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Expunging Google

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Re: Expunging Google

#61

Post by teeja »

ok_craig wrote: post #8

I still think this is all ridiculous. Stopping support for a product that uses a certain standard doesn't mean you're against that standard, unless you're a conspiracy theorist. You can argue that they're against certain open standards if you want, but the canceling of Reader isn't actually evidence of that. Simultaneously putting effort into G+ is also not evidence of that. It's not even symbolic of that. It is only…

In my experience Google buys something, lures people into using it for years, lets it languish without improvements for years so long as it serves their purposes, then kills it off.

Whether they're "working against the potential of the open Internet" is another question altogether. They like head counts, but like certain fickle people in all of our lives, the idea of actually having a real enduring relationship never crosses their Aspergian heads. It's just business. We've already got enough of that ruining the world. Some of us actually yearn for a better future ... not just enduring life on the way to Alpha Centauri or whatever.

Re: Expunging Google

#62

Post by jxi »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #48
ebbv wrote: post #35

This is not conscious consumerism. This is a childish temper tantrum. Chrome has better developer tools. If your job is being a web dev and you purposely make your job harder because you're mad at Google for shutting down Reader, you're not being rational.

I'll still happily use Chromium for web development, as and where necessary. Just not signed in to Google for sync, etc. etc. I do wonder though ... would you have described the formation of the FSF as a childish temper tantrum? I remember the days when to use Linux as a development OS was painful ... it worked out well in the end though :)

FSF is an ideal. The ideal that all software is open source so that it's more secure and has all the other benefits of open source. What you're doing is being childish. "Boo hoo, big bad Google killed a product I liked, so I'm going to make some bullshit arguments to stop using ALL their products."

I don't use all of Google's products, but I use a subset because they get the job done well. If you think killing off reader was a bad idea, why not build your own and see how the cost/benefit ratio pays off. What problem are you even solving by doing this? You're just throwing a childish fit.

Re: Expunging Google

#64

Post by duncan_bayne »

magicalist wrote: post #58
duncan_bayne wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... except where it isn't in their interests, which is why Google is trying to kill off RSS with a multi-pronged strategy (ignore RSS in Chromium, kill off RSS reader, don't offer an RSS feed in G+). If your platform is free-as-in-beer, you have to monetise your users to advertisers. You do this by learning more about them by keeping them within your ecosystem, not by allowing them access to your platform through ope…

Not only would that be a pretty poor multi-pronged strategy, it still has absolutely nothing to do with "embrace, extend, and extinguish", as the parent pointed out. And, seriously, "ignore RSS in Chromium" is now kowtowing to advertisers? How about the lack of gopher support[1]? And no built in bittorrent client[2]?? I'm starting to agree with others that you have a point somewhere in here but you're missing it over…

Not exactly embrace and extend like MS did it, but similar in spirit: take an open protocol, embrace it for a while, gradually weaken it over time in favour of a parallel closed system, then once everyone is happily using it, kill it dead and watch the migration into the closed system.

If I had to guess, I'd say that torrent support was nixed for fear of offending Big Content; Opera has already showed that it's reasonable for a browser to support it. Also there's already a plugin for that protocol, so it may just be a low priority for the team. Odd that they flagged the request 'invalid' though.

(Please stop telling me that I'm angry about Reader. It's not that I'm angry: I've identified what I think is a pattern in Google's behaviour, figured out what their end goal is, and it troubles me. So I'm abandoning their platform to the greatest extent practical.)

Re: Expunging Google

#65

Post by duncan_bayne »

jxi wrote: post #62
duncan_bayne wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll still happily use Chromium for web development, as and where necessary. Just not signed in to Google for sync, etc. etc. I do wonder though ... would you have described the formation of the FSF as a childish temper tantrum? I remember the days when to use Linux as a development OS was painful ... it worked out well in the end though :)

FSF is an ideal. The ideal that all software is open source so that it's more secure and has all the other benefits of open source. What you're doing is being childish. "Boo hoo, big bad Google killed a product I liked, so I'm going to make some bullshit arguments to stop using ALL their products." I don't use all of Google's products, but I use a subset because they get the job done well. If you think killing off re…

I don't think it was a bad idea, I think it was a very good idea from their perspective. I think that what they're trying to do is a bad idea for everyone, which is why I've changed platform.

Why do you assume I'm angry about it?

Re: Expunging Google

#66

Post by duncan_bayne »

cromwellian wrote: post #51
duncan_bayne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right; I've corrected that. You're also correct that RSS doesn't solve the problem of federated social networking. It was never intended to. W.r.t. developing protocols for federated social networking: Google isn't interested; it would harm their bottom line if users on their systems could easily share content outside those systems. Hence why Google+ doesn't even offer an RSS feed. Do you really, hand-on-heart…

A central core feature of Google Wave was federation. Wave failed. Reason? Not because of federation, but because of consumer experience and confusion. If you look at G+, Google has taken a very very careful approach this time (after OpenSocial, Buzz, Wave, et al failed), building on it very incrementally, always concentrating on user experience at each step. Even to the extent that they don't have even have an API t…

Hmmmm ... the fact that there is no API access, no RSS feed etc. doesn't strike me as a coincidence, or perhaps a consequence of a streamlined user experience. I think it's deliberate, & part of a long-term strategy.

Clearly you don't though.

Perhaps we should resume this conversation in five years time? :)

Re: Expunging Google

#67

Post by duncan_bayne »

tikhonj wrote: post #56

Even assuming Google is not being malicious--and I think that's a broadly safe assumption--I'm still concerned. I'm am significantly over-reliant on Google's serviced: my email, my calendar, my OpenID, my web search, my videos, my phone, my maps, my web browser... (Well, I do use Firefox now.) It's a single point of failure. A rather scary one at that. Some of these things do not have good alternatives. My phone? I c…

Disquet. That's _exactly_ it, and I wish I'd thought to use that word in the first place.

You're right that Google is still better than Apple and Microsoft. I'm still hoping that Ubuntu for phones gets some traction, I'd love for a truly general-purpose pocket computer.

Re: Expunging Google

#68

Post by duncan_bayne »

cageface wrote: post #47

I understand why people are reluctant to trust a single corporation with so much control over their personal information, particularly when, as they say, the user is as much the product as the customer. I'm generally a big defender of Google but even I am disquieted by their maneuvering around Google+. However, I also doubt it's possible to build services as sophisticated as GMail on direct payments from users. I str…

> I strongly suspect that very few people would be willing to > pay what it would cost to build and run a service like > GMail without ads.

What do you think the problem would be? I'm using Fastmail now, and not missing anything from Gmail. All for $50 / month.

Re: Expunging Google

#70

Post by cageface »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #68
cageface wrote: post #47

I understand why people are reluctant to trust a single corporation with so much control over their personal information, particularly when, as they say, the user is as much the product as the customer. I'm generally a big defender of Google but even I am disquieted by their maneuvering around Google+. However, I also doubt it's possible to build services as sophisticated as GMail on direct payments from users. I str…

> I strongly suspect that very few people would be willing to > pay what it would cost to build and run a service like > GMail without ads. What do you think the problem would be? I'm using Fastmail now, and not missing anything from Gmail. All for $50 / month.

I tried Fastmail last year and maybe my impressions are out of date but it can't compete on features at all. The web interface is stone age compared to gmail, search is far slower and less sophisticated, spam filtering was not as good etc. No native apps are available for mobile.

Fastmail isn't bad but I don't consider them to be in the same league.

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