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Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

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Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#181

Post by techrat »

somebehemoth wrote: post #178
techrat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google still open sources their apps. That's why there's almost always two versions of each app on Android. Messenger versus Hangouts. Google also allows you to remove ANY AND ALL information they have on you that is used to target advertisements. Google also allows you to export ANY AND ALL data you use in their services and to import it to any other service you choose. Really much ado about nothing here.

Are both versions of their apps open source and do they have equivalent features? Second question (maybe based upon old info) but I thought deleting email from GMail does not really delete the email which is retained for Google's purposes? These are sincere questions and not intended to be rhetorical.

Equivalent features that are not tied into Google services? Yes. Messenger does MMS/SMS. So does Hangouts. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that specific services (Voice calling over GTalk) should require the specific app (Hangouts)

And no, Google does not keep emails. After 30 days you cannot recover anything.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/112445?hl=en

>If you can't find your messages in All Mail, Spam, or Trash, or by performing a search, then they've been permanently removed from Gmail, possibly deleted by someone else. We regret that we are unable to recover messages that have been permanently deleted.

I can confirm that having emails permanently deleted, such as when I unsubscribed from mailings from a store I deleted my account from... I stopped receiving advertisements in the sidebar related to that store. When you stop getting ads about specific things after deleting all emails about those specific things, I would say that's fairly conclusive.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#182

Post by SimeVidas »

Kalium wrote: post #176
SimeVidas wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like accessibility, web compatibility is harder to achieve (and requires more resources) when addressed late in the development process. A web app must be accessible and compatible with the major browsers, so ensuring this from the start is the optimal approach.

And it's clear that they were looking at it from the start. If you read around a bit, you'll see that they ran into a particular performance problem with Firefox. They're working to solve it, but decided they could release something usable for Chrome users immediately.

Still, I suspect Google’s developers are too focused on development in Chrome-only. If true, this may have contributed to perf issues arising in Firefox, in the first place. I also suspect that Google’s web compat team is not sufficient to handle their products.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#183

Post by jimktrains2 »

a3_nm wrote: post #129
jimktrains2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is a practice that big players do. http://serverfault.com/questions/364132/postfix-says-mail-se...

My understanding of this answer is that the SMTP said it had accepted it, but the sender would have been notified afterwards that the message had not been delivered, had the return addresses correctly been set up. This seems OK to me; I would have received the bounce. (Also, the mail was sent from www-data, which I think was an acceptable clue to classify the message as spam no matter from which server it came from.)

It doesn't always need to send a bounce if it doesn't want to.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#184

Post by Bahamut »

skywhopper wrote: post #106

Any time you see a comment like "With some more man hours, it seems trivial for Google to get the application to run in Firefox", you know the author either doesn't know what they're talking about or just hasn't thought about it very much. Anyone who's done any serious web-app development in the past decade knows that cross browser compatibility at the bleeding edge (ie, past what the JS frameworks have worked out) c…

This is an extremely naive comment. While cross-browser testing does take work, it makes an unfair assumption about the experience & knowledge of some of us commenting. Diggan (the user who wrote the gist) is not a regular person - he is an experienced and knowledgeable web developer (I don't necessarily agree with all his opinions, but I do respect his knowledge - I have previously had a vigorous conversation with him on IRC on some technical stuff). When I said CSP and animations are "trivial", it isn't without having had experience doing just that.

As someone who has had to work on teams and who now leads teams on apps with cross-browser functionality (and native mobile via Cordova), I get the challenges. Google definitely has the resources to meet them though. Time is just the x factor, and with this sentiment, I agree with. I have no problems with what Google did here - I merely made observations.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#185

Post by Kalium »

SimeVidas wrote: post #182
Kalium wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's clear that they were looking at it from the start. If you read around a bit, you'll see that they ran into a particular performance problem with Firefox. They're working to solve it, but decided they could release something usable for Chrome users immediately.

Still, I suspect Google’s developers are too focused on development in Chrome-only. If true, this may have contributed to perf issues arising in Firefox, in the first place. I also suspect that Google’s web compat team is not sufficient to handle their products.

Did you read the clearly documented technical details? Basically, array slicing on sparse arrays in Firefox is much, much slower than on Chrome.

It's not a matter of lacking competence or skills or anything of the sort. It's a basic question of what level of resources you are willing to put into a product before you have something to beta-test. Inevitably, that's less than the amount required to be perfect in every aspect.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#186

Post by JoseVigil »

There is always a conspiracy theory on everything Google does. I think this has nothing to do with that.

Besides, everyone that has a startup and fresh ideas is always "afraid" of Google next step not stepping on top of its startup.

This generates paranoid among us, its natural given the size of Google.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#187

Post by bnb »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #148
jenius wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity, what do people typically slam google for? I feel like I have a lot of trust in their services -- a hell of a lot more than facebook, and somewhere around on par with apple. Sure, they collect a bunch of your data, but it's for the purpose of them being able to serve more relevant ads to you if I'm not mistaken, since that's where most of their money is made, and their ads are fairly clean and n…

Yup, I'd like to know it too. Everything I saw or read confirms that they're one of the most benevolent big companies ever, and yet for some vauge reasons they are called evil.

Google tries to copyright cookies: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0156738.html

Bullshit actions in partnership with Apple: http://pando.com/2014/03/25/newly-unsealed-documents-show-st...

And, to me, the worst - Bulling the CSS WG: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2014Feb/0103.h...

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#188

Post by bnb »

msandford wrote: post #128
TeMPOraL wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that most of those comments stem from Google-hating, which is currently a big fashion here. Were it Apple doing it, they'd be lauded for their attention to user experience. Was Inbox a product of a random startup, it'd be praised for good business approach and proper prioritizing of developer time. But it's Google, so it must be some evil plan.

I'm sure that there's a lot of that going on, yes. But Google has the legacy of their "don't be evil" company motto to content with. Which is to say that people expect (foolishly) for them to at least try not to appear evil. The difference between Google prioritizing Chrome vs anyone else is that Google owns Chrome whereas Apple doesn't, and some random startup certainly doesn't. It smells of Microsoft's "we'll only…

So Mozilla is "some random startup"?

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#189

Post by sosborn »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #172
sosborn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Support cost" doesn't apply only to customer support.

Go on, I'm interested - what extra cost do Google have if I use the same service in FF as I would otherwise have to switch over to Chrome to use; given that they say up front that other browsers aren't supported and that this is a beta so expected to be shonky. What cost is there? If I've switched UA string Google might not even be able to tell, without actively seeking out the information, that other browsers are us…

It takes resources (mainly developer time) to ensure that an application is working properly on multiple browsers. If you read the article you can see that a simple UA string change does not fix the problem.

Re: Why Is Google Blocking Inbox on Firefox?

#190

Post by mikeash »

techrat wrote: post #179
mikeash wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does open source invalidate that argument?

Anyone can build and release a compatible browser whereas one would be stuck with Internet Explorer (and no compatible browser) if something were only to work on IE. As it stands, Chromium exists.

How is it any better that something can run on a bunch of slightly different versions of Chromium, but no other browsers built from a different base?
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