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Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#181

Post by makomk »

tuxone wrote: post #154
kenbellows wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is potentially a critical difference here. The "We don't support IE" mini-movement was a reaction to Microsoft's refusal to use the web standards that every other major browser supported. In this case, it appears to me (admittedly without research) that Google's motivations must be different, and two possibilities spring to mind: (1) Google doesn't like the competition from Firefox or (2) the Play store uses no…

(3) Firefox for Android misses true Intent Filters support, which causes annoying experience for the average user.

Might have to try it then. Google Chrome for Android's handling of intents is really annoying. Sometimes I have to tell it to open a link in the browser rather than the associated app three or more times, as it redirects between different pages or domains and prompts again for each one.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#182

Post by adrusi »

tuxone wrote: post #154
kenbellows wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is potentially a critical difference here. The "We don't support IE" mini-movement was a reaction to Microsoft's refusal to use the web standards that every other major browser supported. In this case, it appears to me (admittedly without research) that Google's motivations must be different, and two possibilities spring to mind: (1) Google doesn't like the competition from Firefox or (2) the Play store uses no…

(3) Firefox for Android misses true Intent Filters support, which causes annoying experience for the average user.

I've never had issues with intents on Firefox for android, including in the play store. If there are issues, then users of Firefox chose to take them on. Who knows, maybe they value their software freedoms more than the ability to open a link in a different app.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#183

Post by myko »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #176

Is it just me, or did anybody else see here a comment from a Google dev just one minute ago, stating this was "just a simple bug", going to be "fixed in short time"? I refreshed the page and now it's gone. Edit: well I don't really know if the comment came from a Google dev, I guessed so because it looked very authoritative.

It was published on an Android fan site but didn't identify a specific developer:

http://www.androidcentral.com/heres-whats-google-play-store-...

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#184

Post by makomk »

dinesh_babu wrote: post #20
nfriedly wrote: post #17

That's a shame. I love Firefox mobile and use it pretty much exclusively, so this just means I'll spend less time browsing the Play Store.

why in god's name would you browse the play store in Firefox instead of the app?

Web browsers have nifty features like tabs. The official Google Play Store app doesn't. This is a common problem with standalone apps actually.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#186

Post by tuxone »

wlesieutre wrote: post #178
tuxone wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not crazy, it's Intent Filters [0], IMHO the Android killer feature as an open platform. As an Android user I love the ability to select my default app in order to open an image, share an image, share a text/link and, of course, open a Play Store app record. It's the Android way and Firefox is breaking it. [0] http://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-filter...

As a recent iPhone switcher, yes, I love intents. It's great to be able to set what I open mailto: links in, etc. Not sure I understand the connection here though, could you explain? What intent is Firefox breaking, and why is it OK that Chrome can go to play.google.com (in the browser, it doesn't bounce me to the Play Store app) while Firefox is blocked?

Hey, we talked about this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9027332

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#188

Post by makomk »

wlesieutre wrote: post #178
tuxone wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not crazy, it's Intent Filters [0], IMHO the Android killer feature as an open platform. As an Android user I love the ability to select my default app in order to open an image, share an image, share a text/link and, of course, open a Play Store app record. It's the Android way and Firefox is breaking it. [0] http://developer.android.com/guide/components/intents-filter...

As a recent iPhone switcher, yes, I love intents. It's great to be able to set what I open mailto: links in, etc. Not sure I understand the connection here though, could you explain? What intent is Firefox breaking, and why is it OK that Chrome can go to play.google.com (in the browser, it doesn't bounce me to the Play Store app) while Firefox is blocked?

Apparently if you open a link to the Play Store, Firefox just opens it normally and lets you reopen it in the app if that's what you want, rather than immediately dumping you into the app and randomly breaking stuff like tab support in the process.

Re: Google Play Store: Browsing with Firefox is no longer supported on Android

#190

Post by calbear81 »

jMyles wrote: post #126

Is this payback for the Mozilla - Yahoo deal? Or am I reading too much into things?

Surprising that you're the first to mention the most obvious answer which is that with the search deal ended, there is less affordance to "play nice" with competitive browsers. This is not at all unusual and perhaps before there was more consideration given to have their mobile offering work on one of their largest commercial search partners.

Also, lot's of people are lamenting the seeming betrayal of "don't be evil" but I think it really hasn't been about that for a while. Google has bigger ambitions to change the world now as their investment in driverless cars, medical devices, VR, etc. has shown. Those ideas require large capital investment and anything they can do to generate more revenue to fund those truly game-changing ideas are probably seen as fair (regardless of whether they adhere to an open internet/standards based approach). One day, we'll all see that the "ends justify the means" or so we hope.

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