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Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

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Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#31

Post by couchand »

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.

In case you haven't seen it, you might consider Fastmail [0]. They have a great webmail client, they just released native mobile apps (for both iOS and Android at the same time, wow!), and they are very much working to expand the standards to meet the needs of modern e-mail.

[0] https://fastmail.com

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#32

Post by hokkos »

Google Inbox is using between 365MB and 460MB, when Ghostery and Add Block Edge is activated, it is more than 600MB. This is where multi process seems to be useful (otherwise it is using much more memory for no real gains), and extensions can be really taxing sometimes.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#33

Post by mahouse »

couchand wrote: post #10
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.

That is not true, the application does not run, or at least not securely, with its animations, etc.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#34

Post by kailuowang »

When you decide whether to release a product on a certain environment, it's not as simple as something like:

a) if it works, or seems it would work, on that environment, then we should release it there.

or b) that environment is a competitor, so we shouldn't release it there.

If you think it should be that simple, you never worked with a real product manager responsible for products with millions of users.

Having a product to support a new environment isn't a trivial effort for devs, QA and a bit design. At a particular stage of the product (think about the goals they want to achieve for Inbox at this stage, which I think is something along the line of polishing the product based on mass but controlled feedback), I would've probably made the same decision if I were the product manager.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#35

Post by whizzkid »

qnk wrote: post #12

Google is not the same it wanted to be back in 2009 [1]: Today, we base our developer products on open standards because interoperability is a critical element of user choice. [1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html

I think this slide explains everything about how Google has changed the way of handling their business.

http://www.slideshare.net/ericschmidt/how-google-works-final...

They are more focusing on managing their business which is limiting their contributions to open standards.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#36

Post by Jgrubb »

couchand wrote: post #31
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.

In case you haven't seen it, you might consider Fastmail [0]. They have a great webmail client, they just released native mobile apps (for both iOS and Android at the same time, wow!), and they are very much working to expand the standards to meet the needs of modern e-mail. [0] https://fastmail.com

+1 for Fastmail, and thanks for the heads up on the mobile client that I had no idea about.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#38

Post by frandroid »

spindritf wrote: post #16

Because they don't want a slow webapp under their logo. And this one would be particularly handicapped by that. Everyone praises Apple for user experience, right? There you go. They're giving you want you want. And at least Chrome works on multiple platforms, even Linux. What seems like a more arbitrary limitation is that Inbox doesn't work with Google Apps. Thought it, too, probably has some technical reason deep in…

Whoa, good to know. But considering that the product is beta, they probably want to test it on regular free customers first...

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#39

Post by cognivore »

There's not really a good reason for Google to make applications they create work outside their own run-time environment - Chrome. Any technical reason they might offer (sparse array performance) is just facetious. They have the technical know-how to solve such problems, but business wise it makes little sense.

I use three web browsers for just that reason. Chrome for Google products (YouTube, Gmail, now Inbox, etc.), IE for Microsoft products (Outlook.com, etc.), and Firefox for the open web and general usage.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#40

Post by gcb0 »

kailuowang wrote: post #34

When you decide whether to release a product on a certain environment, it's not as simple as something like: a) if it works, or seems it would work, on that environment, then we should release it there. or b) that environment is a competitor, so we shouldn't release it there. If you think it should be that simple, you never worked with a real product manager responsible for products with millions of users. Having a p…

just like Microsoft was praised for releasing their OS with a free, supported browser. with all the development and qa done for free...
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