Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 50 posts

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#31

Post by Goladus »

amichail wrote: post #3
globalrev wrote: post #2

because flash sucks?

Could you elaborate? Maybe it's not convenient for developers, but the result is better for users than an ad hoc mix of old web technologies that is seriously lacking in features and plagued with compatibility problems.

Actually it's not always better for users. There are usually tradeoffs when choosing technologies and this is no exception. There are two (maybe three) fundamental issues with Flash.

The vast majority of internet content is conveyed with text, links, and images. Even a with a site like YouTube, there's a host of information related to each video that is best conveyed using text, links, and images. And apart from the rendering part images are essentially just links. Flash has a whole lot of overhead and does not perform basic text and linking tasks very well.

The second is that it has limited access to the underlying operating system.

The third is that it's a proprietary environment controlled by Adobe.

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#32

Post by Goladus »

amichail wrote: post #8
aneesh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can think of a few good examples of web sites which use Flash effectively Youtube!

But why not use Flash for the entire site rather than just the video player?

Because when you display all that extra site stuff with flash you take away tons of simple but important functionality.

     copy/paste

     save as...

     view image

     copy image location

     Bookmark this

     Open in new tab
etc. you get the idea.

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#33

Post by bootload »

amichail wrote: post #18
humanlever wrote: post #17

Google revolves around information accessibility, using Flash for anything besides the presentation of graphics is a big step back in that area. Youtube may make good use of Flash, but even they limit it to areas of absolute necessity.

Why can't Flash be improved to make information accessible?

".... Why can't Flash be improved to make information accessible? ..."

Probably for the same reason the tech that google does use can. Openness.

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#34

Post by flashgordon »

globalrev wrote: post #2

because flash sucks?

actually flash may "suck", but the flex (and air) sdk is not half bad... even I could learn it in about half a day and managed to put together some pretty sophisticated tools at work (game development stuff)..

the real reason i would say google would not want to use flash is due to its not-so-openness and thereby prepping itself for more uncertainity in the future.

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#36

Post by jcbozonier »

presty wrote: post #21

Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)? What better technology? Guess who popularized AJAX? Flash sucks. There's no real support for linux from adobe, it makes the browser heavier, it's a closed proprietary technology and it's awful for things that are not animation related.

Actually Flash is open source now. You can even make your own player: http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#37

Post by wmf »

jcbozonier wrote: post #36
presty wrote: post #21

Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)? What better technology? Guess who popularized AJAX? Flash sucks. There's no real support for linux from adobe, it makes the browser heavier, it's a closed proprietary technology and it's awful for things that are not animation related.

Actually Flash is open source now. You can even make your own player: http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/

But making your own player doesn't give you any say over the future of Flash, so if you do that you're getting on a treadmill controlled by Adobe.

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#38

Post by nostrademons »

gus_massa wrote: post #12
wmf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that AJAX cross-browser compatibility problems can be solved using infinite money. Besides video, what compelling Flash features aren't available in JS+HTML?

Flash is useful for single player, little games, that you can play in the browser without installation.

Like Tetris?

http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~jdtang/tetris/

FWIW, I'm using mixed Flash & JavaScript for my startup (Flash for embedding, JavaScript for the site itself). I've got Asteroids, Pong, and Brickbats all working in pure JavaScript. And I'm just hooking up code right now that lets you edit the games in real-time, no need to reload anything. That ranges from very-difficult to impossible with Flash.

Re: Ask YC: Why doesn't Google use better technology to build its services (e.g., Flash)?

#40

Post by thaumaturgy »

wmf wrote: post #30
thaumaturgy wrote: post #24

I'm surprised nobody here has mentioned what I would expect would be one of the biggest reasons: bandwidth. Considering the number of people hitting the various Google services at any given moment, adding Flash, and/or pretty images or extra CSS or fancy-pants JavaScript could induce a pretty big additional cost, and for no justifiable reason.

Why would compressed bytecode (Flash) be larger than source code (JavaScript)? AMF is also generally smaller than JSON or XML.

| Why would compressed bytecode (Flash) be larger than source code (JavaScript)?

I read the original question as asking why Google didn't add Flash onto its interface. I suppose it might be possible to replace their current JavaScript functions with Flash bytecode, but given the lengths they go to already to compress their JavaScript, I'd be surprised if the benefits there would be worth the trouble, not to mention any possible costs they might end up with due to migrating to Flash. (Browser support, version changes...?)

| AMF is also generally smaller than JSON or XML.

I kinda recalled Gmail (for instance) not using XML, but I dumped a session through Firebug to make sure. They're using their own (very simple) data format, and I doubt that AMF, or SOAP, or anything else could beat it, short of using actual data compression on both server and client side (and, again, probably not worth it).

Crawling through the Gmail code and data only reinforces my guess that their services are designed with low bandwidth usage among their top priorities.

Post reply on HN