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Google Backs Down On Maps Redirect
Dupple writes "A few days ago Google blocked access to its maps on Windows Phone 8, claiming that it 'worked best' on WebKit-based browsers — effectively excluding WP8 users. This, despite Google Maps working fine on desktop versions of IE that use the same rendering engine and users being able to spoof the user agent string on their WP8 devices to gain access. Now it appears that Google has backed down and is now allowing WP8 users access."
How soon they forget.
Gotta get that location based advertising revenue.....
This isn't genuinely evil, it's just a dick move.
Google will soon be announcing Chrome's support for ActiveG plugins. This will make excluding Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer even easier. Oh, and Opera user, this will also affect you, but that pretty much goes without saying.
This whole idea that Google wants to shut device users out from their services is beyond stupid. Google wants one thing - to make money serving up ads. They want users of ALL devices looking at their maps, using their search, using their gmail, etc, etc, etc.
A few weeks ago, Google Maps started acting flaky. This was amazing because Google is supposed to be the best at web development. In any case, it was clearly a situation where they just made things needlessly complex. Like MS used to do and still does. It will be googles downfall if the continue to game the market instead of just developing innovative products. And really it will be a shame. They are competent, but if they fall to fear, and the desire for profit instead of providing end users the best product, it will not end well. I hate to say it, but Bing and the MS WIndows Phone are competitive, and they are competative because Google has just been sitting back thinking how they can screw people.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think you mean U-turn
"What Are They Gonna Do When Were All Using Freenet"
This is a perfect example of why no company should have monopolistic power.
Yeah. Except... there is that little think called Bing Maps, which does more or less what Google Maps does and is even owned by the company who's mobile browser couldn't access Google Maps.
So, no monopoly here.
Internet Explorer asks its users "Where Do You Want To Go Today?" and wrongly conclude that the maps data is fetched from Microsoft servers. If IE changed their title bar to read "We use Google Maps data to guide you accurately", I'm sure Google wouldn't object.
iPhone users recently got lost using non-Google maps, and learnt their lessons the hard way, so Google just want due credit for their maps data, that's all.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
'thing' not 'think'
Notice how all of the big wheels in the smart phone field are utterly terrified to compete on technical merit, and have to resort to Apple's "thermonuclear" lawsuit strategy, or Google's "no internet for you" strategies?
Post-PC era. Yeah, right.
Not sure rolfwind is saying Google is a monopoly. Just like Apple, Google is showing anti-competitive behaviour, that demonstrates they would do far worse if they actually did have a monopoly or significant majority.
Not that I'm in any way supporting Microsoft's browser. Those bastards held back web development for a good decade, so a little Schadenfreude is in order.
My Lumia 920 with WP8 still redirects maps.google.com to the Google homepage.
It's been covered repeatedly that Google makes more from iPhone than from Android: http://gizmodo.com/5897457/google-makes-four-times-more-money-from-ios-than-android. I don't know what the comparison will be with Windows phone, but it is a source of revenue. And some people will be required to carry a Windows phone device by their companies. Google would surely want a piece of that action.
to where its money is coming from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more-iphone-android. Way more money per iPhone user than Android user.
Yes, if you could block the Google ads and replace them with your own you'd be doing well.
The mobile version of google maps uses touch events not supported by IE10 mobile, it has nothing to do with the rendering engine!
So they will get google maps but not with the best experience.
Can we please have one discussion regarding Google without somebody chiming in with the "Don't Be Evil" thing?
No. "Don't be evil" was the founders mantra and part of their mission statement for Google.
Well, they're not following that anymore. And I think it's necessary for people to post this to remind us of Google's desire not to be another Microsoft.
That's not the issue. The issue is that Google Maps works perfectly fine on desktop IE, and mobile IE uses the same rendering engine / works the same. You would be correct if Google had blocked desktop IE too, BUT THEY DIDN'T. This was Google exercising their power to try to damage the Windows Phone experience.
I think that they are just jealous that Microsoft came up with an original mobile experience and all they could do is copy what Apple had going on. If Google didn't see Microsoft as a threat, they wouldn't be doing these antics, so I see this as validation of the Windows Phone platform.
The real reason they reversed it is that Google is scared that the EU would've used it againt them as evidence of anti-competitive practices.
and I'm a huge Google Products fan boy.
That being said, this is stupid, and 'evil' (For their use of 'evil', not "just like the Nazi's" evil).
Intentionally blocking any browser is insane. They have tools already for saying "This version of this browser is known not to work well with this product", without needing to block the product entirely. It's nothing more than Google leveraging its position to block Windows Phone 8 - which is a shitty, cheap thing to do, and something they would have bitched like hell about if MS had done it back when they were the big dog.
It's something I really wouldn't have associated with Google, so clearly I need to re-evaluate my thoughts on them. I didn't see them as a Saint - in fact I viewed all transactions as "I pay for this product with my personally identifiable information so you can sell more ads". But that MO would require them to allow as many people to use their services as possible - not blocking people in some sort of petty attack.
You don't have to be a Windows Phone user to be offended by this.
Assume you are google. You obviously test your services for compatibility on some devices and you figure out that maps is basically unusable for a specific user group, which is less than 3.5 percent of all your users. They give negative feedback since they believe they device froze or something, and are as noisy as 20% percent of the other users. Now you decide to place some sign wich says:"sorry doesnt work right now." I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
There are enough sources of free and paid for electronic maps on mobile devices. Nokia offers maps, some navigation system providers have apps, and osm also exists. Yipp. I tried it. Its very well possible to live without google maps.
The best part is that the writer of the original article demand detailed infromation from google but whenever he talks about his own (seemingly contradicting) experiences, the article contains a lot of "i am virtually sure" phrases and 'it mast have been in that way' logic.
This is a perfect example of why no company should have monopolistic power.
Yeah. Except... there is that little think called Bing Maps, which does more or less what Google Maps does and is even owned by the company who's mobile browser couldn't access Google Maps. So, no monopoly here.
And there have always been alternatives to Windows, so no monopoly there?
I don't get why anti-competitive abuse shouldn't be decried if the company is a non monopoly. Otherwise you end up with a few actors controlling the whole market and raising the bar for entry and colluding to raise prices. For a big example, see the US wireless carrier market.
This space for rent.
Not even RIM looks on MS's mobile offerings with jealousy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Google made android NOT to lock people into Android but to avoid being locked out of iOS and Windows Phone and Symbian and Blackberry. Okay, so the last three ain't a threat anymore (or in one case, ever) but we saw what Apple tried to pull, lock Google Maps out and force people to use Apple Maps. Which was an amazing success story for Apple... well... this time. But next time?
Google developed Chrome to push web browser development because they didn't want to wait for IE or Firefox to get off their lazy ass. Especially IE, they made a capable fast browser designed to deal with any futuristic Google wishes to develop and the rest of the browsers either had to catch up OR be replaced.
Google KNOWS that in order to sell petrol, you need to sell cars. Well okay, that in order to sell inkjet ink, you need to sell printers. Google Maps could never have run well enough to replace Tom Tom on IE6, so Google pushed IE6.
And Google knows that on tightly controlled devices like mobile phones were it used to be the norm that the telecoms decided what was and was not available, they could all to easily be replaced. All of their services. So they rolled their own phone just to make sure they couldn't be completely locked out. Google isn't intrested in selling browsers or mobile phones, it primary interest is making its services so widely available that all who want to use it, can use it and then see the ads, that Google serves and makes it money from.
Google has given everyone a fast car, so we will buy lots of petrol. Given everyone a printer so they can sell lots of ink. Make web services supported by ads capable of replacing dedication payed for applications, so Google can sell ad space rather then software.
In order to operate in the open market space it needs to hang up its ads, it has ended up building most of the market. Quite funny if you think about it, because ANY of the other players could have had Androids market share but none did.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Please stop living in the past.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2012/12/21/windows-phone-now-third-most-popular-platform-in-u-s/
I think that they are just jealous that Microsoft came up with an original mobile experience.
Sayyy what? How is it original? Please give examples.
And don't say "live tiles" are original either. Widgets on Android have been doing the same things for years.
I agree with Google, if basic pan/zoom did not work in Microsofts mobile browser, it would make Google Maps quite useless.
InternetExplorer is closed-source, so noone can claim that the mobile version uses the same rendering engine. Even if it was exactly the same, it clearly did not work the same since pan/zoom did not work, and last I checked (admittedly long ago) it did work on the desktop version.
Google removed the redirect when Microsoft fixed there mobile browser and pan/zoom as at least usable.
The only interesting question is why Microsoft shipped a new mobile browser without testing it with a rarely used website like Google Maps.
Windows hat upwards from 90% of the desktop market.
Google has, what, 50-70%, depending on country/region?
if anything this is Google tightening their grip on mapping. People don't complain about what they don't care about and there is no way to make money if no one uses your services.
I think Google is playing way too nice here. Just publish the number of unique Windows 8 phones that where redirected.
You're forgetting that "vendor lockin" thing with the OEM's. "If you want to sell Windows, then you can ONLY sell Windows OS's." Remember that? BECAUSE of that little bit of arm twisting, then no OEM could afford to be locked out of Windows, so they ALL agreed to those terms.
That was a very effective monopoly. Worldwide, Microsoft has owned more than 90% of all desktops for how long now? Definitely a monopoly.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Google's new motto: Only be a little bit evil.
That only shows which phones were sold in the last 12 weeks, not market share. Considering Microsoft just launched WP8 phones, and RIM's last new phone was over a year ago while the new Blackberry 10 phones will be out soon, those numbers aren't very useful for drawing any such conclusions.
Not really. That doesn't count and even if it did, you have no proof it ever happened. What google is doing is FAR FAR worse than anything Microsoft ever allegedly did. This is all a direct result of the irrational hatred linsux losers and their free software nazi friends have against Microsoft.
Windows hat upwards from 90% of the desktop market. Google has, what, 50-70%, depending on country/region?
Depending on whose numbers you use, Google has 70-80% share in US (Comscore being the lowest, with just below 70%, NetApps and other measurement services pegging it higher), 80%-90% WW, and in Europe 90+% (as high as 95+% in many markets). And that is if you are measuring searches, their share is significantly higher on revenue, because they are the only actor in the market with enough critical mass in the ad auction system
Latest US ComScore: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2232359/Google-Takes-67-Search-Engine-Market-Share One by country list: http://returnonnow.com/2012/06/search-engine-market-share-country/
Not arguing that Windows doesn't have a high marketshare (at least on traditional PCs, there was a story recently that the true market share on computing devices - including tablets and smartphones etc - was around 20%). But Google has a stronger dominance than many think. As for arguing monopoly or not, that is a different discussion, just jumping in on the numbers here.
Offtopic: Just have to post somewhere as Google doesn't seem to like getting feedback (try to find an email/feedback-form, good luck with that...).
I'm from Finland and I never really though about filter bubble before. Now visiting Japan and it's close to impossible to get any sensible results about anything. It's a real PITA, finally I had to take a proxy in order to find the stuff I'm looking for. This shit is just unbelievable. All but censorship. You guys should really try it abroad: search, youtube, maps (!!!), you name it, returns completely different results without the option to use a "default". It's not just the order of results but the results themselves; depending on your IP you get completely different sets like "no results" for very common queries. Settings & al. do nothing. The Great Firewall is kidsplay compared to this. (Yes, I know ddg & lxsearch but those are probably limited to US-bubble.)
Do no evil indeed.
just try, still not able to visit map.google.com
You're forgetting that "vendor lockin" thing with the OEM's. "If you want to sell Windows, then you can ONLY sell Windows OS's." Remember that? BECAUSE of that little bit of arm twisting, then no OEM could afford to be locked out of Windows, so they ALL agreed to those terms.
That was a very effective monopoly. Worldwide, Microsoft has owned more than 90% of all desktops for how long now? Definitely a monopoly.
I believe the only argument above was that Google couldn't be a monopoly because there exists an alternative, Bing Maps, and AC was just pointing out that this is the same for Windows. If the argument is strong-arming, using your dominant position to block competitiors, well, that is exactly what we are discussing Google doing here as well.
why do you even buy a windows phone if you are going to use gmail and gmaps?
Google just found out exactly how many people, who own Windows phones, use Google Maps.
Unequivocally the realest of the realz...
They are not a search monopoly because there are dozens of other search providers (bing, ask, yahoo, duckduckgo, yandex. aol) and you can switch to any of them at a moments notice, its just that the rest a rubbish.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
...and apps on X have been doing it for decades. Still remember xeyes in the mid-90s on my Linux box. Written in 1988...
Uh, sorry, where are the ads in Apple's Maps app? I must have missed those.
They just gave the stray users who've been using Google Maps on Windows Phone another reason to switch to Here Maps.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Android barely has a foothold in the tablet space, and a successful Windows 8 could push them into 3rd place. They fear being locked out of the ad revenue from owning the platform.
...you do realize RIM has copied the live tile look for their new OS?
http://wmpoweruser.com/rim-please-stop-flattering-windows-phone/
In the last 12 weeks, of the number of smartphones sold, 53% were Apple, 41.9% were Android, and 2.7% were Microsoft. This only accounts for the last 12 weeks. I have heard of some consolation prizes being unworthy of their title, but this one takes the cake. And the title totally misleading.
If your argument was valid, then Microsoft's lock-in of the desktop market at 90%+ was irrelevant as anyone could switch to Linux or Mac at the drop of a hat. That obviously wasn't happening as there are more factors in play than just having other options available.
The simple fact is, that the Windows phone browser worked just fine, and used the same engine as the desktop, which was not blocked. When you spoofed the user agent header, it also worked fine on the Windows Phone.
I suspect Google saw that they went to far, and backed off. Was it evil? Probably not. Dickish? Probably. Anti-competetive? Possibly since Android is the dominant OS in the market, and Windows is by far one of of the weakest competitors.
First of all, widgets are not live tiles. Widgets are interactive components, Live Tiles are passive.
Secondly, Windows Phone explicity avoided any sort of skeumophism in its design, a complete differentiator from Apple and those who have copied them.
Thirdly, not only did Windows Phone avoid skeumorphism, it embraced being a digital, mobile experience, meaning it didn't use any stale metaphors to base their user experience on -- meaning on 3D UIs or book pages that look like book pages, etc. Much of the Metro experience came out of the underappreciated ZUNE experience, which pre-dated Android.
Finally, the critics agree -- the Windows Phone experience is original and refreshing. Woz spilled some crazy love all over the Windows Phone design, practically saying that the ghost of Jobs must have been reincarnated at Microsoft.
Yes, I used xeyes.
That is not a live tile. When you clicked xeyes, it didn't launch a program. xeyes didn't tell you anything (the weather, sports scores, etc.), other than the direction the mouse pointer was relative to the xeyes.
"If you want to sell Windows, then you can ONLY sell Windows OS's."
That is where Microsoft got itself on the wrong side of the law. Giving away a product others pay for (Web browser / Netscape), isn't the nicest thing to do, but people do that every day. People used to PAY for e-mail before Hotmail and Gmail came along. Now free e-mail is standard except for corporate and people who want real support.
Yeah, but what is anti-competitive behavior? If Bob's Diner offers a free order of cheese stix with a purchase of the Meatloaf Special, that's anti-competitive behavior (since they're selling the cheese stix below cost), but I don't think we want to ban that.
The reason a simple law takes 40 pages of legalese is because you want the law to stop people who damage the overall economy, not Bob's Diner. And that's why some anti-competitive behavior is only illegal when a company has monopoly power or is acting in concert with other companies.
A warning to my fellow nerds: Google and friends are going lalaland. Get your shit out of the clouds and get ready for the storm. Out.
no there is a large difference between installing a different OS and typing a different web address into your browser.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
You do realize it's not a matter of just using another search engine. If the market dominant search engine is also one of the best, switching to something that is sub-optimal isn't going to be a good choice for many. You are suggesting it's just a matter of picking another. There's a reason Google is the #1 search engine, and highly desirable for both end users and for businesses to be listed there.
You are ignoring that facet.
Its not W3C standard.
It's a candidate recommendation, which is a lot more than can be said for any of the IE6-exclusive features.
Google will soon be announcing Chrome's support for ActiveG plugins. This will make excluding Safari, Firefox and Internet Explorer even easier.
Google offered Native Client to Mozilla; Mozilla didn't want it.
We've known for years now that the right way to handle platform capabilities on the web is to do feature detection on a case-by-case basis
Sure, feature detection is best when it works. But there are some cases where it doesn't solve everything.
JavaScript feature detection performed after the page has already loaded doesn't tell the server how much text will fit above the fold on the user agent's screen. Perhaps you want to send more detail (such as a large photo, a headline, and the first sentence of the article) on large screen browsers and less detail (such as a small photo and a headline) on browsers with much smaller screens. Just setting the extra information to display: none in the CSS isn't enough, because the carrier still bills the user by the bit for downloading the markup for the elements that end up not displayed.
There was also a case where different browsers would implement APIs related to scroll and mouse position by returning the position relative to different things (the window, or the top of the document, or something else), and simple present/absent feature detection wasn't enough to distinguish among these differences.
Finally, how should a web application gracefully degrade when feature detection discovers that an essential feature is not present? For example, in an application that uses WebGL, what should the application do if WebGL is not present?
Google and Microsoft fighting over phone map apps. Apple and Google fighting over the same. The HTML5 video codec patent conflict between Apple-and-Microsoft and everyone else. Maybe the real problem is that we have these tech giants, and they try to do everything in every area vaguely electronic. They aren't trying to just make and sell(/license) the best products any more: They have each created their own self-contained ecosystem, and are doing all they can to make sure that their ecosystem thrives while not in any way encouraging those of their competitors.
Maybe this wouldn't happen if we actually had an operating system company, and a phone company, and a maps company, and a web browser company, and a video technology company, and a company store, and so on. Sure, it would mean more of a headache to get all this tech to play nice together - but we wouldn't end up in these ridiculous situations where your phone refuses to talk to your favorite mapping service because that service is run by a competitors of the company that programmed the phone.
If google is the best search then why would you want to switch to a different one?
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
I believe that's the point the parent was making.
On the one hand, people say "damn you, Google, for abusing your search and advertising monopolies to foist other ancillary properties on users, trample on competitors, and gain marketshare."
And then, the instant one of those other ancillary properties becomes unavailable or somehow impaired on a competing platform, no matter how small the present marketshare (or actual need, given that the Platform itself already has a perfectly decent working alternative), the same people say "damn you, Google, for not using all the resources you gained through your search and advertising monopolies to ensure that every user everywhere can access all your other ancillary properties on their chosen devices."
If Google *were* to provide full support for Windows Phone devices with apps and everything else, sure it'd make Windows Phone a more fully-featured device that might help it sell over Android. But what difference does it make to Google if Android sells? Google is not in the business of selling phones. If you're using Google services on a Windows Phone device, you're still providing the data that helps Google extend the search and advertising monopolies you were apparently complaining about in the first place. So the fact that Google services are not provided as apps on Windows Phone (or the fact that the web portal isn't working or is being redirected for whatever reason valid or not) is an opportunity for other competing products to gain traction that can actually eat away at Google's marketshare. Isn't that actually what people want?
It's this bizarre "can't live with you, can't live without you" thing, and it seems remarkably petty and lacking in perspective. "Damn you, Google, for not giving us more Google so that we can better compete against Google." My head hurts...
Remember Microsoft telling the world they had no obligation to support a competitor's product?
On the surface, there are *minor* visual similarities. Having used both I'm fairly comfortable saying that RIM didn't draw inspiration from MS here. It actually is an evolution of what they had in their playbook OS - released almost 2 years ago now.
and the first sentence of the article
Use JS to measure the client area and make an Ajax request for the image once you know the size?
For one thing, it isn't just images; it's also the amount of text that you want to download and display, and that's part of the markup that the server has to finish sending before the JavaScript has a chance to make additional requests. It's also which web browser's prefixed CSS properties you want to download and use (-moz-this, -o-that, -webkit-this, -ms-that); doesn't adding more CSS after the page loads create a FOUC (flash of unstyled content)? For another, it fails if the script fails to load, whether through noscript-style policy on the client or through a transparent corporate "Internet security appliance" proxy.
Show an error message and refuse to run. The point is that it should show the message when the browser says that it can't do it
Recently, someone complained when a WebGL application wouldn't run on Chrome for Android or Safari for iOS: "I don't think these guys are very bright if they're creating new web content that doesn't support 500+ million devices out there, and putting a message asking users to ask Google and Apple to support some obscure webgl thing furthers my belief that these guys are morons."
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110
You must get educated before you are capable of judging how evil either company might be.
And, don't miss the AARD code, either:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sure, no problem.
Burning up irreplaceable resources and releasing the toxic residue into the shared atmosphere is evil.
So if you drive a petroleum-fueled car, or use petroleum to heat your home, you're evil.
It's true even though you don't want to hear it. Most of you are evil. And the most evil thing you do is not admitting it. If you admitted it you could start doing something about it.
> Windows Phone explicity avoided any sort of skeumophism in its design
Bollocks. I see at least 4 skeumorphic icons in the screenshot here:
http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Windows-Phone-Summit-2012-slashgear_s-Photos.jpg
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
IE 10 has Do Not Track enabled by default, Google don't want do not track, but simultaneously don't want to look like they're violating it, so they blocked IE 10 on phones, not a shocker.
If they backed off, they weren't being evil. They were just being a dick.
Fool me once, shame on you... I bought a Windows Phone 7 device last April and have been nothing but happy with the OS itself. However, I've been nothing but pissed off and mad at the decisions Microsoft has made about it. They shouldn't have let manufacturers make these nice, expensive "flagship" devices three months before Microsoft announce no further updates would be made. Or the elusive 7.8 update that's been full of questions and ambiguity. Now, we don't even get the crappy web based Google Maps website access because we didn't get IE 10.
wtf are you talking about? The design of an icon referring to what it does is much different than designing something to be used the way the actual physical THING works.
That's nice.
Windows Phone 7 was unveiled to the world at Mobile World Congress in February of 2010, which would be almost a year before Blackberry released their product. Blackberry had plenty of time to pick it over before releasing their product.
Yes, I used xeyes.
That is not a live tile. When you clicked xeyes, it didn't launch a program. xeyes didn't tell you anything (the weather, sports scores, etc.), other than the direction the mouse pointer was relative to the xeyes.
Windowmaker dockapps did this well over a decade ago.
If the market dominant search engine is also one of the best, switching to something that is sub-optimal isn't going to be a good choice for many.
I suppose they should've thought of that before buying a Windows device then, hmm?
You know, Microsoft, the company which has been doing this with every single product they've made, ever.
(Apple has become very good about mimicking Microsoft in this regard in recent years, I might add.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Then the FTC case should be re-opened. MAPS has a monopoly on web mapping by being free.
That means Google are open to anti-trust issues. I know Microsoft have done worse (and perhaps are doing worse with Skype on Android), however that doesn't make it right.
How on earth you people think that this was some evil ploy is beyond me. You really think the google maps team is getting secret orders from the upper management to cause an internet outrage (as would be the manifestly obvious effect to anyone who has met the internet)? The mobile code probably had a bug that was causing annoying server side issues for the google maps team, so they redirected mobile IE for a few days.
So, they basically try to attack their competition by pulling a major service from it and making it look bad and then they hand out a free maps app to Apple, which was on the verge of total user rage meltdown over Apple's maps application. Yeah, that makes sense.
Way to miss the point. Live Tiles and Active Frames are completely different -- they're only superficially similar. (They only look like they could be the same thing if you've only seen a couple screenshots.)
It's pretty obvious that active frames are an evolution (more of an adaptation for smaller screens) of what we've already seen on the PlayBook, which was definitely not inspired by Windows Phone. (WebOS, no question. But from what we've seen of BB10 so far, they're long past that stage.)
But go ahead and stick your head in the sand. It's better than where I suspect you've been keeping it...
Required reading for internet skeptics
I'm talking about the skeumorphic icons in the MS interface which apparently you're too thick to recognise.
It always gives me pleasure to see people who gush with positive things to say about Microsoft products demonstrate how interminably dumb they are.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
This is the funny part. MS wants everyone to use its services so bad that it's ranting and screaming about Google's "monopoly." However when Google actually stops users from using a Google service (thus forcing users to use MS's offerings) they call foul. Come on Mr. Balmer. Make up your mind!
I want this account deleted.
The difference is that it's damn hard to buy a PC and not pay the Windows Tax. I can change my search provider having not payed anything. If I buy a PC, in all likeliness, I've already payed the Windows Tax. Windows is in the pace it is simply because Microsoft strong armed OEMs into ONLY shipping with Windows. It wasn't consumers choosing. It was consumers not having a choice. They got Windows installed whether they wanted it or not. And since installing ANY OS of any kind is well beyond the skill set of most people switching is mostly out of the question. People are mostly going use the OS that's preinstalled simply because its all they can do.
Notice that MS isn't very successful in markets they can't strong arm. They have to force their products on to users or they're out like Pee Wee Herman's dick in a theater.
Not sure how your post is relevant to the discussion at all. It sounds like a stock rant against the windows OS tax. The discussion is about Google blocking the IE browser on a Windows phone which apparently works just fine, regardless of Google's claim that it doesn't.
What a great waste of time by Google doing it in the first place, slasdot reporting it and me commenting on it.
Shenanigans!!
there is no WAY the Samsung Galaxy S III got beat by iPHONe!
I demand a recount.
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First of all, widgets are not live tiles. Widgets are interactive components, Live Tiles are passive.
So widgets such as facebook feed, twitter feed, email notification counts, flickr feeds to name a few are not live updated via push notifications? I consider them both live and interactive components.
Weather widgets aren't updated via push notifications unless it involves an alert of some sort but they are as live as they can be. I'm sure the weather tiles on the W8 phone work the same way.