Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#171

Post by snazz » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:44 AM UTC

john61 wrote: post #93

userbinator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

startpage.com gives me better results than Google itself, because of the missing personalization bubble.

Really? I find that their cache of Google results is very old on average, so new sites don’t appear for a very long time compared to Google. DDG seems to be better than Startpage on that front, but a Google takes the cake in result recency. Even my not-horribly-popular web site is indexed by Google within ten minutes of me publishing anything.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#172

Post by tinus_hn » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:47 AM UTC

elcomet wrote: post #133

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,…

> everyone knows FTP is plaintext You mean no one knows that FTP is plaintext except a minority of users which happens to be on HN. Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Maybe they'll add an option to enable ftp or something. > drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use I'm not sure how that's true. Every time I used FTP, it was not for drivers. All the d…

> Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser.

Yet they are positioning it as the only browser

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#173

Post by The_rationalist » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:48 AM UTC

iovrthoughtthis wrote: post #142

Good. An easy feature for competitor browsers to implement.

Firefox used to support FTP too and removed support for it far before chrome.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#174

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:50 AM UTC

gone35 wrote: post #146

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,…

Indeed; by the same "security" logic, why not get rid of HTTP too then? (Or SMTP, for that matter?) The point of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is to do precisely that: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful -- long tails included. But I guess for them it's not... (Also, I can't believe the Chrome team is so strapped it can't…

If I imagine I'm in a position as a developer / project manager / whatever working for Google trying to advocate Google committing resources to the FTP protocol in Google Chrome, I'm struggling to think of a way of promoting it that shows it will have a return on investment.

How do you display ads while someone is accessing an FTP server?

ftp://example.com/directory/file.extension can be a link in a website, where the website displays ads.

I'm just imagining some people having a conversation that goes something like this:

"The funding for this feature has been removed because we can't serve ads on a page like this https://imgur.com/20ooI9f "

Edit: grammar

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#175

Post by The_rationalist » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:52 AM UTC

Endy wrote: post #62

Second best reason to move away from Chrome.

Ridiculous, Firefox removed support for FTP far before chrome.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#176

Post by The_rationalist » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:57 AM UTC

Just as a reminder, Firefox did this (a year ago?).

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#177

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 10:58 AM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #172

elcomet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone knows FTP is plaintext You mean no one knows that FTP is plaintext except a minority of users which happens to be on HN. Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Maybe they'll add an option to enable ftp or something. > drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use I'm not sure how that's true. Every time I used FTP, it was not for drivers. All the d…

> Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Yet they are positioning it as the only browser

This'll happen when the major ideology held by most people is competition.

One wouldn't expect Google to say "We recommend you use our browser, Google Chrome, but there's also these others that work fine to."

It's probably the case that back when the number of internet users was smaller the place had a more community oriented vibe, whereas now there is huge sums of money and power at stake.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#178

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 11:01 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #159

elcomet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone knows FTP is plaintext You mean no one knows that FTP is plaintext except a minority of users which happens to be on HN. Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Maybe they'll add an option to enable ftp or something. > drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use I'm not sure how that's true. Every time I used FTP, it was not for drivers. All the d…

> Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. That is a problem. We have browser engine duopoly, and really everyone is doing whatever Google wants anyway. So as they're optimizing against power users, they're making the whole web much worse.

Can you please explain to me why you believe optimising against power users is making the internet worse.

I tend to agree with you, but would you mind fleshing this out a bit. Or, if you've written this before please point to it.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#179

Post by shakna » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 11:02 AM UTC

gone35 wrote: post #146

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,…

Indeed; by the same "security" logic, why not get rid of HTTP too then? (Or SMTP, for that matter?) The point of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is to do precisely that: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful -- long tails included. But I guess for them it's not... (Also, I can't believe the Chrome team is so strapped it can't…

> Indeed; by the same "security" logic, why not get rid of HTTP too then? (Or SMTP, for that matter?)

I believe those will happen, in the long run.

The next HTTP spec includes mandatory SSL, and Google had a hand in designing QUIC, and Google has been deprecating traditional SMTP authorisation.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#180

Post by layoutIfNeeded » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 11:09 AM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #141

kccqzy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one really uses FTP to transmit anything secret or confidential. Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication.

I guess many old website maintenance workflows still rely on ftp'ing HTML and assets to the web server (though not through browsers). I personally have recommended clients to switch over to ssh/scp 15 years ago if they can help it but their hosting package might not support it. The optimal, made-for-purpose protocol for this use case is WebDAV but I'm not sure it's still supported out-of-the-box by all major OSs and/…

Ugh... WebDAV itself is a nasty can of worms, full of half-assed optional extensions and specification warts.