* "he left out the part where Google recently sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it remove the YouTube app from its Windows Phones" has nothing to do with interoperating, but rather Microsoft not showing ads (among other infractions).
Larry gave an impressive non-answer to the relatively basic question ("Hey, any chance web technologies will replace Java on Android?"), and went off on quite the interesting tangent about just about everything.
I can only assume he's been wanting to say these things for a while, and jumped on basically the first open ended question he got. I bet the Google PR team was freaking out a bit.
You realize that if ads are required by the TOS, but you don't have the ability to include ads, that it doesn't mean it's just okay to ignore the TOS and distribute the app anyway?
Whether it's fair or not for Google to not provide a way to include ads is a different argument entirely. It sounds like it's just not even technically legal for MS to distribute their YouTube app in its current state.
>You realize that if ads are required by the TOS, but you don't have the ability to include ads, that it doesn't mean it's just okay to ignore the TOS and distribute the app anyway?
Microsoft developers didn't have to read and accept the TOS to access Youtube videos. Perhaps they're trying the legal precedent of the equivalent of 'clean room reverse engineering".
Is it legal for Mozilla to distribute Adblock on their site which is a program that disables Youtube and Google ads and hurts content creators?
>It sounds like it's just not even technically legal for MS to distribute their YouTube app in its current state.
So what? Google can sue them for billions and win and stop all Windows Phone users from easy access to YouTube videos despite their stated mission of "Organize the world's information and make it accessible to everyone".
Not sure why you're so worried about Microsoft's finances, they have 75 billion in the bank and some pretty good lawyers. No wonder they snuck in a "download video" button too. The WP Youtube app is the best Youtube app on mobile platforms because of that.
Nothing you said is actually a justification for MS's actions.
> Is it legal for Mozilla to distribute Adblock on their site which is a program that disables Youtube and Google ads and hurts content creators?
Yes. This is because AdBlock is a service that modifies the way your own browser - your property - works. It is not in itself a service that pulls YouTube content from YouTube.
For this same reason, it is available even in the Chrome Web Store itself.
I don't understand how you can say "so what" to pointing out that one of these companies is acting illegally, and expect to be taken seriously.
Also I think you meant to say "Google" in your last sentence instead of "Microsoft"? I can't tell and it doesn't seem to make sense otherwise.
The public YouTube API documented at https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/ appears to have all the functionality required to implement a TOS-compliant client. In particular, it has support for fetching the HTML required to embed a video player that obeys uploader settings for advertisement and device restriction.
Microsoft's original request is for Google to create a new API which would allow querying of richer metadata about videos. It's not apparent why this new API is required to write a TOS-compliant YouTube client.
To my knowledge the YouTube API doesn't ban users for excessive use of the API, it just throttles them temporarily.
The exact throttling values are not posted publicly, but there are multiple third-party apps using the YouTube APIs successfully, so I expect the limits are high enough for a standard client to work without problems.
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If Microsoft wrote a TOS-compliant YouTube app and put it in their app store, but it was written in a way that bumped up against the quota limits, I'm sure they and Google could work out some way to grant them more quota.
>If Microsoft wrote a TOS-compliant YouTube app and put it in their app store, but it was written in a way that bumped up against the quota limits, I'm sure they and Google could work out some way to grant them more quota.
MS has been requesting API access since three years, so I think there was no amicable resolution and MS was forced to do this.
From their statement:
"We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs," says a Microsoft spokesperson.
1) Requesting Google design, implement, and publish a set of new APIs specifically to support a particular low-population platform owned by a self-vowed enemy of the technology stack Google is built on.
2) Requesting Google increment a few numbers in a database somewhere.
Jesus, that was some serious word-twisting. It was an impromptu response and IMO they should be weighed with the spirit more than the words in mind.
Given the benefit of doubt, I can totally see where Larry was coming from. In fact it seemed bold and even slightly refreshing to hear him convey his thoughts without the usual restrictions. Industry wide conversations start these ways and examination of a problem is crucial before we can attempt to solve it.
This is one of the most breathtaking biased pieces I've seen in a very long time. This guy really, really doesn't like Google. Or maybe just Larry Page.
Edit:
By the same writer:
In the same vein as this "story", a bizarre caption in a "story" covering Eric Schmidt's Guardian op-ed suggesting civilian drones are a bad idea:
"Google CEO Eric Schmidt knows what's best for us."
I glanced through the first 10 pages of his other stories on Slate. They aren't all rabidly anti-Google. Though he does seem to hold the founders of Google in special disdain for some reason.
Now I'm more inclined to think this is simple link-baiting, not bias. He'll say anything for the clicks. Which seems like a common trend on Slate these days. I remember the days when Slate had some really excellent original journalism.
"To recap, Page criticized Microsoft for treating Google as a rival, blasted Oracle for caring too much about money, and then whined about everyone being so negative. Heck, if it weren’t for those other companies standing in the way, Google would have probably already solved world hunger."
I mean, pretty much this (assuming the above was facetious). The Youtube thing really made me lose a lot of hope in Google as a company. Even though, I feel that we've made great strides in the past 10 years, I can't help but be reminded that:
1) I have people on my Facebook that I can't add to my phone without some ridiculous hacks (that essentially scrape FB, breaking the TOS) - thanks Facebook
2) I can't use GMail in the vanilla mail app on my touchscreen W8 laptop - thanks Google
3) I can't have a Metro Chrome app - thanks Google
4) My sister can't have almost anything (native) Google-related on her ARM-based W8RT tablet - thanks Microsoft
5) I can't have a distro-agnostic framework that "just works" for downloading/updating/installing/uninstalling Linux packages - thanks FOSS infighting cliques
6) I don't have full control over my Android/Apple phone, over my Android/Apple/Windows tablet, (and soon over my Google glass) unless I root said devices
This is simply a consumer-space extension of the legal battles that these companies are so fond of (see Samsung vs. Apple). The sad part is, it's probably going to get worse before it gets better. Oh, well.. c'est la vie.
2 - Gmail supports SMTP and IMAP, so any mail client should work. The top hit for [windows 8 gmail] is http://www.redmondpie.com/how-to-configure-mail-in-windows-8... , which indicates that the Windows 8 mail app has an icon specifically for configuring Gmail accounts.
From a security and reliability perspective, having root enabled by default is a terrible idea. The arms race between OS vendors and malware developers means that defaulting root to disabled is both desirable and inevitable.
Only root can install malware into the kernel or BIOS. Only root can pull keys and passwords out of /dev/mem. Only root can damage an installation beyond the ability to factory reset.
I eagerly await the day when every major OS will require jumping over some basic hurdle (e.g. rebooting into single-user mode and running /sbin/root-me-harder) before enabling root access, because that will eliminate entire categories of security risks from consumer-oriented computing.
I don't understand your question. Just so it's clear, I consider smartphones and tablets to be computers also, and I hope that one day all computers (desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, watches, goggles, Borg implants) come with root-equivalent access disabled by default.
3 - There is no native Metro Chrome app (talking x86 or x86-64 here, I address RT in my subsequent point), so I'm not sure what you're talking about. The current Metro implementation is NOT a true Metro implementation (it's just the desktop app stuck in a metro window -- no gestures, no larger fonts, etc, etc).
2 - According to that article, Microsoft disabled access to EAS even for Google accounts that still supported it, and has not yet added support for the standardized contact/calendar protocols supported by Google Apps. That is not the same thing as "can't use GMail in the vanilla mail app on my touchscreen W8 laptop". In particular, unless the mail app somehow dropped support for SMTP/IMAP, then it will support Gmail perfectly just like any other desktop client.
3 - So your complaint is that the Metro version of Chrome does not support some Metro features? Again, that is absolutely not the same as "can't have a Metro Chrome app".
2 - I guess my quip should have said "thanks Microsoft" in retrospect. (Although even if I wanted to run GMail natively, there's no Windows store app made by Google when there's one made by Yahoo, for example; I would ask why)..
3 - Sorry, but I don't buy this. A desktop app copy-pasted onto a Metro frame (I have no idea what the containers are called so excuse my ignorance) is NOT a Metro app (like the one Mozilla is working on, for example: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Metro).
Considering how big of a lie Google's "Don't do evil" motto has become, are we supposed to believe that Page really wants to solve problems and make progress by cooperating with other companies?
You have to have consumed quite a bit of the "Goolaid" to be able to take his ramblings seriously.
Considering how big of a lie Google's "Don't do evil" motto
Genuinely curious here, what are the things that google has done that people think are evil? Maybe as a follow-up, what corporations do you think make a greater positive impact than google?
I'm sorry if this comes across as rude, but... did you read the god damn article? Google actively helped scammers sell fake pharmaceuticals. How is that not the definition of evil?
I guess I don't see the distinction you are trying to make. Google representatives helped Whitetaker sell illegal, often fake drugs, often times giving him feedback on how he could circumvent the company's own policies and various detection algorithms. In other words, Google acted in an evil manner.
> I guess I don't see the distinction you are trying to make.
I already told you: "I'm hesitant to call anything evil just for being caught in the cross-hairs of the drug laws in the US." If you think that violating the drugs laws (or helping someone to do so) in the US is evil, then we have a fundamental disagreement.
From my reading of the article, the sting wasn't to find out if Google was knowingly helping scams---just that they were knowingly helping someone sell illegal drugs.
The problem is not that the drugs were illegal. The problem was that they were fake. That is evil. Furthermore, scamming people is evil as well, since it involves taking advantage of them.
Yes, it was. The entire article is about setting up a sting to catch Google helping people sell illicit drugs.
> The problem was that they were fake.
I'm running out of ways to explain this to you: the sting showed no evidence that Google knew that the drugs were fake---only that they knew that they were trying to sell illegal drugs.
There are two competing ideas going on here:
1) Google knowingly facilitated the sale of illegal drugs.
2) Google knowingly facilitated scammers.
From what I could tell, the article demonstrated (1) but not (2). I don't think (1) is evil. I do think (2) is evil. So if you disagree with my interpretation of the article, at least you can be satisfied that we agree on something.
There is nothing wrong with Google trying to make money. Making money is great. It's the utterly insufferable "we're not just making money, we're changing the world!" rationalization that accompanies it. Fact is that Google is an advertising company (95% of its revenues come from ads), selling eyeballs to companies peddling cheap Chinese crap. They're incredibly good at it. They should just embrace that and stop pretending they're something else.
I've been reading responses on this site for the past day, and I think some of you are a little insane. You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.?
We should all understand that google doesn't deserve relentless praise, but some of these counterpoints are more baseless and distasteful.
>>You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.?
Did MapQuest change the world?
Did AltaVista or Yahoo!?
What about the thousand translation sites that exited before Google?
I'll tell you who is changing the world. SpaceX. It is led by a man who started it despite all odds. A man whose sole drive is to get humanity to Mars so that if something happens to Earth, it doesn't wipe out our entire species. A man who believes he has a mission, and believes in that mission so strongly that he is willing to invest every last penny of his personal fortune in it, and work himself to death to see it accomplished.
THAT is changing the world. Not being able to look at pictures of a street from your computer or find the translation of a spoken phrase accurately or make payments via your email - all the while being served shitty, mostly useless ads.
I'm sorry, I love Google and the convenience it provides, but at the end of the day, it is just an advertising company. And you cannot change the world with advertising.
It is pieces of the puzzle really. You need machine learning, computer vision, robotics and ultimately AI plus some kind of self-assembling machines to really make it work.
We don't have the tech yet. But it is getting there. Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult. You pretty much need your phone to be aware of the environment; if you want to get good results that is. So projects like Siri, Google Now or Glass are actually important and potentially can be crucial and 'world changing'.
>>Being able to find the translation of a spoken phrase, or answer a spoken question accurately is actually difficult.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that every world-changing problem is difficult to solve, but not every difficult problem is world-changing when solved. I have no doubt that Google engineers overcame countless challenges that would fry the brains of most people here. Does that mean the solutions they produced changed the world? No. Rather, they ended up as products and features in Google's massive advertising machine.
You mentioned other projects. Let's take Google Glass. It is quite promising. But let's face it: at the end of the day, it will be yet another means of showing people ads. They will be more accurate ads perhaps, since Google will know exactly where you are and what you are looking at - but they will still be ads.
I actually saw a demo of live conversation translation between two speakers (Chinese and English) using cell phones, at a Microsoft tech fest a few (2?) years ago. Something from MSR, obviously not on the market yet, so not quite there, but there are lots of people trying to bring the star trek universal translators to life :)
Utter nonsense. Technologies compliment each other. You cannot space launching vehicles without being able to stand on the shoulder of giants. Maps, email, translations are all required for humans to lead good day to day lives. Unrelated but I care two hoots about spaceX and would prefer humanity to end on earth. Heck, they should invest in improving the lives of people living on earth right fucking now like Gates is.
You don't think Google Maps changed the world? Translate, search, etc.?
Those examples "changed the world" in the same way the iPod and iPhone changed the world: extremely elegant implementations of products and ideas that had been out there already.
Sometimes getting the details right -- turning a curiosity for the rich into a tool for the masses -- really is a key advance worthy of its own recognition.
Altavista was hardly a curiosity--it had 13 million queries a day at its peak. In any case, nobody is denying Google recognition for building a damn good search engine/advertising platform.
And there was something like a half million automobiles sold before the model T.
In any case, my point wasn't that the analogy is particularly apt in this specific case. It was that extending "what has been done" to "what works for people", in general, is a noteworthy accomplishment in and of itself.
So while one can certainly still argue that Google hadn't 'changed the world', they ought not simply point to the prior existence of alternatives. They would also need to show that it didn't unleash untapped demand/usage.
And the snarky, though not entirely-irrelevant, reply to altavista's peak usage is: 13 million queries? Sounds a million people had to search about a dozen times each to get a decent hit.
Making a good product people like to use is not "changing the world." Not to mention that MapQuest, Babelfish, and Altavista were all reasonably good and useful before the Google counterparts existed.
What a crock of shit. Have you heard of MapQuest, Bing Maps, or Yahoo! Maps? How about AltaVista or Yahoo! Search? BabelFish ring a bell? If Google changed the world through all their ad-infested crap, it certainly was late to do so.
Er. There was a certain scalability demo of Microsoft SQL server, of all things. Some time back in 1997 or 1998 it was... Terraserver was the name. Just a tidy bit before google.
As much as I philosophically agree, and want to agree with much of the sentiment being evoked here ("solve problems", "cooperation", "progress", etc.), I can't help but shake the feeling there's a shark out there currently being jumped by a vibram-sporting surfer.
I want to produce food for myself and my community on my property, and build structures that make efficient use of space for occupancy, and these things are extremely illegal.
Larry Page seems to be in denial that Google is different from Microsoft or Oracle. For the most part Google doesn't care about collaboration or innovation. What they care about is increasing their mass, by offering an ever increasing number of products & services, in order to attract more eyeballs to view ads.
What value is Google creating by making another subscription music service with a similar catalog size at the same price as existing companies?
What radical innovation has Google+ Hangouts incorporated that doesn't exist with Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp & Skype?
Why does the Chromebook Pixel look so much like a boxy Macbook Pro?
Just like Microsoft, they aren't trendsetters, they follow and copy what others are doing and use their brand recognition in order to gain market share.
Larry says "you can't focus on zero-sum games", but that is exactly what Google is doing. Maybe not for a specific industry ( Messaging, Music, etc ), but they are interested in winning the zero-sum game of people's attention.
If Google can spread itself across as many industries as possible, not necessary being the market leader of a specific industry, and take slices of people's attention here and there, they'll win the attention game.
Google embraces collaboration/standardization because it means a lower barrier of entry into another industry for them.
Well, if Google decides to found a new country akin to Bioshock's Rapture, I don't think they'll lack for volunteer citizens...
But even for Google, founding a country would be enormously difficult. So even if Page genuinely wanted to, it won't happen this decade. Whether it should is a different issue.
From Google's About page:
"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Last time when Google was intentionally blocking Google maps and then deprecated ActiveSync on Windows Phone someone suggested Google should updated it to the following:(which seems quite true given how much of the world's crowdsourced video content is on YouTube):
"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, except on Windows Phone".
* "he left out the part where Google recently sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it remove the YouTube app from its Windows Phones" has nothing to do with interoperating, but rather Microsoft not showing ads (among other infractions).
* "Mozilla guy" is Dan Buchner (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dandonkulous), who's working with Google on web components. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2cpEUw1...
Larry gave an impressive non-answer to the relatively basic question ("Hey, any chance web technologies will replace Java on Android?"), and went off on quite the interesting tangent about just about everything.
I can only assume he's been wanting to say these things for a while, and jumped on basically the first open ended question he got. I bet the Google PR team was freaking out a bit.