I'll take Google over Microsoft anytime. I believe there are no absolutes everything is relative, everything depends on the context, on our scale of values. Personally I don't care about such concepts as open or evil. If the actions of a company are illegal they should be punished. If they are not but they ought to be, you can try to build enough consensus to legislate on the matter.
I personally feel more wronged by Microsoft than by Google, I've never been forced to use Google products. The pervasive dominance that Microsoft still holds on the desktop is poisonous. Until I am free to choose or not to choose Microsoft products I will feel wronged by Microsoft.
One difference is that Microsoft and Nvidia are considered evil and are derided for it and they don't pretend that SMB or graphics drivers are open. While Google has a 'do no evil' official policy which many folks seem to think they comply with. Similarly, with regards to openness.
Google has obligations (both legal and moral) to both the content providers of YouTube and to the organisations who buy adverts on it. In order to 'not be evil' they have to take actions that respect these obligations.
Microsoft's original version of the app either:
a) deprived YouTube partners of their share of the revenue from adversing
b) caused advertisers to be charged for adverts that were not shown
The download feature also posed a problem to content providers who only hold a streaming licence to their content. If it didn't respect YouTube's no mobile flag (I'm unsure about this but it seems possible) it would also have caused issues for content providers who only held non-mobile streaming rights.
Microsoft now has a new version of the software that supposedly corrects these problems and is whining about openness and anti-trust. But why should Google now trust them? They treated not only Google, but also their partners and advertisers, like dirt. Now they want special treatment. It's like walking into someone's shop, insulting both their sales staff and their customers, then next week coming back and asking for discount.
How is Google being evil by imposing restrictions on a known bad actor in order to protect their partners?
Did Google provide the APIs required for MSFT to show ads? Did Google's obligations to content owners not apply to the other platforms where ad-free official clients existed?
> Did Google provide the APIs required for MSFT to show ads?
Yes. The API is an HTML5 iframe, (and it takes care of both movie and ads). Microsoft refused to use that API for their own reasons.
> Did Google's obligations to content owners not apply to the other platforms where ad-free official clients existed?
The iOS client is the only ad-free official clients in existence. It was created in 2007 with a five year license agreement to Apple. I have no knowledge of the details, but it is possible that Apple actually paid in lieu of showing ads.
Either way, there is no reason an 2007 agreement between Google and Apple should apply to Microsoft in 2013.
I think single Main Reason why Google requires 3rd parties to use an iframe is that it keeps them in control of when and how ads are shown, what can be rewinded, etc. Without updating the 3rd party app and republishing it to all stores.
They loosen this requirement for google's own youtube clients because they can push new version of those apps whenever they like.
They had no guarantee that MSFT would respond to their requests for changes in a timely manner in the future.
Why didn't MSFT want to use an iframe?
Because arrogant ignorance of the open standard of HTML5 is part of company DNA.
Any web developer can rant for hours how crappy IE6-9 are and what a drag it is to maintain compatibility with IE when you are building a modern webapp.
To remind everyone that IE11 will be dead on arrival, I'm copying some html5test results:
Chrome - 463
Firefox - 410
Safari - 378
IE 11 - 355
But if MSFT bothered to properly implement HTML5 then
a) they wouldn't have difficulty building a youtube app in accordance to the google's terms and conditions
b) WP users would enjoy better browsing experience
c) developers wouldn't have to deal with the compatibility mess caused primarily by IE6-10 and not yet released IE11
YouTube also offers a Flash based API to show videos with adverts. If HTML5 wasn't feasible for Microsoft they could have paid Adobe for a licence to use the Flash runtime in their YouTube app.
>Google has obligations (both legal and moral) to both the content providers of YouTube and to the organisations who buy adverts on it. In order to 'not be evil' they have to take actions that respect these obligations.
Aren't content providers losing revenue because Google refuses to make a Youtube App for Windows Phone in an effort to cripple it?
The latest numbers peg WP's marketshare at 3 to 10% in various countries. Assuming a one to one equivalence of users and views, content providers are losing ~3 to 10% of revenue because of Google's dithering on this to help Android.
I would assume both content providers and ad buyers would benefit if Google makes an official Youtube app or allowed Microsoft's version with ads in it. Am I wrong?
If Google wanted to fulfill it's obligations to content providers and advertisers, they would do what Amazon does with Kindle and have a proper app on every platform that lets them publish one.
The fact that they don't shows that the reason is all about Android and not about Youtube.
> Aren't content providers losing revenue because Google refuses to make a Youtube App for Windows Phone?
If those Windows Phone users want to watch said content, they can do so in their web browser.
> The latest numbers peg WP's marketshare at 3 to 10% in various countries. Assuming a one to one equivalence of users and views, content providers are losing ~3 to 10% of revenue because of Google's dithering on this
That assumes that those people will not watch that movie anyway (on a desktop, on a friend's phone, or on the WP using the browser) - which is a completely bogus assumption.
> I would assume both content providers and ad buyers would benefit if Google makes an official Youtube app or allowed Microsoft's version with ads in it. Am I wrong?
The would also benefit if Google gave a free android phone to all WP users so they can watch it. So? Google is not a charity. They set terms and conditions for implementing a YouTube app. There are tens of youtube apps for both iphone and android that abide these rules (not talking about Google's official apps here! see e.g. Jasmine on iOS).
Microsoft insists on not observing the terms and conditions, and then blames google.
> they would do what Amazon does with Kindle and have a proper app on every platform that lets them publish one.
There's no kindle app for Linux. Or the Raspberry Pi. Or the the BeagleBone Black. Or the Chumby. or my smart Vizio TV. And yes, I run all these platforms at home. Does that mean Amazon doesn't care about Kindle content? (incidentally, the Chumby, Vizio and Linux all have native apps for YouTube, and each of them has sold more units than the Windows Phone).
> The fact that they don't shows that the reason is all about Android and not about Youtube.
Next time, you should start with the facts and work out to a logical conclusion, rather than starting with a conclusion you want, and trying to fit the facts into it.
>If those Windows Phone users want to watch said content, they can do so in their web browser.
>That assumes that those people will not watch that movie anyway (on a desktop, on a friend's phone, or on the WP using the browser) - which is a completely bogus assumption.
The degraded experience causes many folks to leave the web app instead of going on to watch more videos, especially related ones. Also assuming that fickle users with low attention span are going to remember to search for the video later on on their other devices is also a bogus assumption.
Lack of an officially sanctioned solution definitely hurts content producers.
>(incidentally, the Chumby, Vizio and Linux all have native apps for YouTube, and each of them has sold more units than the Windows Phone).
Just Nokia seems to have sold 20 million phones in the past few quarters.
Anyway, if Windows Phone has very few users, how are the content producers hurt if they watch videos without ads?
How are the same number of WP users simultaneously not worth monetizing by YouTube enough to make an official app and at the same time hurt their revenues if not monetized by being shown ads to?
Even Vimeo with its puny marketshare and revenues compared to Youtube has developed an official Windows Phone app!
> Just Nokia seems to have sold 20 million phones in the past few quarters.
Ok. Nintendo has sold more than 100 million Wii consoles. It has no kindle app. It has a YouTube app. Your comparison to Amazon is still bogus.
> How are the same number of WP users simultaneously not worth monetizing by YouTube enough to make an official app and at the same time hurt their revenues if not monetized by being shown ads to?
I'm sorry, we appear to be living in different planets.
Google is under no obligation whatsoever to give preferential treatment to Microsoft, regardless of how much money it costs or earns them. And as Microsoft is still bullying Google's Android partners with patent threats, Google refuses to give Microsoft a preferential treatment. It's so simple. And yet, it seems so hard for many people on this thread to understand.
>Google is under no obligation whatsoever to give preferential treatment to Microsoft, regardless of how much money it costs or earns them. And as Microsoft is still bullying Google's Android partners with patent threats, Google refuses to give Microsoft a preferential treatment. It's so simple. And yet, it seems so hard for many people on this thread to understand.
And if YouTube's content providers and users are hurt by this, so be it?
>I don't think being open means you have to let third parties dictate the terms of their use of your stuff.
Then what does open mean? To me it means to provide an API on an equal footing among the various platforms. If Google is providing access to secret Web service APIs to their Android and iOS Youtube Apps, but not to Windows Phone, how is that open? Requiring to show ads is still understandable, but requiring HTML5? Why do they care if it's HTML5 or something else? It sounds fishy, and Google should come out with a real reason for requiring HTML5 if there is one, after all they call themselves open.
It is probably well within their rights to screw around since it's their stuff, but lets not pretend it's open. Didn't MS get lambasted for private APIs in Windows? Why does Google get a free pass now and get away with calling itself open?
> Then what does open mean? To me it means to provide an API on an equal footing among the various platforms.
To most of the world, it means "you can interoperate with me as long as follow my terms and conditions", with those terms being considered reasonable. it does NOT mean "I must let everyone compete with me on equal footing".
Even granting your point which I think is a bit of a stretch for "open", I think there are some unreasonable requirements at place here.
>"you can interoperate with me as long as follow my terms and conditions", with those terms being considered reasonable.
I wonder if the HTML5 requirement can considered reasonable. Why does the server's web service API care if the client is HTML5 or not?
Microsoft says this in their post:
>There was one sticking point in the collaboration. Google asked us to transition our app to a new coding language – HTML5. This was an odd request since neither YouTube’s iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility. At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps.
Google's statement is totally mum on the matter except for "it violates terms of use". If they want to call themselves open, they should atleast let us know what the HTML5 requirement is about, as it is certainly strange for a web service API. And in my opinion this makes it a 'unreasonable' condition for an open API and Google's silence does not help it. I do think Google is within their rights(absent monopoly concerns) though.
> I wonder if the HTML5 requirement can considered reasonable. Why does the server's web service API care if the client is HTML5 or not?
Yes, it is very reasonable.
The server doesn't, but google does. The HTML5 requirement means that google can change everything about their service (e.g. they can switch the ads from being h264 videos today, to javascript games tomorrow, to 3d interactive items the next day when 3d screens become the norm on phones). If they had to expose an "ad inventory API", they couldn't change these things without breaking older clients.
An analogy: Microsoft relies on the TCP packets coming from YouTube being always 100 bytes or less (because they are). Google says "no, you must use a general TCP stack, because one day we might want to make our packets longer". Microsoft dedicates significant engineering resources to examine the possibility, and at the end of the day recognizes that even though they have a general purpose TCP stack, switching to it will result in some inconvenience to users. So they release an app that has a TCP stack that expects 100 bytes or less -- and google refuses to serve it.
This is exactly the same, except at a higher abstraction level. Google doesn't care to spell it out, because anyone who is capable of understanding that issue already does.
What does the app being written in HTML5 have to do with Google changing the API? The app would still have to be updated when the API changes. Additionally, if that were a concern of Google's, why aren't their apps written in HTML5?
> What does the app being written in HTML5 have to do with Google changing the API?
Everything. As I explained above, please reread.
> The app would still have to be updated when the API changes.
With an HTML5 API, the API can be stable and still support many new features, video formats, ad formats, etc without change. NOT SO if you don't let google have their iframe.
> Additionally, if that were a concern of Google's, why aren't their apps written in HTML5?
Because they can update their own apps whenever they want to, but they cannot force Microsoft to.
Yes, they can; they can have the older app say "you need to upgrade your app" (likely with a 60 or 90 day grace period), and put the new one on the play store. Alternatively, maybe their native client already falls back on an HTML5 alternative on a cue from their server - I have no idea.
What is clear from this debacle, though, is that Microsoft was unable to write their app according to Google's guidelines, and then took 3 months and still couldn't fix it - which means that Google definitely cannot expect them to upgrade to newer APIs ever - so it doesn't seem onerous to require them to actually use the official API now.
The HTML5 requirement stops YouTube apps from having any control over the experience. They barely even deserve the name 'YouTube app' any more. They're closer to 'YouTube embed containers'.
Google isn't forcing Microsoft to write better code. They're trying to force Microsoft to write no code at all, and instead execute whatever javascript comes from the Google servers, sight unseen.
Google is refusing to provide a real API that deals in discrete chunks of data, where the consumer chooses how to interpret them. Even though Microsoft is willing to display ads or presumably do anything else Google asks for that its own apps do.
> The HTML5 requirement stops YouTube apps from having any control over the experience
That's demonstrably false. Have a look at the "Jasmine" app for iOS - it's way, way better than the official iOS client, despite using the same HTML5 API. It does NOT, in any way, provide a degraded experience compared to the official app using.
> and instead execute whatever javascript comes from the Google servers, sight unseen.
Well, yes. Microsoft also doesn't vet the videos it is going to show - google might instead stream rickrolls. Google is not asking Microsoft to execute arbitrary javascript (which allows e.g. stealing credentials). They're asking them to use an iframe, which is perfectly sandboxed. And they actually need to run javascript for functionality - I don't know if you've noticed but Google keeps adding features like captions, annotations, multispeed, multiquality, etc - they need to run code so they can add more features and make them accessible to all.
> Google is refusing to provide a real API that deals in discrete chunks of data, where the consumer chooses how to interpret them. Even though Microsoft is willing to display ads or presumably do anything else Google asks for that its own apps do.
Well, Microsoft is refusing to let me sell Windows Premium addition DVDs for $10, even though I'm willing to pay them the $0.50 that a DVD costs, and displaying their logo and whatever it is they do themselves when they sell a Windows equipped computer on the Microsoft store.
Do you realize how stupid it sounds? Google/YouTube is not a charity, nor a utility, and not even a monopoly. They're accessible on Windows Phone, and they're happy to have Microsoft play according to the same rules they set for everyone else. I understand Microsoft is really not use to playing by the rules, granted - but that's hardly Google's fault.
> It does NOT, in any way, provide a degraded experience compared to the official app using.
It doesn't? Because one of the other posts in this thread says that it is degraded.
> Well, Microsoft is refusing to let me sell Windows Premium addition DVDs for $10, even though I'm willing to pay them the $0.50 that a DVD costs, and displaying their logo and whatever it is they do themselves when they sell a Windows equipped computer on the Microsoft store.
Okay, I can work with this analogy. First off, Microsoft would be giving Microsoft-made DVD printers to the other major stores and letting them do the exact same thing you want to do, on official Microsoft hardware. And you've worked hard to make your hardware be up to spec to theirs, but they don't want you to be in business so they only let you use the method that gives them more control: buying full Windows boxes for $0.50 and packing them with the computer. But they won't let you actually take the disc out of the box and install Windows yourself, leading to a degraded experience.
It seems like a reasonable request to me now, though Microsoft can refuse if they want. But they can't call themselves 'open' at the same time.
> They're accessible on Windows Phone, and they're happy to have Microsoft play according to the same rules they set for everyone else. I understand Microsoft is really not use to playing by the rules, granted - but that's hardly Google's fault.
Google is the one explicitly providing an app that doesn't follow the rules. I'm sure Microsoft would be thrilled to not have to write their own app, but they've only tried to write an app that follows the same rules as the official apps. If they can't, then it really sounds like it's not open. Half-open, maybe.
