81–87 of 87 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK they did keep turn-by-turn directions off iOS though. It's been a while since I've used an iPhone so I can't readily verify that.
They didn't, it's fully featured. In some ways it's even better than the Android app, more beautifully designed. They mentioned in their blog they'll be bringing much the same to Android soon.
Where's the repro? What's the mechanism? Header redirect? Meta tag? JavaScript? Magic? Can this effect be replicated without a Windows Phone? I tried setting my User-Agent to "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; ARM; Trident/6.0)" and could not repro.
Try making your useragent: "Mozilla/5.0 (compatiable, MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch)" I did it in Firefox and maps.google.com redirects. Making your useragent anything that contains "Windows Phone" makes it redirect.
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatiable, MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch)
> Host: maps.google.com
> Accept: */*
>
GET /m/local HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatiable, MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch)
> Host: maps.google.com
> Accept: */*
>
The Windows Phone browser does not send touchstart or touchmove events. This alone makes it damn near impossible left to implement decent maps, so the claims that its the equivalent of IE10 is incorrect. Its a pretty huge oversight by MS given that WebKit, Firefox and Opera do it just fine.
If you alter the useragent on a developer device, Google Maps doesn't redirect and works just fine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're just trying to avoid having a single company, Microsoft, dominate the industry again.
Microsoft will never have a shot at dominating the mobile industry. What I don't understand is your willingness to support a duopoly, which is almost as bad as a monopoly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm pretty sure you're just being neglected. First of all, when "neglect" gives Google leverage to harm a competitor in a different market (using maps to harm a mobile OS vendor), it is reasonable to think it might not be just neglect, but also strategy. Second, neglect is bad enough by itself. Google has been phasing out support for Opera in properties like blogger.com on desktop, and now is officially on record a…
1) any kind of anticompetitive argument like that is a dangerous road to walk down. Is Google leveraging the popularity of maps.google.com to also marginalize rockmelt? Is a "install chromeframe" interstitial on IE6 some strategy beyond "we don't want to support your browser"? there is always a line, and considering how widespread UA sniffing and webkit-only prefixes are, you would need a considerably higher bar of e…
If Google did prevent a browser like rockmelt, which is not a strategic threat to Google, from accessing maps, I would say that likely it is a side effect of something else. But Microsoft IS in fact a strategic threat to Google, and Google constantly thinks about how to compete effectively against it. To do otherwise would be stupid, which Google is not.
> it ignores the very simple fact that any organization is made up of people with very different opinions
Of course Google is a very large company, and has many people inside it with many different opinions (and as you say, many are great people that truly care about the open web). But like any corporation, it is hierarchical and its leaders at the top do define an overall coherent strategy for the company as a whole. A company that does not do that is doomed to failure, and there are of course plenty of examples in history.
Google's overall strategy with respect to the web has shifted in recent years, with less support for alternative browsers on desktop and especially mobile. This makes business sense for Google - supporting other browsers in some cases might help them compete against Google, which like any company Google wants to prevent. This is not unique to Google; what is, is that years ago Google was very different - it didn't have it's own browser and OS, and it supported openness on the web, that openness helped Google as a new company making money on the web. But that openness is no longer crucial to Google's strategy, and that is affecting Google's products more and more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Free and open web" doesn't mean unfettered access to private parties' services, it means unfettered access to the internet itself. I.e. access to the services on the internet that private parties are willing to let you use.
Most everything on the internet is owned by someone , and the whole meaning of things being free and open is that putting something up is putting it up for everyone. Your interpretation is just "you can use the things I let you use", which is a tautology...
In the US you are a "free" citizen in an "open" country. You are free to go anywhere you want on open roads. This doesn't give you the right to trespass and go into anyone's private property. If they have a fence up, you have to stay out. If they're having a yard sale, you can come in.
If Alice wants to let Bob on her property and not Eve, that doesn't make the US any less of a "free and open" country.
This is what is meant by "free and open" web. You can attempt to reach any endpoint you want without restriction, but the endpoint itself has private control over whether you are allowed to its contents or not.
Anything less is not actually freedom, because then the endpoints' freedom to determine who can use its private property is being denied.
A web that is not "free and open" is one in which your attempts to reach endpoints are interrupted and allowed or denied by a third, censoring entity. (Usually the government.) It has nothing to do with how those endpoints would respond to you on their own.