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Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

zdnet.com

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Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#61

Post by smokinjoe »

orangethirty wrote: post #30
guelo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're going down the Facebook route, they want to lock you into their AOL-style walled garden. I was surprised the other day when I went to share a video from Google+ to Facebook, turns out I couldn't, it wasn't a youtube video as I had expected.

Just like PG said in one of his essays, Google is now the new Microsoft. It used to be about giving hackers tools to build on top of their services. Now, its all about turning the search engine into a social network. And before the Google army comes in, let me say one thing. I used to love Google. Used all of their services. Built stuff with their services. Each computer I touched got Chrome installed. I was a fan bo…

> And before the Google army comes in, let me say one thing. I used to love Google. Used all of their services. Built stuff with their services. Each computer I touched got Chrome installed. I was a fan boy. But then they started changing.

Just because they didn't satisfy your demands you decide to take such a drastic turn? Perhaps they were trying to satisfy other casual Internet users as well.

Not to say you're wrong or whatever, but a huge company like Google tries to satisfy as many people as possible to increase their market-share. I don't necessarily see something wrong as long as all the negative side affects aren't solely absorbed by the consumer.

There's nothing wrong with compromises here and there - any healthy relationship consistently needs to deal with them.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#63

Post by onemorepassword »

Karunamon wrote: post #59
robertskmiles wrote: post #21

I think Aaron Swartz hit the nail on the head with his "What Does Google Mean by “Evil”?" blog post[1]: > "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. Hardly the stuff of comic books. But what do these three have in common? They’re all instances of refusing to make things worse for your users in order to make more money " This…

>This is just about the first time I've seen Google unambiguously break their own definition of 'evil'. Shutting down a service is now considered "evil"? That's a stretch if there ever was one...

Replacing an open standard with your own proprietary crap once you have achieved dominance (anybody here not using Google Calendar?) in the market?

That's 90's Microsoft-level "evil".

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#64

Post by ville »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #55

I think this news highlights a more general problem. How can we call something an "open standard" if it's controlled by one company in such a way that they can shut it down at whim. Open sourcing should be a requirement to be an "open standard", or am I missing something?

They are not shutting down the standard, they are dropping the support for it in services they host.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#65

Post by surrealize »

onemorepassword wrote: post #63
Karunamon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is just about the first time I've seen Google unambiguously break their own definition of 'evil'. Shutting down a service is now considered "evil"? That's a stretch if there ever was one...

Replacing an open standard with your own proprietary crap once you have achieved dominance (anybody here not using Google Calendar?) in the market? That's 90's Microsoft-level "evil".

Microsoft-level evil would be charging people for the privilege of using the API, like with ActiveSync. Google isn't quite there yet, but they're certainly moving in that direction.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#66

Post by onemorepassword »

I'm pretty much done with Google as supplier of business apps. I have to migrate our company's Google Apps account anyway because of a (domain)name change (which is still hell with Google Apps anyway, you basically have to buy and setup a totally new account an migrate everything by hand or with 3rd party tools), so I might as well look for another supplier.

As much as I dislike everything Microsoft, 365 currently looks well ahead of Google (everything they haven't killed yet has definitely stopped evolving), and has certainly proven to be a more reliable partner for business use.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#67

Post by freshhawk »

niggler wrote: post #27
robertskmiles wrote: post #21

I think Aaron Swartz hit the nail on the head with his "What Does Google Mean by “Evil”?" blog post[1]: > "They specifically name three: showing irrelevant ads, using pop-ups or other annoying gimmicks, and selling off actual search results. Hardly the stuff of comic books. But what do these three have in common? They’re all instances of refusing to make things worse for your users in order to make more money " This…

You mean Google broke aaronsw's guess at google's understanding of evil. Evil is a relative term, and if Microsoft is seen as the Evil empire then cutting off amicable relations (manifested by open interfaces) can be construed as "not evil" Read the update to the article, where he points out that the entire concept of ads could be construed as evil by some.

aaronsw was quoting google sources, not guessing.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#68

Post by notaddicted »

meej wrote: post #56
gwern wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually been putting numbers on this: there are many fans of NewsBlur, apparently, as a replacement for Google Reader, so that's $12 a year; I'm worried about being tied to my Gmail address, so I finally got around to setting up a vanity domain address which forwards to Gmail and that's going to be about $10 a year. So I'm up to $22 a year, and I haven't looked into any free or paid replacements for Google Cale…

Between Google retiring stuff and Twitter's ongoing war against client developers, I'm seriously considering just packing up and self-hosting everything I care about on my VPS.

I've been thinking along the same lines. To begin I'd like to just mirror everything on a VPS (email, rss, calendars, dropbox, music library, youtube playlists, bookmarks (for me: pinboard)) on the VPS.

Then I'd have cobble together whatever oss webapps I need to access all that remotely, and then lock the whole thing down -- ideally only allow external access via ssh and then set up my phone/laptop to VPN through it when I want access.

It would be at least a day of work to set it all up but I think I've almost reached the requisite pain point.

EDIT: and it would be nice if I could run phone numbers through it as well via something like http://voip.ms/ ... if anyone is aware of someone doing something like this and writing it up I'd be interested to know, I haven't come across any setup like this.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#69

Post by josephlord »

wooster wrote: post #8

Can anyone recommend a good email/calendar host for custom domains? Edit: I have several Google Apps for Business domains. I'm looking for alternatives.

I'm looking at eumx.net at the moment. Fastmail.fm and Polaris were other possibilities.

Re: Google: Do what you want with Reader, but don't kill CalDAV

#70

Post by incongruity »

cooldeal wrote: post #36
psbp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is Google forbidden from ever closing down a service without being accused of being evil?

Not really, but in this case, they have failed to give any justification for not following a standard that industry giants like Apple follow and which Microsoft is close to implementing on Windows Phone. Perhaps there is a technical reason, but Google not being open about it makes people assume the worst.

It's also in contrast with some of their own previous behavior. When they saw opportunities to make things faster/better, they were comfortable breaking standards (or, well, making new tech that might stand as a standard one day and asking people to let go of older standards). One example: SPDY. Another: go. Additionally, there's a whole bunch of examples from chrome where they broke conventions for user experience and drew people's ire, but in all cases they defended these decisions with well thought out (if controversial) arguments.

Where's the argument against CalDAV? (I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I'm just surprised to not have seen anything from them)

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