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Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

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Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#41
post #25

IE across ALL mobile devices currently represents less than 2% market share according to NetMarketShare. In other words, less than the Blackberry browser. Would you optimize YOUR product for that?

Who said anything about optimizing here? Supporting and optimizing are two separate things.

OK. Would you do the work to make your product SUPPORT 2% of the market?

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#42
post #25

IE across ALL mobile devices currently represents less than 2% market share according to NetMarketShare. In other words, less than the Blackberry browser. Would you optimize YOUR product for that?

Who said anything about optimizing here? Supporting and optimizing are two separate things.

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#43
post #27

Google is taking the bizarre position that only iOS and Android exist on mobile (and only the official browsers of those platforms). I don't ever remember Google Maps being blocked in Konqueror or IceCat, so I'm not sure why they are using this tactic on mobile. More importantly, a lot of good-citizen webdevs work at Google like Paul Irish, must be rather awkward for those types.

I can't help but wonder if Google are trying to ensure they stay as the major non-Apple player. For all the popularity of Android, it is a far less interesting offering for a long-term iPhone user than Windows Phone.

I wonder the same thing. It seems like Google is trying to make Windows attempt to enter the market as painful, and played out, as possible. (I'm talking about Windows Phone 8, obviously they've been players for a while).

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#44
post #34
post #12

Many Google engineers here. Anybody care to explain what are the technical reasons why this would be not supported?

Not a Google engineer, but I can offer a partial explanation. As you probably know, up until the release of IE9, supporting apps across the major browsers (Safari/Chrome, Firefox, IE) was a massive PITA. Not just obscure features, either; even IE8 had some crippling misunderstandings of the CSS 2.0 standard (floats). Today desktop cross-browser problems are consistent subpixel antialiasing and less-critical CSS featu…

AFAIK, IE10 on mobile has the same JS engine as the desktop one. What data you have to say that it is slow? This benchmark says its the fastest:

http://crockford.com/javascript/performance.html

Besides how do you explain the uk site that was working already that then got blocked?

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about optimizing here? Supporting and optimizing are two separate things.

OK. Would you do the work to make your product SUPPORT 2% of the market?

It works fine today. No work is needed by Google. They did more work to redirect the traffic.

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office Web Apps work fine in Chrome/Chromium.

Sure, they do now; it's a pretty sensible business decision given Chrome's market share. But there was some period of time after it came out -- I can't recall how long -- when Chrome was officially not supported by OWA (Outlook Web Access). I work at Microsoft (but not on any product related to these) and I'm quite certain that this was the case.

The reason chrome was not supported earlier is probably because OWA possibly used some arcane and non-standard IE features that were lacking in chrome. Also AFAIK it never blocked the OWA outright (by redirecting to some other url instead)

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#47
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said anything about optimizing here? Supporting and optimizing are two separate things.

OK. Would you do the work to make your product SUPPORT 2% of the market?

What work? They can just let Windows Phone users access the site and fend for themselves. I would say writing the code for the redirect is more work.

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#48
post #40

i think the funniest thing is, it actually took this long for somebody to notice

nothing funny. Windows phone already has nice bing maps and nokia maps integration so nobody needed Google maps. But that's not the point...

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same in the sense that a company with a product isn't necessarily obligated to support all potential platforms for that product. But maybe a better comparison would be to point out that web access for Exchange was not officially supported on Chrome for many years. EDIT: To put a slightly different spin on it, it's easy to try to turn this into a moral issue rather than a business decision -- particularly wit…

No, it's not the same. It's one thing to say a product isn't obligated to support all potential platforms, it's another to actively disallow other platforms. If you watch this video (or time travel back to about 4 hours ago and use a useragent string modifier) [0], you'll note that using a Lumia 920's user agent string [1] will redirect you to a desktop version of the site. But now if you try it, the URL will redirec…

Companies do things that hurt their competitors all of the time. Often, consumers are the beneficiaries (at least in the short term) -- as is the case when a new entrant into a market is able to provide a better or cheaper service, and supplants an older or less efficient competitor. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Other times (like now, or when Google announced it was ending support for ActiveSync), the decision is a little more ambiguous. But in both cases, there's a potential cost for Google that's being avoided -- and that aligns nicely with competitive considerations. I don't think we want to live in a society where anyone can be legally compelled to provide a service at a loss to a small number of users.

The rules change, of course when we're close to a monopoly situation. But Google isn't at that point for either maps or mobile devices -- so at least legally, there's really no issue here.

I think that what people are really reacting to is that this is a decision which (at least superficially) is at odds with the way that Google markets themselves to us tech folks. And as such, it's a good reminder not to consume marketing messages without at least a few grains of salt.

Re: Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will

#50
post #36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not the same. It's one thing to say a product isn't obligated to support all potential platforms, it's another to actively disallow other platforms. If you watch this video (or time travel back to about 4 hours ago and use a useragent string modifier) [0], you'll note that using a Lumia 920's user agent string [1] will redirect you to a desktop version of the site. But now if you try it, the URL will redirec…

Why should Google provide their service for free to their competitor's customers?

If that is the logic involved then why is iOS not affected?
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