Microsoft Picks Another Web Standards Fight

mikejuk writes "WebRTC is a way to allow browsers to get in touch with one another using audio or video data without the help of a server. Google has been something of a pioneer in this area, and submitted a suggested technology for the standard. Mozilla has gone along with it, making it all look good. Microsoft, on the other hand, just seemed to be standing on the sidelines, watching what was happening. However, Microsoft now has a product that needs something like WebRTC; namely, Skype. It has been working on a web-based version of Skype and this has focused the collective mind on the problems of browser-to-browser communication. It now agrees that a standard is needed, just not the one Google and Mozilla are behind. Microsoft has submitted its own proposals for CU-RTC-Web or Customizable, Ubiquitous Real Time Communication over the Web, to the W3C. It may well be that Microsoft's alternative has features that make it superior, but a single standard is preferable to a better non-standard. Given Microsoft's need to make Skype work in the browser, it seems likely that, should its proposal not be accepted as the standard, it will press on regardless, thus splitting the development environment. Both Google and Mozilla have already put a lot of work into WebRTC, and there are partial implementations in Firefox, Chrome and Opera."

Comments

Some things never change....

[rts008]

Color me surprised. /sarcasm

Re:Some things never change....

[MightyMartian]

But this isn't 1998 any more. It's not even 2005. Microsoft no longer has the web dominance to force standards on anyone. If it goes it alone, it risks everyone else saying "Fuck you", and if Chrome and Safari won't support whatever Microsoft cooks up, it has at least a half way chance of crapping out.

Yes, Microsoft can still pull shit with document standards, but that's because it still has a massive advantage as far as office applications go, but the days of 90%+ Internet Explorer on the Internet are gone, and gone for good.

Re:Some things never change....

[VortexCortex]

What matters is the product, which in this case is a web-based implementation of voice/video chat. Out of the two proposed standards, the one that can actually be used to implement the product that users want, will win.

Then by your logic, MS will use Skype to win this standard war... Which I agree is probably the case, and also why I said "Fuck you" to building anything on top of browsers a long time ago. Native applications are where it's at. This way, when MS wins, and FF can't work around some patent BS, then I can still just keep using classic NAT traversal like STUN and TURN, and ignore all this bullshit.

What we need is an open platform to develop applications on -- A shitty document display mark up language and a horrid scripting language are what we have to work with. It's really a shame that Java dropped the ball.

It takes me OVER SIX TIMES AS LONG to write a HTML5 web app than to make the same app as a native program on Android (ARM), x86 / x64 windows, iOS, OSX, Linux (and BSD). Cross platform tool-chains exist -- The web only wishes it were one. Long Live The Internet, fuck the web.

Here's a thought

[WizADSL]

Why not go with the best overall standard regardless of who introduced it and whether or not it was the first. Now this doesn't mean I'm for or against either standard, it just seems that the assumption is that it should be ignored because it wasn't first and because Microsoft introduced it.

Re:Here's a thought

[symbolset]

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. - Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Microsoft wields standards like an axe to lay low their foes. They are the natural enemy of interoperability - a company that built its business on being incompatible with everything they want to dominate, one corner at a time. Here, for example, is them talking about leveraging standards to dominate Novell, from the documents disclosed in Comes v. Microsoft

Microsoft got their ExFAT format accepted as a standard volume format for SD and its derivatives, and now use it to extort broad patent portfolio licensing from Android manufacturers because if it supports SDHC or uSDHC with a reasonable media size, the Android device must support ExFAT or it won't be compatible with cameras and other devices that use it. That's a clever strategy for Microsoft, but not a smart one for people who made the format standard because it ultimately makes the standard a dead end.

People who just want to move pictures from the camera to the tablet on the card must pay more now for the tablet, or buy the Microsoft supported tablet and we know what those are like. Ultimately it's destructive to the standard and costly to consumers as uSDHC BOM costs $0.07 to implement and the patent portfolio license demanded is more like $15-25 - we can't even be sure exactly what the price is as they won't even negotiate a license except under NDA. Naturally this leads to innovative devices like the Nexus 7 omitting external storage support entirely and holds back progress in the field. It encourages wifi-attached cameras to avoid the problem. The standard becomes a trap that allows one participant in the market to control its direction. Obviously this is not the purpose of standards.

Post the OOXML debacle this is well understood, and nobody who wants their standard taken seriously would align with Microsoft. The ISO may take a decade to repair the damage from that one where resources deployed to put over the standard involved not just dirty dealing, but deploying such heavy hitters as heads of state.

Microsoft is no longer the 800lb gorilla of IT, casting the long shadow they once did. Even Apple swings more weight than them now. Android phones moved more units and profits than their Windows PC OEMs did last quarter. They don't get to make the rules any more. For the rest of us that's a good thing because they really suck at it. It's like playing Calvinball with Calvin, or any game with a six-year-old: rule 1 is they always get to win.

/Why yes, I did hide this comment down low in the thread on purpose.

That summary is awful

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even know how standards work? They don't just get pulled out someones ass and then bam everyone implements it.
Everyone makes suggestions and they implement some ideas and see what needs to be done to improve on it, and this loops until it is completed.

Neither Google or Microsoft have created a standard, they have created a possible standard. A proposal. Nothing more.
Saying non-standard is completely ignorant to the situation at hand.

There is nothing stating that the entire thing is just going to fall apart in a huge mess.
They likely follow very similar methods that can be implemented in more-or-less the same way.
In fact, both could be combined to create a better standard overall. (and I am sure there was a very good feature in Microsofts implementation that was completely missing from the Google proposal)
Remember, Microsoft also gave you XMLHTTPRequest.
They aren't completely useless. Ignoring them because they slowed down the evolution of the web for a decade is still awful and unfair, regardless of how much we hate them for it. Given they actually put in some effort to IE10 this time, and "Metro", they might actually give a damn about the web now.

Re:That summary is awful

[Nerdfest]

Google also has an interest in the web being open. If everything moves into walled gardens (Facebook, smartphone apps, etc) it loses advertising revenue. Its interests align with those of us who don't want to be stuck in walled gardens.