Seems this is 100% intentional from Google. What the fuck? I was completely blindsided by this, I couldn't imagine a huge company like Google doing this at this scale.
> Seems this is 100% intentional from Google. What the fuck? I was completely blindsided by this, I couldn't imagine a huge company like Google doing this at this scale.
The funny thing about this is that Microsoft used to employ such methods to harm the competition, or so it was claimed (regarding WordPerfect etc.).
It's also mildly amusing that a lot of people still believe the "Don't Be Evil" credo Google used to have.
This is exactly the reasoning that pisses me off. If MS pulled the same shit, we would be out with pitchforks ready to bury them. Have some consistency. Any corporation using their monopoly product to provide a bad experience for competitive products is evil.
Google went out of their way to prevent MS phones from using Google maps. MS did not go out of their way to allow Linux to use Office. There is a big difference.
Some Microsoft software was supported on other Unix platforms through Wabi and similar tools, and IIRC there may also have been native ports. Microsoft rather pointedly has avoided supporting the Linux market, with the exception of tools which allow interoperability with Windows systems (notably kernel contributions most of which relate to Azure).
> Microsoft rather pointedly has avoided supporting the Linux market.
Please. Wake up and smell the coffee.
EVERY major software company has avoided the Linux market. It's because of the questionable market opportunity that is the reason not any competition issues.
As noted: there was specific end-user software supported on Unix platforms, which could be, but never was, trivially ported to Linux.
More tellingly: Linux's overarching success has been in the server space (and the platform is emerging as the mobile leader). Microsoft's server software, including most notably SQL Server (derived from Sybase, originally targeted at Unix systems) isn't available for Linux. Neither are Exchange, Active Directory, Sharepoint, IIS, or Windows File Sharing. Free Software (and proprietary) alternatives and work-alikes for each exist, and in many or most cases are more successful, though AD remains a market leader.
Microsoft conquered the desktop PC market by leveraging compulsory per-CPU OS license via bundled office software to create a self-reinforcing illegal monopoly, which it then attempted to extend into the small server space. It's fought every attempt to crack any part of that stranglehold, fighting OEMs providing other operating systems (DR DOS, Novell, BeOS, Linux), by not porting its Office products (except to Mac OS X, since discontinued), and by not porting/building its server products to other platforms.
Major companies which have not avoided the Linux market include IBM, Oracle (and acquired companies Sun and PeopleWare), and Informix. Yes, all server space. I'm making a point here.
Besides developing office on Linux means commiting resources to support that platform. In this case its a website and Google actually spent resources to break a site that was working previously.
Completely and utterly different, to the point that your assertion borders on the ridiculous. So much for the "open" and "choice" mantra's. However you look at it, this is a dick move.
Isn't it exactly what Google is refraining from? Since the Maps work crappily on non-WebKit mobile browsers, allowing them to be used is delivering bad experience.
I fail to see how this is different than e.g. not supporting Flash on iOS devices due to poor performance and battery drain - a then-controversial move which is now seen as reasonable even outside the circles of Apple fans.
In one case we are talking about the absence of software/support; the iPhone does not ship with Flash. Actively preventing software from running is another; Apple preventing jailbreaking. Now, who do I blame for my iPad mini's lack of an Android port?
> Well... it's their service. And you're not paying for it. Seems to me they can offer it any way they want.
It doesn't so much work that way for Google in 2013. They must be above reproach. Using their dominant leverage in one business to fiddle with competition in another would invite much unwanted government scrutiny – however chuckle-worthy the irony might be, with Microsoft now the aggrieved party.
Windows Phone has a very small market share. If we discovered that people running Opera on Maemo (if there even is such a thing) are getting the same behavior, would it surprise anyone? Would anyone even object?
They don't have an obligation to support tiny platforms that would cost more to support than they're worth just because Microsoft is very loud to complain about anything they do. Or subject users to a crashy experience because the site doesn't need Webkit to load but still needs it to not crash. Any more than Microsoft has to make officeupdate.microsoft.com support Firefox on Mac rather than just redirecting it to office.com like they do now.
As a matter of fact, they do try to block Opera aggressively from their Google Apps. Gmail on Opera (Linux version only) will force you to use the HTML-only version of the site, while display a message telling you to switch to a more modern browser (even though Opera is usually the most standards-compliant browser at any given version compared to its rivals), linking to Google Chrome. I searched on the internet for this, and it seems to happen to non-Linux machines too, but since reports of it are so scarce (Opera is probably the least used browser out there), no one seems to care.
I'm very saddened by the results of the antitrust motion and I hope they get cornered again on antitrust issues. Google and Apple are the new MS, really.
OK, so they discontinued it. For many years windowsupdate.microsoft.com and officeupdate.microsoft.com were Internet Explorer requiring websites with Active X controls to update the appropriate Microsoft software. No support for Firefox on Windows and no support for Mac at all. How does the fact that they discontinued the website itself make the example less valid? It still happened. And there are plenty of other examples from across the industry, if you're actually questioning that.
Anything that still uses Active X is IE-only. It has been slowly dying, but it most certainly still exists, and for many years (even fairly recently) Microsoft was one of the major perpetrators. And Silverlight is almost as bad (but thankfully much less widely used). Half of Apple's web services only work or work fully with Apple's operating systems. There is no Mac OS X support on Amazon EC2 (you can certainly blame Apple for that more than Amazon, but then you're just blaming Apple instead of Amazon). I'm sure you're aware of the kerfuffle over Microsoft shoving proprietary "do it like this version of Microsoft Office" specs into the OOXML standard over strenuous objections by competitors. Almost all of Microsoft's server products rely on Active Directory for feature completeness and don't play half as well with non-Microsoft implementations of LDAP or Kerberos.
If competitors had an obligation to support competing platforms then you could find no saints in this industry.
Edit: Incidentally, I'm really enjoying the irony of you loudly and repeatedly complaining about people downvoting pro-Microsoft content (notwithstanding that this story has remained on the front page for almost a full day) while your brethren simultaneously downvote my comments instead of responding to them.
I think it's important not to use this sort of response to excuse the behavior of companies who don't respect their customers. Google is making money from this traffic. Plenty of companies offer a free service and treat their customers very well.
"This development shouldn't come as any type of shock, however, since Google Maps relies on WebKit on mobile devices"
This is ridiculous. User agent checking / "This site is best viewed with" in my 2013, by Google. What happened to their "Don't be a monkey armed with a hand grenade" motto?
Not sure why there's so much noise around this. I have an old Nokia N8, and maps.google.com doesn't work (and has never worked) on either the Webkit-based stock browser or Opera Mobile.
There is however a native Google Maps app which works just fine.
I tried in Opera and IE10, and in both got the message to open Control Panel and access Windows Update.
Anyway yours is a very bad example since Windows Update needs an ActiveX component to update the OS itself, which is not amenable to web standards, unlike a mapping service.
The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web.
Microsoft's response:
Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 use the same rendering engine.
Again a open case of abusing Monopoly. Google keep forcing the users as it want and everyone says, its a free service and can be bent as Google want. It forces to use Google Plus for may services, forces to log in to Google to install chrome extensions.
It's more that you can install "extensions" just fine, but need to be logged in to get "web apps". In reality, both are Chrome ran code, but there's the distinction there. You can however install basic extensions like adblock or ghostery without logging into Chrome.
(It won't help you on the anonymity standpoint of course, because every Chrome has unique id that's recorded when you log into any google service)
It's the "we require login to access any google docs documents if you use chrome, but don't need it if you use other browser" that's more annoying than web apps in my opinions.
I would hardly call blocking an unsupported mobile OS from loading a website monopolistic. It's like blocking OSX apps from running on Windows even though it might kind of "work". It would tarnish Google's reputation if people tried to use it and see how broken it is/will become since nobody is developing for it. It's a much better solution to just block it outright.
Just because Apple didn't have the sense to keep a broken maps application away from users doesn't mean it's the end of the world if Google does. Mobile Google Maps does not work in Mobile IE10. If anything they're protecting their brand.
I'll happily concede that they should display an opt-out-able "your browser is unsupported" message.
Now it seems Google is doing pay-back by crippling Microsoft's Phone efforts by not offering their services on them. I can't feel sorry for Microsoft in the least, it seems like finally they are subjected to 'what you reap is what you sow'.
Yes, but it's Microsoft customers who implicitly agree with Microsoft policies like pressuring OEMs to not sell computers without Windows Tax, or the whole Secure Boot debacle.
Be careful for what you wish for as it looks like other non WebKit browsers will be caught up in all this. Under this remit Firefox OS/Boot to Gecko for example would be blocked from using Google Maps.
Regardless who the victims are its a bad move for anybody who believes in open web standards.
So by your warped logic Google users also agree with Google policies like deliberately invading your privacy (ignoring Safari DNT) and acting in a grossly anti-competitive manner by abusing FRAND patents (which they thankfully got told off for this week).
I remember when it was Opera that people cared so little about that they regularly banned it, purely by accident. Not a good place for Windows Phone to be.
It was likely flagged. Anti-Google stories don't do well on HN. There's a very strong bias against anti-Google stories, but a strong bias for anti-MS stories.
Don't know about you, but as web dev/designer who codes html emails and websites, I curse Microsoft on a daily basis!
Thankfully ie6 is no longer and issue and there are many frameworks that making building websites for ie7/8 along with the others a snap. Wish there was something for html emails cause i was just cursing microsoft and wishing they'd hurry up and go extinct.
You do realize that IE6 is more than 11 years old. Microsoft wishes everyone used IE10 probably more than you do.
Do you curse Apple because of Safari 1? Which is actually newer than IE6?
Microsoft's greatest fault here is that they haven't been able to get people to upgrade their OS fast enough. An odd reason to curse them. And an odder reason still to flag their articles and push Google articles.
I get that everyone will have some bias, but the amount of bias doesn't seem justified, IMO.
If anything the amount of bias is way to low, MS singlehandedly crippled progress on the web for many many years and would deserve to be burned to the ground by an angry mob of webdevs for it.
You can develop in Chrome and it just works in Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc., but without fail things are always broken in IE (yes also in 6+ versions). Any webdev could tell you about the horrors.
IE versions have always been DOA compared to what’s possible in competing browsers at the time. Microsoft's fault of not getting people to upgrade is their own doing by not anticipating and adequately reacting to the problem… or frankly just not giving a shit™. Others don’t have these upgrade problems.
Also, we can be very thankful that they failed in their ploy to make the whole web IE-specific, but we should not forget and it’s to soon to forgive.
Do you not remember how much of a giant leap forward IE6 was when it was introduced? Or how massively far ahead of Netscape 4.x IE 5/5.5/6 were? IE5 gave us AJAX, and its CSS support was light-years better than the competition when it was released.
I've been a die-hard Microsoft hater since I was a teenager. Even so, there was a period from 2000-2004 when I used IE, because it was so clearly better than any other browser on the Internet. I gave up Netscape reluctantly, but when it just hung on half the sites of the Internet because it was so buggy, it was time to switch.
I take it you don't remember coding <layer> tags and working with Netscape's broken & nonstandard DOM implementation either, nor laying everything out with tables and spacer GIFs because it didn't support CSS. It used to be we'd get our pages to work in IE first, and then the boss would grudgingly say "And you've gotta make it work in Netscape too." (That was actually what got me my first full-time job...they called me in for an interview and during it I worked around a nasty layers bug that they hadn't been able to figure out.)
Was IE6 really all that much of an improvement over the mozilla browser (Not Netscape, precursor to phoenix -> firebird -> firefox ) at the time? I can't remember a time were I found IE to be actually better, or even comparable until recently.
Yes Netscape was having problems around that time, good luck trying to finance the development of a complex commercial software project when your competitor is abusing its monopoly by bundling a free alternative with its operating system. You are right about the ancient history timeframe but my points are valid for everything that happened with and after version 6, you know… the point when the web and broadband really started to take off.
And you could have used Opera or the Phoenix/Firebird Firefox-precursor instead of IE6.
With IE 4/5/6, MS also made a browser that was light-years ahead from a user's point of view than the competing browsers at the time from a speed and usability perspective.
At the time, Netscape 4 was a bloated, buggy joke, and was happily doing stupid stuff like re-downloading the content it was displaying when you resized the main window because its caching was so atrocious. And this was in the days of 28.8k / 56.6k modems, so if you resized the window, you'd probably be waiting 30+ seconds for the webpage to redownload and redraw, during which Netscape would either lock up or display a blank page, whereas in IE it could instantly resize with the content it had locally. That meant a huge amount in those days.
If microsoft had not shipped a couple of hundred million graphics terminals the web would have never taken off.
Arguably windows was one of the key ingredients in the soup that allowed the web to take off (the others: universal access to the net, Peter Tattam's trumpet winsock, the mosaic browser and ncsa httpd).
Right, because Microsoft invented it all (OS-tech) and nobody else would have been able to produce a graphical OS in it’s place… there is a difference between actually innovating and making a difference and simply being there because you were able to dominate the market trough shady practices. As I pointed out these things rather happened despite Microsoft than because of it.
Look, I'm about as anti MS as is possible, on a scale of 0 to 100 I'm stuck near the 100 end and nothing Microsoft or Bill Gates will do can change this. They're beyond redeeming themselves as far as I'm concerned. I routinely return mail to sender because people insist on sending me something that only a proprietary reader or application can open. I'd rather use linux and bloody open-office (or libre office or whatever they decide to call it today) because I very well remember the tricks that Microsoft pulled.
And yet, in spite of all that I have no problem with crediting them with those things they actually did.
I did not claim Microsoft invented it all, I did not say that nobody else would have been able to produce an alternative, I did not say it was very innovative, nor did I claim they got there in an ethically sound way.
But they did what they did and no amount of living in denial is going to undo that.
You are living in denial when you claim that the web would have never taken off were it not for Microsoft, especially when it was/is probably the biggest threat to the open web we now know. Every possible alternative OS would have been at least as capable of propelling the web, probably more so as katbyte points out.
Your argument is about the same as telling North Korean citizens they have to thank the Dear Leader for the good things they have. Technically correct but horribly lacking in perspective.
Like it or not, Microsoft totally dominated the home computer market in the 1990's, which is when the internet began to take hold. I'm no Microsoft fan, but to deny that they has a significant impact on the adoption of the web as we know it today is extremely short sighted. I suppose that you may be too young to remember of course...
Without a doubt MS used anti-competitive measures, but I grew up and was using their stuff during the time (late 90s), and I'm still not convinced bundling a browser made that much difference for the average person who was buying a new computer at the time.
I say this because I used to help out a lot of family/friends with their computer issues, and the vast majority of them during the time were using AOL or Compuserve for their internet access which had its own browser and didn't use IE at all (until several years later when they started using it).
Similarly, packages from BT (in the UK, the main phone line provider) shipped installs of Netscape, and to use it, the average user would have to use that (because they couldn't cope with the Dial-up-networking part of Windows as it was too complicated). They'd just double-click the "BT Internet" icon on the desktop, which would start Netscape and automatically dial up to their ISP.
In fact, I distinctly remember trying to convert several people from Netscape to IE, and this was with Windows 98. (I remember showing them active desktop).
Or we might be in a better place if superior graphical OS's (like OS/2) had been allowed to flourish instead of being killed off though business tactics rather then by having a better product.
The same could be said for IE6. They again pushed a inferior product to market through questionable business tactics making a purposely broken browser the dominant player for a very long time. Its interesting to imagine where the web and personal computing would be today if neither of those two things had happened...
> They again pushed a inferior product to market through questionable business tactics making a purposely broken browser the dominant player for a very long time.
That's not true. You have false memory of things that never happened. When IE6 came out, it was nothing short of incredible.
Are you sure? It was some time ago but I remember Mozilla being a better browser overall and far more secure. Maybe I am just remembering wrong, or I'm a few years off but I don't remember IE ever being comparable in quality to Mozilla, now Firefox, until fairly recently (IE8/9).
Even the wiki page for IE6 states (among many other negative things):
"This version of Internet Explorer is currently widely criticized for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in "worst tech products of all time" lists, with some publications labelling it as the "least secure software on the planet."
However it is wiki, so please do tell, what exactly made the release of IE6 so incredible when compared the the other browsers of its time??
When Firefox came out in 2003/2004, that was impressive and better than IE. Before then, Netscape and Mozilla were slow and very buggy.
IE6 was released in 2001, and at the time it was great. The fact that MS stopped working on it and the fact that most corporate IT networks stayed on it so long when the rest of the world had moved on are what gave it a bad name in the years since. But when it was released, it was great.
wow long thread here and most in regards to coding websites for legacy IE.
Well again my angst isn't about legacy IE cause indeed MS has moved forward in this regards & frameworks (i.e. boilerplate) make it easy to code for ie7 on up, but their outlook clients uses a form of MS Word to render html emails. Prior to 2007 they didnt use MS Word and older outlook clients are more simple to deal with in rendering your HTML emails perfectly. Though why in 2007 did they switch to a worse and more complicated rendering technology and then in 2010 stick with the same crap and then the latest 2013 remain sticking with the same crap rendering engine? It's all about money I am sure but in the end it only hurts them, as us techies loathe them and we are the innovators and early adopters.
That's because some posts get flagged by folks who either think it doesn't belong on HN, or that it spam/offtopic/flame and the posts move downwards.
However, sometimes people seem to flag posts because they don't want them see by HN readers. I've seen this happen to a lot of links to stories that aren't charitable to Google/Apple or are friendly to Microsoft even if they're legitimate news stories or even just announcements.
Also wanted to mention that lately I've seen even some Apple news and announcements get flagged a lot. I speculate Google/Android fans/employees/shareholders are going a bit overboard. :)
When you change it to something else (I did to Android 2.3, WebOS) it worked. When accessing with a WP7 user agent string ("Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; SAMSUNG; SGH-i917)" I was redirected to www.google.com.
Looks like an innocent mistake, however. Or they decided they wouldn't support IEMobile 9.
It's Google. Of course it's an INNOCENT mistake. If Microsoft had done it, it would be a mortal sin against humanity.
Google has even come out and said that mobile Google Maps is only for WebKit engines. The open web is no longer about web standards apparently -- it's about one specific rendering engine.
It goes even further. At the top of my google docs spreadsheets there is now some scary language saying I should upgrade to chrome from my unsupported (but perfectly functional) browser.
Those horrible notifications that reappear every time you refresh the page are my very own source of annoyance with google. I have a 23" display and I like zooming into all pages to see text clearer. Now, google is the only internet company that decided to show me a big red box with "Your browser's current zoom setting is not fully supported".
I guess we're forgetting how expensive it is to officially support IE. When Windows phone first launched it came with some sort of IE6/7 combo and was, of course, another nightmare from Microsoft for web developers.
If it were up to me, I wouldnt have my developers waste the effort on a browser/device that doesnt matter. However, I have not targeted the newest version of mobile IE, it is on my list, I have read that it is magnitudes better than what they originally shipped.
I agree there's no proof of retaliation and the article is going a little overboard with jumping to conclusions but why would an update to GWT cause a site to redirect user strings with "Windows Phone" in them to google.com ?
Anyway Google has come out with a statement saying that only webkit is supported on mobile for maps.
I haven't tested WP8 devices but the default browser on WP7.5 didn't support pinch gestures so google just displayed a page saying "Your device is not supported".
Google is 302 redirecting anything with a WinPhone user agent to the main page. This may be a bug rather than an intentional thing, but it's Google's bug to be sure." Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/15yx0a/after_mic...
[1] http://i.imgur.com/Hfum6.jpg
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And update here:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/4/3836510/windows-phone-8-use...
Seems this is 100% intentional from Google. What the fuck? I was completely blindsided by this, I couldn't imagine a huge company like Google doing this at this scale.