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

www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 320 posts

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#81

Post by RulerOf »

rendaw wrote: post #22

Is there any legitimate use for UA string sniffing vs feature detection? And what could a search engine possibly do that's so bleeding edge it doesn't work in all browsers?

There've been a few, but the first one that impacted me was Chrome's switch to requiring the SameSite=None flag on Set-Cookie headers[1] in a third party context.

> Warning: A number of older versions of browsers including Chrome, Safari, and UC browser are incompatible with the new None attribute and may ignore or restrict the cookie.

This caveat meant that UA sniffing was the only reliable means of setting cookies that were guaranteed to work properly.

1: https://web.dev/articles/samesite-cookies-explained

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#82

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Fatnino wrote: post #42
boomboomsubban wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is currently facing an antitrust suit where their payment to Firefox is a crucial part of the evidence against them. And it's over their search engine, which is far more important to them than Chrome. They pay Firefox as they're buying a valuable product. Which is why they also pay Safari.

Are you certain that search is more important than chrome? Sure search was their first product, but they have long since pivoted to being an ad company. And while yes, they can show ads along side search, the real cash cow is all the juicy data they can exclusively hoover up through Chrome to better target ads all across the web not just search.

Nope, search ads are still where they make at least 2/3rds of their money. The rest of their ad inventory has substitutes, search really doesn't (because they basically invented the category (grumble grumble something Overture)).

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#83

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

oblio wrote: post #65
Fatnino wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you certain that search is more important than chrome? Sure search was their first product, but they have long since pivoted to being an ad company. And while yes, they can show ads along side search, the real cash cow is all the juicy data they can exclusively hoover up through Chrome to better target ads all across the web not just search.

Chrome is okish for collecting data. But they have Android which probably provides 100x the data.

Only on poor people! (I mostly jest, but having talked to a bunch of former Google ad people, it was a real concern for them that most of their high revenue users were moving to iPhone).

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#87

Post by suprfsat »

xcdzvyn wrote: post #80
rendaw wrote: post #22

Is there any legitimate use for UA string sniffing vs feature detection? And what could a search engine possibly do that's so bleeding edge it doesn't work in all browsers?

Detecting the user's OS to provide the right binary download link?

Google Earth still asks me to choose "64 bit .deb (For Debian/Ubuntu)" or "64 bit .rpm (For Fedora/openSUSE)", but I guess user agent sniffing wouldn't help that.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#88

Post by scott_w »

rendaw wrote: post #22

Is there any legitimate use for UA string sniffing vs feature detection? And what could a search engine possibly do that's so bleeding edge it doesn't work in all browsers?

We’ve seen browsers behave differently in subtle ways. To mitigate impact while we figured out the correct fix, we’ve served different content to them so those users still get a working experience while we figure out and fix the underlying issue.

This had nothing to do with feature detection, so the usual suggestions simply won’t work.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#89

Post by lamontcg »

pmontra wrote: post #4

9 minutes ago: > Since this has now been posted to HN, I'll be locking this thread. This bugtracker is a work place, not a discussion forum. We have a bad fame.

> This bugtracker is a work place, not a discussion forum.

that's actually an excellent way to frame what a bugtracker is actually for.

it is about workers getting shit done and its optimized for the people who work the issues.

it isn't optimized for the people posting comments on issues.

and the fact that a lot of users that have never had to deal with fixing software bugs think it looks like a forum website would explain the impedance mismatch that you often see.

Re: www.google.com – The page is blank when accessed

#90

Post by doix »

Uptrenda wrote: post #43
tmtvl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our bad reputation is not entirely undeserved, some of us are not as well behaved as others.

[flagged]

Oh come on. As soon as any issue hits any "social media" site, the comments turn to shit with people inserting their own clever meme or whatever.

The bug is well understood, there's nothing to gain from keeping the issue open and a lot to lose. Getting notifications for "shit posts" is pretty annoying.

_Maybe_ they could have avoided explicitly calling out HN and just said "social media" or whatever. But you're really pulling at straws to get offended here. I don't think their an asshole, I think they're pragmatic.

Post reply on HN