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Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to
Back in 2009, Google introduced SPDY, a proprietary replacement for HTTP that addressed what Google saw as certain performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1. Google wasn't exactly wrong in its assessments, but SPDY was something of a unilateral act, with Google responsible for the design and functionality. SPDY was adopted by other browsers and Web servers over the next few years, and Google's protocol became widespread.
[...] The same story is repeating with HTTP/3. In 2012, Google announced a new experimental protocol, QUIC, intended again to address performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Google deployed QUIC, and Chrome would use QUIC when communicating with Google properties. Again, QUIC became the basis for IETF's HTTP development, and HTTP/3 uses a derivative of QUIC that's modified from and incompatible with Google's initial work.
It's not just HTTP that Google has repeatedly worked to replace. Google AMP ("Accelerated Mobile Pages") is a cut-down HTML combined with Google-supplied JavaScript designed to make mobile Web content load faster. This year, Google said that it would try to build AMP with Web standards and introduced a new governance model that gave the project much wider industry oversight.
A person claiming to be a former Microsoft Edge developer has written about a tactic Google supposedly used to harm the competing browser's performance:
A person claiming to be a former Edge developer has today described one such action. For no obvious reason, Google changed YouTube to add a hidden, empty HTML element that overlaid each video. This element disabled Edge's fastest, most efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. It hurt Edge's battery-life performance and took it below Chrome's. The change didn't improve Chrome's performance and didn't appear to serve any real purpose; it just hurt Edge, allowing Google to claim that Chrome's battery life was actually superior to Edge's. Microsoft asked Google if the company could remove the element, to no avail.
The latest version of Edge addresses the YouTube issue and reinstated Edge's performance. But when the company talks of having to do extra work to ensure EdgeHTML is compatible with the Web, this is the kind of thing that Microsoft has been forced to do.
See also: Ex Edge developer blames Google tricks in part for move to Chromium
Related: HTTP/2 on its Way In, SPDY on its Way Out
Google Touts QUIC Protocol
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
The Next Version of HTTP Won't be Using TCP
HTTP/3 Explained: A Work in Progress
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:34AM (13 children)
Google has become so big and unavoidable, it's more a do-as-I-say-or-else kind of a strategy.
Access to most of the internet depends on talking to Google servers, and people will use whatever browser "just works". If browser makers don't implement SPDY, they'll lose market share. So they obey even if they don't like it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:48AM (6 children)
Yeah, in that and many other ways, Google is the new Microsoft.
Google pumps out crap software they abandon regularly, just like Microsoft. It's the arrogance of being a giant, rich company with a captive audience.
(Score: 4, Redundant) by crafoo on Tuesday December 18 2018, @01:34PM
I'd argue that Google is bad in every way that Microsoft was (is), but additionally they are actively fighting free speech (a basic human right) and pushing hard on regressive social and political agendas. They are far more evil.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Tuesday December 18 2018, @04:29PM (3 children)
While I don't want to dispute your general premise, I think this case is slightly different. In this case:
1. Microsoft puts optimizations into its browser that are very specifically targeted to Youtube.
2. Google changes Youtube in a manner that is valid HTML, but breaks Microsoft's optimization.
In other words, Microsoft tried to cheat on browser performance and Google broke the cheat.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:42PM
It's a strange world we live in where Microsoft tries to cheat and finds it does not have market power to succeed anymore.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday December 18 2018, @09:47PM (1 child)
I don't think Microsoft was trying to cheat. They were just trying to reach max performance. That's not cheating, there is nothing in web standards that says, "Browsers may not use GPU acceleration on pages with the following elements."
Microsoft are not the heroes of the story, they're still Microsoft. But Google is the bigger villain here.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday December 21 2018, @02:56AM
They tried to optimize the browser in ways that only work in specific, limited circumstances. Where have we heard of that recently? I know: Dieselgate.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:02PM
Often the abandoning of a project *is* part of the EEE strategy. They use open source in order to get people to adopt their technology, but they can't do the extend/extinguish if the code is kept open source. So they build the product, get people using it, then announce that it's being killed to be replaced by something similar but marginally "better". And the new thing is no longer open source.
It's more of an embrace, extinguish, extend perhaps...embrace a new market with open source tools, extinguish those tools, and extend the newly created market with a bunch of proprietary lock-in devices.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @01:10PM (3 children)
Nice story, but it's simply not true; google still supports good old HTTP 1.x, same as always. Everyone adopted SPDY because it was faster, not because it was required for any content, google or otherwise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @03:20PM (2 children)
Really? I don't think I've ever seen requests use it, nor seen configuration options in web servers for it.
It always seemed to be one of a hundred other google brain farts that they eventually abandon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @04:21PM
"Everyone" meaning web browsers, since those are the ones that google supposedly forced into using it.
Most non-google sites never adopted SPDY (eithr not caring at all, or waiting for HTTP 2.0 instead), and google abandoned it once HTTP 2.0 was finalized.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:11PM
the op meant http2 when they said spdy, obviously...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday December 18 2018, @04:21PM
I've been a Firefox user since near it's beginning. I'm not going to change now. I had a brief dalliance with Chrome when it was still pretty new, but ended up reverting to Firefox. Firefox is a true open source project and don't have the same monetary incentives that Microsoft and Google have/had. Google treats you like a product, whereas Firefox treats you like a person.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 18 2018, @05:57PM
Not sure about the network protocol stuff, but Google's EEE has been discussed a number of times as it relates to Android, and it seems pretty accurate there.
They release it open source, with a bunch of open source apps. Then they start slowly replacing all the open source apps with their own closed-source variants. And now that they've got most Android users and manufacturers dependent on those free apps, they've started their plans to kill off Android entirely. This is one reason why, if you buy a phone from someone like Samsung, it's preloaded with all kinds of duplicate garbage. Samsung doesn't want to risk being a hostage to Google, so when Google started replacing the open source apps, Samsung started making their own replacements too. (I believe other companies have done the same, but Samsung is the one I'm most familiar with.)