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Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

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Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#81

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dragonwriter wrote: post #23
kccqzy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one really uses FTP to transmit anything secret or confidential. Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication.

> Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication. reply So...no reason for FTP in the browser, since it already supports HTTP?

Once every site serving FTP makes their files available on HTTP, sure.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#82

Post by clouddrover »

userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

> this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be

Bully them back. Don't use Google search and don't use Chrome.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#83

Post by takeda »

anyfoo wrote: post #41
big_chungus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP is basically useful as a single-use protocol: file transfer only. File transfer only allows a more stripped-down, dedicated server with better security. Vsftpd and others have excellent security specifically tailored to permission-based file transfers with access control lists etc. You will rarely find a comparable http option. It's not perfect, but there are also good partes and reasons why it's still around. Se…

As written in another comment, you will find FTP to actually be a truly horrendous protocol, at least from today's perspective. I'm not sure there is anything that FTP offers, that the rsync or sftp, for example, offer much better (or simply HTTP if it's only in one direction), and then some. SFTP is actually not just FTP over SSH. The protocol is different precisely to get rid of a lot of the outdated nuisances.

FTP became a nightmare to use thanks to introduction of NAT, it was developed before NAT existed so it wasn't designed with it in mind.

As for rsync, sftp, scp those are heavily tied to ssh, rsync to the point that you actually ssh to host and call rsync command. rsync has a server mode as well, but almost no one uses it.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#84

Post by userbinator »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #80
CGamesPlay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP support is still a big attack surface for the client that has to be managed, regardless of wire security. But my gut reaction to reading this concern is actually: why do you think this is “bullying” and not “opening the door for a niche competitor”?

What big attack surface? The client? FTP is an ugly/stupid protocol, but it's not really complex (I suspect it's far simpler than HTTP).

I'm surprised the article claims there are still bugs, because one would think (hope) that a protocol over 30 years old with an implementation over a decade old should've received its last bugfix long ago and become truly stable by now.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#85

Post by rkagerer »

I've always felt browsers are gimped FTP clients and found it weird they had support for the protocol in the first place. In fact the first time I used an FTP url in Netscape I was surprised it actually worked.

That said, I find the viewpoint "users should not be impacted by this deprecation" the height of arrogance. Note that phrase is lifted from the article, and is not present in the dev team's post.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#86

Post by cameldrv »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #52
tim58 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fine with this. I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment. There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change?…

The same could have been said of Gopher. FTP is typically insecure and painful to use with it's varying port maps. Transferring files over HTTP or more modern protocols is the future.

FTP in PASV mode operates very similarly to HTTP, and is no more insecure. With an organization the size of Google and the Chrome team, they should be able to make it work.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#87

Post by kerng »

kccqzy wrote: post #6
TylerE wrote: post #5

Not bothered by this. No one should be running FTP in 2019. It sends passwords in plain text for christ's sake.

No one really uses FTP to transmit anything secret or confidential. Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication.

That is inaccurate, banks heavily use ftp. Probably not a world that many here are exposed to, but it's very normal in the financial space

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#89

Post by tastroder »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #8

I'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.

Chrome still displays bitmap images. (S)FTP is still used, there's a lot of legacy stuff on the internet, and Google does not dictate what technology people use. It's still a web browser after all, not an Instagram viewer.

> It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up.

While I see that it is shared by many here, I do not get this sentiment. It's still out there and rarely used, yes. But similarly would not require much maintenance for the time being, remove it when users decide it's dead, not just your shiny modern partners. The codebase cannot be that burdened by support for the protocol, why even take action?

I guess what I'm trying to figure out is the reason why this even came up, is that to soothe some weird code base / maintenance metric?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#90

Post by userbinator »

clouddrover wrote: post #82
userbinator wrote: post #66

Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also,…

> this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be Bully them back. Don't use Google search and don't use Chrome.

Easier said than done, especially when most of the population doesn't care either because they're too young or too nontechnical; actually, I already don't use Chrome, but their search (which still shows FTP sites...) is, despite slowly getting worse too, still giving a wider breadth of sites most of the time. Bing and DDG help fill in the gaps.
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