of adtech that are ethically neutral. Just as advertising itself - there are even ads created by great creators that are works of modern art. It's only when it's abused adtech becomes evil.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#7

Post by Osiris » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:47 AM UTC

If the product was responsible for 25% of the company revenue, why was only half of one engineer assigned to it? And after the vulnerability was discovered, they still only had 5 people assigned to it while it increased in importance to 50% of revenue?

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#8

Post by aequitas » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:48 AM UTC

elcomet wrote: post #3

Very interesting story! The title (Google being able to kill facebook) seems a bit exagerated though. If this app was so important (25 to 50% of all facebook revenues), and so important to customers (most powerful editor to manage ads), I'm sure if Google had disabled websql, they would have forked some older chrome / electron with websql support and bundle it with the app.

Indeed, people will always find a way, especially if money is involved. And running outdated browsers for legacy support, while being a huge security risk, is not uncommon for a lot of use cases, especially back then.

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#9

Post by spankalee » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:48 AM UTC

That is not how Chrome removes features. It's based on usage. WebSQL is still supported today, in fact: https://caniuse.com/sql-storage

Re: Google could have killed Facebook with the flick of a switch

#10

Post by simonh » Wed, Feb 10, 2021, 8:52 AM UTC

Osiris wrote: post #7

If the product was responsible for 25% of the company revenue, why was only half of one engineer assigned to it? And after the vulnerability was discovered, they still only had 5 people assigned to it while it increased in importance to 50% of revenue?

I've seen this sort of thing happen many times. What usually happens is the original team that built it leave the company or move on to other teams, and the one engineer left actually has a different job as well now but is stuck supporting it part time as a favour. It's not that you couldn't assign other engineers to help support it, but they wouldn't have any idea how to do so because there's probably no documentation and only that half an engineer around to show them how it works.