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posted by chromas on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:08AM   Printer-friendly
from the yes dept.

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


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:48AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:48AM (#775761)

    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.

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  • (Score: 4, Redundant) by crafoo on Tuesday December 18 2018, @01:34PM

    by crafoo (6639) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @01:34PM (#775811)

    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)

    by Whoever (4524) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @04:29PM (#775891) Journal

    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

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @08:42PM (#776031)

      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)

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @09:47PM (#776063)

      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

        by Whoever (4524) on Friday December 21 2018, @02:56AM (#777071) Journal

        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

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:02PM (#775942) Journal

    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.