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Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

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Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#121

Post by duskwuff »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #52
tim58 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fine with this. I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment. There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change?…

The same could have been said of Gopher. FTP is typically insecure and painful to use with it's varying port maps. Transferring files over HTTP or more modern protocols is the future.

The same was said of Gopher. When Mozilla dropped support for the protocol in Firefox 4.0, there was a brief outcry, followed by silence as everyone realized that the protocol had been effectively unused for decades already.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#122

Post by pmarin »

userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

They can’t serve adsense from a FTP server.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#123

Post by weinzierl »

userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

There was a time when www was just a part of the Internet and we had www search and ftp search engines. The one I used to use was called "ftpsearch" and the only thing (besides the name) I remember is that it used to say "This server is located in Trondheim" on the front page. A quick web search turns out that it still seems to exist in some form [1]. Unfortunately it apparently doesn't really work anymore.

Maybe it's time to bring ftp search engines back.

[1] http://www.mi.uni-koeln.de/~jbe/ref/ftpsearch/

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#124

Post by clhodapp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #118
dagenix wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't care about FTP being insecure either. Well, then its probably a good thing that you aren't a browser developer.

"Insecure" is the new "is a witch". Too coarse to be used as a valid argument.

Alright. It's not encrypted and not origin-verifiable then. I think we all knew that though... anyway it should be abundantly clear at this point that no one should be using protocols that can trivially be MITM'ed to access anything over the internet.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#125

Post by a_t48 »

kibibu wrote: post #120
a_t48 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of a piece of software of reasonable complexity (network/file handling, etc) that has solidified like this?

Sqlite

The other ones I might give a pass to as I can't find where the update history lives, but this is untrue - https://www.sqlite.org/changes.html

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#126

Post by clhodapp »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #104
duskwuff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So HP is now on notice to fix that. It's not happening until 2020Q2, so that gives them plenty of time.

HP has nothing broken to fix.

They do though: 1) They are distributing executables to their users over a MITM-able channel. That is not acceptable. 2) A bunch of their users will have a much tougher time downloading their drivers when Chrome stops supporting FTP.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#127

Post by abdullahkhalids »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #8

I'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.

> it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.

Rather, there are no ads on FTP pages, so Google is going to use it's power to stop countless people to stop using FTP.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#128

Post by OrgNet »

weinzierl wrote: post #123
userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

There was a time when www was just a part of the Internet and we had www search and ftp search engines. The one I used to use was called "ftpsearch" and the only thing (besides the name) I remember is that it used to say "This server is located in Trondheim" on the front page. A quick web search turns out that it still seems to exist in some form [1]. Unfortunately it apparently doesn't really work anymore. Maybe it'…

Ftpsearch.ntnu.no was the one I used to use

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#129

Post by cameronbrown »

reilly3000 wrote: post #112
cameronbrown wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all my work in vim ;) I'm not saying the command line isn't useful, it's insanely useful to me, but I and presumably you are the 0.5% of people that do things like batch organising thousands of files. Most people will just have a basic folder structure on a cloud service somewhere and they're fine with that. My point is that the general population doesn't need to be exposed to the command line to be able to go d…

I don't know what it is about a black, mostly blank screen, but for the first 30 years of my life it was a source of anxiety, a 'thar be dragons...' kind of feeling. I was convinced I would make one wrong keystroke and do some terribly destructive operation. Hell, there are still some directories I'm reticent to visit. I wish there were guard rails for learners (I guess a proper permissions scheme would do) or a safe…

Worried about a `sudo rm -rf /` kinda thing?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#130

Post by clouddrover »

userbinator wrote: post #90
clouddrover wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be Bully them back. Don't use Google search and don't use Chrome.

Easier said than done, especially when most of the population doesn't care either because they're too young or too nontechnical; actually, I already don't use Chrome, but their search (which still shows FTP sites...) is, despite slowly getting worse too, still giving a wider breadth of sites most of the time. Bing and DDG help fill in the gaps.

> Easier said than done

It's real easy to do. It is not the case that you are dependent on Google search. You're imposing artificial limits on yourself. Break free of this limiting mindset.

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