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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @09:39AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @09:39AM (#775768)

    And a credible one, instead of one that peddles DRM.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:13PM (#775948)

    I hate to stack a second anonymous coward on this. It's exactly the problem. W3C credibility is zero and they have no desire to solve the problem. I can prove that easily because they have not removed DRM from the HTML5 standard for all their recent talks.

    I am also concerned about IETF since TLS 1.3 RTT0.. So no standards bodies around willing to do the right thing.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:36PM (#775957)

      Speaking of trusting google with things.. this is probably not a good time to be worrying about market share if we think google will (and have) ruin the web. IETF has handed them the transport layer from the looks of it: https://www.zdnet.com/article/http-over-quic-to-be-renamed-http3/ [zdnet.com]