Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by benesch » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 4:31 AM UTC

barista wrote: post #44

benesch wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All anecdotal. Maybe it's Trident (the rendering engine) then, but it really hangs for me after a few tabs.

(Exactly. It's probably political as I mentioned before.)

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

#62

Post by garuda » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 4:33 AM UTC

YeahKIA wrote: post #58

jmcdonald-ut wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

And this just days after FTC cleared them if any misbehavior. Bravo!

The FTC cleared them of antitrust. This is just normal business competition.

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

#63

Post by garuda » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 4:37 AM UTC

wrath wrote: post #57

garuda wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google have provided a free, open source alternative to Windows Phone. There is nothing 'evil' about them not supporting other platforms.

Of course it's evil. Redirecting a user is hostile in nature and was surely done to piss off microsoft. What wouldn't be evil is putting a banner stating that the browser is not supported. I get that google needs to make money, I'm fine with it, but don't for one minute think they are the good guys anymore. They are as evil as any other public company. Sad but true.

They're the only ones providing an Open Source mobile OS. Without them, we'd have only proprietary solutions controlled by single corporations.

Having put in all this effort to provide an open solution, they need to be somewhat competitive to make it succeed, otherwise it would likely languish the way the Linux desktop has.

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

#64

Post by recoiledsnake » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 4:39 AM UTC

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #17

On the one hand, this isn't really any different than Microsoft not supporting Office on Chromium. On the other hand, isn't the whole point of web standards to avoid situations like this? I suspect we'll just get confirmation of something we really already know: standards are really important only when you're not the market leader.

>On the one hand, this isn't really any different than Microsoft not supporting Office on Chromium

Err what? Does Chromium even have a API usable by third party devs?

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

#65

Post by garuda » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 4:43 AM UTC

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #49

chewxy wrote: 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…

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…

I don't see it as at odds with how they market themselves. They position themselves as providing an Open, non-proprietary option as an alternative to monolithic and traditional closed solutions from Apple and Microsoft, and they are delivering on that in the form of Android.

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

#66

Post by kenjackson » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 4:47 AM UTC

garuda wrote: post #62

YeahKIA wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this just days after FTC cleared them if any misbehavior. Bravo!

The FTC cleared them of antitrust. This is just normal business competition.

But the EU hasn't. :-)

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

#67

Post by schuke » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 5:19 AM UTC

As a Windows Phone user in China, the feeling is very familiar. Bravo, Google, you've certainly learned a few tricks from the bloody Communists.

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

#68

Post by kvb » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 5:33 AM UTC

garuda wrote: post #60

kvb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's anti-competitive! They took something that was working on a competitor's phone platform and intentionally caused it to stop working. It's probably not illegal , but if it's designed to harm a competitor it is by definition anti-competitive.

Not adding value to your competitor's products for free is simply competitive and part of normal business. "Anti-competitive" is a different thing and means using market power to suppress competition, whereas this move is about intensifying it.

First of all, forget "not adding value to your competitor's product" - this is about removing value that was already there.

Secondly, Google has market power in both the mobile device OS market and the online map market compared to MS, and is trying to leverage its position in the latter to hurt MS in the former. This seems like exactly your stated definition of anti-competitive behavior. How is this "intensifying" competition?

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

#69

Post by SirPulse » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 5:48 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #66

garuda wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTC cleared them of antitrust. This is just normal business competition.

But the EU hasn't. :-)

Well if EU can be influenced by lobbying as FTC can be then EU will clear them as well

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

#70

Post by Turing_Machine » Sat, Jan 05, 2013, 6:07 AM UTC

kenjackson wrote: post #45

malachismith wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe Google is tired of the ongoing maintenance hassle and doesn't want to pay to write all the special-case code that will be necessary to support IE in future versions of their maps product.

From what I'm seeing, and to take just one example, IE 10 still doesn't support touch pan and zoom on mobile, which strikes me as a useful thing for a map application.