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Google Blocks YouTube App On Windows Phone (Again)
dhavleak writes "From Gizmodo: Earlier today, the Microsoft-built YouTube app for Windows Phone was unceremoniously disabled by Google. These kind of little inter-corporate kerfuffles happen from time to time, and usually resolve themselves without screwing too many users. But boy, Microsoft didn't take it quietly."
Hoo
Help stamp out iliturcy.
These kind of little inter-corporate kerfuffles happen from time to time.
Hmm. I'm not sure it's interoperable issue when it come to MS, it's always furthering their agenda. In this case, removing ads and preventing Google from monetizing the content it delivers.
Fuck right off MS. You claim to grow your XBox business via games and subscription fees, but your EULA says I can't block the ads on the homepage with my router without being in breech of your EULA. Oh, but you're fine with blocking Google's ads and then playing the martyr when they ban your app just like you banned my xbox.
"Don't be evil" doesn't extend to picking up that blood-soaked hitchhiker with a chainsaw. That's covered by the "don't be stupid" corrolary.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Google claims that one problem with our new app is that it doesn’t always serve ads based on conditions imposed by content creators."
Nothing more needed to be said. The rest of the article is manipulation.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Both the iOS and Android apps are written by Google.
That's not true. There are scores of YouTube playing apps on the iOS app store. You can download an IOS YouTube app written by Google, but it's not the only one and I don't think ships by default on the device anymore.
I presume that MS reserves the right for first-party apps on Windows Phone to use private APIs to implement features no other app can have. Apple certainly does this.
Apple generally does NOT do this. Not because they are a bunch of saints but because they are not a bunch of damn amateur coders.
Apple doesn't use private API's for their own software for the same reason they don't want other app developers to - because using private APIs means breakage at some point down the line, or because you want to do an API change but some moron on Word (or Pages) made use of a private API and now you have to coordinate with them as to when you can change the API. API interfaces are there for a reason... they protect both sides.
Of course internal Apple products have earlier access to API updates than everyone else (and probably more say as to what API changes need to be made), but there has been no indication that most Apple software that ships on iOS is doing anything you couldn't do yourself. Apple even demonstrates at WWDC how to make apps similar to ones they are shipping.
There are sort of exceptions to the rule in that at times there are whole private frameworks they use to implement some feature (like carrousels) or Settings.app which has to manipulate all kinds of things other applications are not allowed to touch. But by and large any Apple iOS application could be written from scratch if you had a mind to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I actually own a Windows Phone too. It's an HTC HD7 my wife bought to spite me (ah, domestic bliss). She did it right - this was a WP "hero" phone, the benchmark of that day. She used it for three weeks thinking to school me but after a few rounds of "how do I do that cool thing you do on your Galaxy Phone" and the reply "your phone doesn't have that app" she gave up. It's in a drawer somewhere. I haven't seen it in a year. She uses a feature phone now, and is thinking about the Moto X - a real wood skin and awesome life would be just the thing to show up my GS3 with the ultrathick 3rd party extended life battery. She bought the teens iPhones to spite me quite more successfully. Our teens love their iPhones and I don't blame them - they're great gear. iThings are not my thing, but you have to let kids find their own religion.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Really so what you're saying is that if Google builds the apps and distributes them, that's Okay but if Microsoft or any third party ISV builds an app using their public APIs and then distributes that is a blood-soaked hitchhiker?
Since Microsoft has been through the Anti-Trust wringer before, you can bet that this little problem will get all the attention they can dig out of it, in the press and with the DOJ lawyers and the FTC. If Google publishes an API and says "use it, it's open" and then somebody picks up that mantle and builds something using it only to have Google shut it down for fictitious reasons, then at that point you have to call bullshit on the whole openness agenda and "do no evil." When Apple pulled Google Maps out of IOS, Google cried foul because Apple has to approve all apps on their platform and yes, Apple's customers cried foul as well because the Apple Maps app sucked but it seems that Apple, Google and Microsoft are all in this little arms race of what they call "open" APIs and services but when somebody implements an API using them that happens to be another 800 lb gorilla you bet the games will start. Eventually if they don't play nice, it'll wind up in court with a long drawn out legal proceeding and while Google has dodged a few bullets of late, they won't dodge a bullet if MSFT comes back with documentation that Google is playing tricks to maintain a competitive advantage. After all, Google announced that they wouldn't be building apps for Windows Phone.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Good for Microsoft, defending all eight of its Windows Phone customers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
+10 Unintentional Irony
Poor Microsoft, the company whose motto was at one time "It's not done until Lotus won't run!" The company that intentionally used a non-compliant Kerberos variant to foul up interoperability with *nix systems. The company that went out of its way to kill Netscape and then let the web rot for five years with IE6. The company that intentionally violated its Java licensing agreement with Sun in an attempt to enact its major philosophy; "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish".
Yes indeed, what goes around does indeed come around.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Lets backtrack a bit to the MS post when they released the new youtube app.
Note the parts in bold. MS lied, they didn't address it. So Google saw MS thumbing their nose, went WTF, got pissed off and blocked it .
MS gets slapped with its hand caught in the cookie jar and then admits that its 'new' app did not comply with Google's request that it be in HTML5 :-
Note that the new app was pushed out without Google's approval, unlike what they implied. Typical MS arrogance and lies at work. I feel sorry for any Winph8 users caught in the crossfire, but MS does not deserve any sympathy in this matter.
Is the metadata hidden by Google a metadata like "this ad is from content owner" or "this ad is from us", preventing MS to replace Google's ads by their own ads as they don't know which ads can be removed without getting content owners angry ?
It's curious to see Google pull this.
From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
"At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important." .. ... ... expensive too. Either way, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don't have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won't." ...
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors."
"To understand our position in more detail, it helps to start with the assertion that open systems win. This is counter-intuitive to the traditionally trained MBA who is taught to generate a sustainable competitive advantage by creating a closed system, making it popular, then milking it through the product life cycle. The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, while the old IBM made the mainframes expensive and the software
"In other words, Google's future depends on the Internet staying an open system, and our advocacy of open will grow the web for everyone - including Google."
The entire thing is a good read.
This space for rent.