This is business. Microsoft would do exactly the same if the situation was reversed.
Microsoft is considered evil by many tech folks. What you're saying is Google is evil as well and we shouldn't expect better from them.
Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#42Do no evil , LAWL
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#43This is business. Microsoft would do exactly the same if the situation was reversed.
Considering how much money MS makes for "licensing" of their patent in Android, this is the least they can expect.
Let's play a sad song on a tiny violin for them.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#44This whole thing is a giant nothingburger. There are plenty of Youtube apps for WP. The official one on iOS that got so much hype on release (and talk now regarding the lack of a WP version) is frankly awful compared to many of the alternatives and currently sits at 2 stars on the iOS store. WP users be thankful you don't have either the MS port or an official Google one. From what I gather even if you had both, you'…
It's curious to see Google pull this.
From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
"At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important."
..
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors."
...
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, while the old IBM made the mainframes expensive and the software ... expensive too. Either way, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don't have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won't."
...
"In other words, Google's future depends on the Internet staying an open system, and our advocacy of open will grow the web for everyone - including Google."
The entire thing is a good read.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be OK is the rules weren't arbitrary, it is not OK to allow native API calls to some and to force to use HTML5 to others, it is inexcusable.
There are no "others" and no "rules". Google makes the iOS and Android apps, not third parties. The Windows Phone YouTube app would be the first significant (1) phone OS to have a YouTube app not made by Google, there are no others to compare Google's behavior on for fairness. This is the first event of its kind. (1) If you consider single digits market share to be significant.
>The Windows Phone YouTube app would be the first significant (1) phone OS to have a YouTube app not made by Google, there are no others to compare Google's behavior on for fairness. This is the first event of its kind.
It's also the only significant phone OS that doesn't ship with Google search as the default.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be OK is the rules weren't arbitrary, it is not OK to allow native API calls to some and to force to use HTML5 to others, it is inexcusable.
Why? How is this any different than me releasing my code under something like the LGPL, which would allow those folks who dynamically link to not release source to their app, but force those who are required to statically link (due to platform or other reasons) to release source to their app? Note that it's a similar situation. If I release code under the LGPL, i don't have to abide by it, only others do. Twitter req…
It's anticompetitive because Google is using its dominant online video platform to promote its mobile OS, even though those are really two separate industries. It's no different from MS selling an internet server that uses nonstandard extensions and only making those available on windows.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#47This whole thing is a giant nothingburger. There are plenty of Youtube apps for WP. The official one on iOS that got so much hype on release (and talk now regarding the lack of a WP version) is frankly awful compared to many of the alternatives and currently sits at 2 stars on the iOS store. WP users be thankful you don't have either the MS port or an official Google one. From what I gather even if you had both, you'…
It's curious to see Google pull this. From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html "At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their bran…
I'm all in agreement on the hypocrisy of Google's "open" bullshit train but isn't the central issue here that the gd brand mark for YouTube is simply not free to use?
I think Google is within their rights to put whatever limits they want in that area, even unreasonable ones.
And while 2/3 of HN is happy to swallow the open kool aid, last I checked MS wore big boy pants and surely they can do better than crying about their big unfair rival on their blog.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#48This is business. Microsoft would do exactly the same if the situation was reversed.
Exactly, Microsoft already does something similar by reserving some of their APIs for their own use. There are others that are available to some (eg the carriers) but nobody else. It's nothing new, they have had so-called 'private' APIs since the early days of Windows.
>It's nothing new, they have had so-called 'private' APIs since the early days of Windows
Point to a single "private" API. There is no such thing. Preemptive apologies if you're a non technical person as these things are obvious to most programmers so I don't really want to berate anyone for simply not having sufficient information.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, Microsoft already does something similar by reserving some of their APIs for their own use. There are others that are available to some (eg the carriers) but nobody else. It's nothing new, they have had so-called 'private' APIs since the early days of Windows.
And Windows detected DR-DOS and crashed your computer to kill DR-DOS and MS paid a paltry $150M to Caldera later but they got to upkeep their monopoly in the PC market. Now they get a small serving of this medicine and it's far less sinister and they whine. Oh they irony.
>And Windows detected DR-DOS and crashed your computer to kill DR-DOS and MS paid a paltry $150M to Caldera later but they got to upkeep their monopoly in the PC market.
Actually Windows ran perfectly fine over DR-DOS. Perhaps you're thinking of the beta version which included the code to not allow Windows to run on any dos other than MS-DOS. The reason obviously is purely technical. Because of the way Windows 3.1 worked it required access to internal MS-DOS undocumented data structures which could not be guaranteed to work on any other DOS clone.
In fact Windows crashed on MS-DOS 4.0 because the internal data structures changed. MS-DOS 4.0 contains special code for backwards compatibility to trick Windows into thinking its running on the older version.
Re: Google blocks Windows Phone YouTube app again, for “manufactured” reasons
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
With that logic, Google could block any other phone like the Ubuntu Edge for "business reasons", Google deserves to be sued for this anti-competitive behavior.
its not anticompetitive to not allow a third party to release your product on their platform without following your rules (reasonable or not). Hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering effort and bandwidth go into Youtube. In reality Google is completely within its rights to no do anything to support any platform it chooses not to. Why allow a platform and company to leech off that if they're not willing to. Mic…
>its not anticompetitive to not allow a third party to release your product on their platform without following your rules (reasonable or not).
That is actually the definition of being anti-competitive. Google is gaining an unfair advantage w.r.t. Android vs WP by manipulating terms of their extremely popular video service to make it not work on their competitors product.