Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#1

Post by diggan » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 12:53 PM UTC

Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?
gist.github.com

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#2

Post by josteink » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

> I'm not 100% sure on how the browsers implementation differs with CSP but there is a main difference in that there seems to be no CSP protected between Google domains in Google Chrome

If this is true, does this mean that Google is short-cutting internet-security for their own applications in their own browser?

Or am I reading this all wrong?

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#3

Post by jaimeyap » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:32 PM UTC

I think the term "blocking" is a bit misleading. It implies they have it running properly in FireFox and are going out of their way to make it only run in Chrome.

It seems more likely they had an aggressive plan to ship inbox across Web, Android and iOS. And they started with "Chrome only" to save development time. I'm sure support for other modern browsers will follow soon.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#4

Post by transfire » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:34 PM UTC

Google's attempt to take over email does not sit with me well. We need better email. But email is too important to be proprietary. We need open standards here. And we need open source developers to kick it in high gear to create better email clients.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#5

Post by tedchs » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:34 PM UTC

tl;dr: here are a couple stabs at why, but I still don't know.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#6

Post by pjc50 » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:36 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #4

Google's attempt to take over email does not sit with me well. We need better email. But email is too important to be proprietary. We need open standards here. And we need open source developers to kick it in high gear to create better email clients.

There's no shortage of mail clients. There's even a decent choice of webmail clients. But Gmail offers free hosting with decent antispam, which are things that otherwise cost money.

Unless people want to get syndicalist/cooperative with their email, they'll go with the large free email providers.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#7

Post by Oculus » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:37 PM UTC

transfire wrote: post #4

Google's attempt to take over email does not sit with me well. We need better email. But email is too important to be proprietary. We need open standards here. And we need open source developers to kick it in high gear to create better email clients.

I don't think the issue is as much with the clients as it is with the spam filtering Google provides. The sheer volume of emails they handle allows them to have the best spam filtering in the world. Something, that will be very difficult to duplicate through OSS.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#8

Post by Tyrannosaurs » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:39 PM UTC

The last paragraph:

"However, we still haven't figured out exactly why Google is blocking Inbox on Firefox. That the application is not working, seems to not be fully true. With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox to. Maybe too much Chrome specific technologies or just a try to limit the usage of Firefox on the web?"

Is odd as he's spent the rest of the article pointing out that there are bits of missing functionality (such as transitions), he's disabled CSP which worries him and that there are errors showing, and that's just what a relatively brief review found. Given what is listed it seems pretty straight forward to me that in it's current form it shouldn't be supported on Firefox.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#9

Post by pilif » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:39 PM UTC

On the HN thread accompanying the release of Google Inbox, a (supposed) engineer working on Inbox was saying that the reason for the exclusion of Firefox was a performance issue with accessing sparse arrays with huge indexes.

Link to the post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8495498

Link to the bugzilla entry: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1087963

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#10

Post by couchand » Fri, Nov 14, 2014, 1:39 PM UTC

jaimeyap wrote: post #3

I think the term "blocking" is a bit misleading. It implies they have it running properly in FireFox and are going out of their way to make it only run in Chrome. It seems more likely they had an aggressive plan to ship inbox across Web, Android and iOS. And they started with "Chrome only" to save development time. I'm sure support for other modern browsers will follow soon.

Except that with a few quick changes the application ran, so intentionally blocking seems like a valid description.