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Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

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Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#21

Post by Tuvaloon »

jsnell wrote: post #13
dkulchenko wrote: post #6

This argument is ridiculous. What business sense would there be for Google to restrict access to Maps on one platform in the interest of "competition"? It's not like any potential WP8 users will be swayed over to Android just because of GMaps, considering Bing Maps is a more than adequate alternative. Occam's razor: it's more than likely that they just don't want to invest the dev + support time to support WP8 (web o…

Maybe in isolation. But combined with two other similar WP8/Google stories within the last week, both clearly driven by commercial issues, the case for this not being a technical issue either becomes stronger.

Or its a no one uses wp8 issue that applies to all of gooogle's portfolio. Google didn't keep maps of iPhone, even though that could have sold 10 million androids.

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#22

Post by recoiledsnake »

What I am totally flabbergasted by is the fact that Google is redirecting to Google.com without even a simple message saying that your browser is not supported. That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Can anyone explain the reason that Google can possibly have for this?

Edit:

>For the record, here is Google’s formal statement on the issue:

>The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web

Wonder what this means for Firefox OS then.

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#23

Post by magicalist »

chewxy wrote: post #16
magicalist wrote: post #2

It's not shenanigans, it's browser sniffing instead of feature detection, and Google does it on too many of its sites. What's annoying about this "controversy" is that the minuscule marketshare slice that is windows phones merits this much coverage, when this is daily life for the significantly larger (in absolute number) set of Opera users, on desktop and mobile. There's also a very real reason that Mozilla has cons…

Maps on Opera, Ubuntu 12.10: http://i.imgur.com/KKVbj.png Maps on Opera, Nexus 4: http://i.imgur.com/0DXVz.png You were saying?

I was talking about a number of sites all over the web (including several at Google) that user agent string sniff and tell opera that it isn't supported, not maps specifically.

But, speaking of maps specifically, maps.google.com in desktop Opera works fine, but clearly you didn't try using Opera Mobile, because as soon as you start dragging the map, it disappears.

(at least on a galaxy nexus running jelly bean)

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#24

Post by dkulchenko »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #22

What I am totally flabbergasted by is the fact that Google is redirecting to Google.com without even a simple message saying that your browser is not supported. That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Can anyone explain the reason that Google can possibly have for this? Edit: >For the record, here is Google’s formal statement on the issue: >The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such as…

Probably for the same reason iOS app crashes are just an exit to the home screen (compared to Android's visible "force close" message).

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#25

Post by chewxy »

magicalist wrote: post #23
chewxy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maps on Opera, Ubuntu 12.10: http://i.imgur.com/KKVbj.png Maps on Opera, Nexus 4: http://i.imgur.com/0DXVz.png You were saying?

I was talking about a number of sites all over the web (including several at Google) that user agent string sniff and tell opera that it isn't supported, not maps specifically. But, speaking of maps specifically, maps.google.com in desktop Opera works fine, but clearly you didn't try using Opera Mobile, because as soon as you start dragging the map, it disappears. (at least on a galaxy nexus running jelly bean)

Maps on Opera mobile works (Nexus4). It just lags like nobody's business.

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#26

Post by magicalist »

azakai wrote: post #10
magicalist wrote: post #2

It's not shenanigans, it's browser sniffing instead of feature detection, and Google does it on too many of its sites. What's annoying about this "controversy" is that the minuscule marketshare slice that is windows phones merits this much coverage, when this is daily life for the significantly larger (in absolute number) set of Opera users, on desktop and mobile. There's also a very real reason that Mozilla has cons…

> I'm pretty sure you're just being neglected. First of all, when "neglect" gives Google leverage to harm a competitor in a different market (using maps to harm a mobile OS vendor), it is reasonable to think it might not be just neglect, but also strategy. Second, neglect is bad enough by itself. Google has been phasing out support for Opera in properties like blogger.com on desktop, and now is officially on record a…

1) any kind of anticompetitive argument like that is a dangerous road to walk down. Is Google leveraging the popularity of maps.google.com to also marginalize rockmelt? Is a "install chromeframe" interstitial on IE6 some strategy beyond "we don't want to support your browser"? there is always a line, and considering how widespread UA sniffing and webkit-only prefixes are, you would need a considerably higher bar of evidence to demonstrate any sort of strategy at work instead of just lazy front end developers.

2) This we agree on. There are very few reasons to UA string sniff to determine functionality, and redirecting based on it is about as low as you can go on that axis. Yes, there will be users that click through the "this won't work in your browser" button and still get mad at you that your site doesn't work in their browser (just see app reviews for plenty of evidence of this), but there should still be some way of trying the content for the many browsers out there that a developer just doesn't have the incentives to manually test in.

("that Google used to champion" is just dumb rhetoric, though. it ignores the very simple fact that any organization is made up of people with very different opinions and attempts to trivialize the efforts of all the people at google still working hard on web standards and their implementations. I don't agree with all of Mozilla's decisions with regard to the open web (in fact, working group mailing lists are 90% disagreeing with each other on how to advance it), but that doesn't mean that you guys now no longer champion it)

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#27

Post by Permit »

dkulchenko wrote: post #6

This argument is ridiculous. What business sense would there be for Google to restrict access to Maps on one platform in the interest of "competition"? It's not like any potential WP8 users will be swayed over to Android just because of GMaps, considering Bing Maps is a more than adequate alternative. Occam's razor: it's more than likely that they just don't want to invest the dev + support time to support WP8 (web o…

Why would they silently redirect? Why not have a closeable banner that reads "Your browser may not support features necessary to run this website."

Also feature detection would be preferable to user agent detection.

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#28

Post by SirPulse »

untog wrote: post #12

The Windows Phone browser does not send touchstart or touchmove events. This alone makes it damn near impossible left to implement decent maps, so the claims that its the equivalent of IE10 is incorrect. Its a pretty huge oversight by MS given that WebKit, Firefox and Opera do it just fine.

Are you saying that is the reason of the redirect?

Re: Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition

#29

Post by nirvdrum »

Tuvaloon wrote: post #21
jsnell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in isolation. But combined with two other similar WP8/Google stories within the last week, both clearly driven by commercial issues, the case for this not being a technical issue either becomes stronger.

Or its a no one uses wp8 issue that applies to all of gooogle's portfolio. Google didn't keep maps of iPhone, even though that could have sold 10 million androids.

AFAIK they did keep turn-by-turn directions off iOS though. It's been a while since I've used an iPhone so I can't readily verify that.
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