Web by Google (TM) - <AUTHOR> https://landshark.io/2020/08/16/web-by-google.html <comment><USER3> The problem is that, IMO, centralization of the internet is simply the natural course. Especially when people seem to care so little. Centralization is cheaper, easier to monetize, easier to control, easier to update and upgrade. That's why people prefer Discord to IRC, that's why people prefer Slack to SMTP or Jabber, that's why for many people these days the distinction between git and GitHub is blurry.

I suspect that if you broke those companies up you'd only win in the short term, then it would consolidate again. You'd need a constant pressure to prevent this situation and given that the USA would be in the best position to do that I'm not holding by breath.

The internet started decentralized because there was no money to make and we were still figuring things out. As soon as it became mainstream it started to coalesce and we're just now reaching the final stage of this evolution. Even here on HN you have threads full of people coming up with excuses for why they won't run Firefox, and that's a community that should understand the implication of those things. Good luck convincing the internet population at large.

Are there statistics on the browser usage on HN? Just for a good laugh.

<comment><USER4> Meh, I think the longest lasting protocols are the decentralised ones, the good ones just can't fail by design. SMTP is still going very strong, BitTorrent isn't going away, bitcoin won't die anytime soon

slack/discord will probably disappear and be replaced by another closed system until we find the right way to do real time chat in a decentralised way.

<comment><USER5> As for SMTP, most people use Gmail nowadays anyway. Google might be able to kill SMTP if they wanted to.

<comment><USER4> Google will not be able to kill smtp, gmail is only one side of the email market. They'd have to offer a transactional and marketing email service and get every app/company to use that over smtp. It's monumental and I don't think it will change for decades.

<comment><USER3> You can damage open/federated email without having to break the lower level layers. See winmail.dat for instance[1].

I don't know if it's still in the pipeline but I remember that Google proposed an "AMP for email" not so long ago, with basically self-updating email contents.

Open email can be severely damaged if good old SMTP is only used to tunnel proprietary formats, especially if those formats are effectively just metadata that's used to fetch the actual content of the email from 3rd parties.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulation_Format)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Asking a rhetorical and irritating question - but one which web nerds need to be much better at answering: why, exactly does it matter?

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally uncomfortable with a monopoly of this scale; I'm a Firefox user, a Pihole user, a non-FB user. But when people (non nerds) ask me why, it's hard to answer. They're all happy enough: Chrome is fast, AMP is faster, they get to find out the stuff they want to find out from incredibly accurate search, or Facebook - so what's the actual problem here?

My answer is normally about principles or competition or fairness but in practical terms, I haven't got a lot of answers.

Help me out here.

<comment><USER7> Having any infrastructure controlled by a publicly traded corporation has enormous historical precedent to lead to the dissolution of that infrastructure for shareholder profit.

Once Google feels comfortable with doing so not allowing arbitrary routing in Chrome will be on the table to control what websites people visit. The only things stopping that is a feeble threat of state intervention or the threat of competition in the browser space reclaiming market share as a result.

They can, and probably will, take Chrome wholly proprietary at some point. Microsoft kowtowing to their engine is in their favor for now, but long term its in their business interests that Microsoft not _have_ a browser anymore. That they present Chrome as the only option to users.

We can mire in the details of what a browser is, but for 99% of people Chrome is a program you run that shows you the stuff you want. The http, html, etc underpinnings are totally irrelevant. Chrome could be doing _anything_ as long as it were showing the content the user of it expects. Google has already done this in the past with things like SPDY. I'm sure standards realize this - <USER2> why http/2 was a thing after all - that at this point if Google creates a new protocol it is de-facto required to become a standard because that is the only way for alternative browsers to keep pace with Chrome.

As such Google gets to dictate the future of hypertext. Not the users of the platform, not standards bodies formed to collaborate, the board of directors of a publicly traded US company.

<comment><USER8> Even if Google takes Chrome proprietary in the future, Microsoft and others can continue on their forks. That's the beauty of open source in this case.

As for SPDY, standards bodies like to "pave the cowpaths" so they codify existing implementations. Apple and Mozilla supported SPDY, it eventually became http/2 as you say, and then everyone dropped support for SPDY. This sounds like everything worked as intended.

<comment><USER9> > Even if Google takes Chrome proprietary in the future, Microsoft and others > can continue on their forks. That's the beauty of open source in this case.

It won't help much if a huge part of Chrome's proprietary new future involves running on proprietary content as well. Just wait until Chrome has some special non-HTTP integration with "lightning fast AMP pages" that other browsers can't serve, or serves a lot slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The issue is not the fact that Google owns the web. It is that the web itself has become decimated to the point where a company like Mozilla does not have a future.

Facebook, Uber, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. None of them are optimized for Google index.

Most top consumer internet applications don't take place in your browser.

<comment><USER11> This

And I'd argue that google's about the only thing propping up the internet. Chromium's a reasonably open platform (certainly more so than internet explorer, which not that long ago looked destined to become the dominant platform), gmail has kept email viable, android is somewhat open (and without it, apple might own that space entirely), etc

Every other player that's gotten traction has set up a walled garden

<comment><USER12> Gmail is actually a major force in further consolidation of email to a very few number of players. Ever increasing rulesets to be able to send to Gmail from other email servers increase the barrier to entry step-by-step until even the last holdouts will have to pick between a very limited number of parties to host their mail.

<comment><USER13> Not sure what rulesets you're referring to. I understand the spam prevention techniques (DKIM, SPF) but those are all widely accessible open standards. Could you give an example of the barriers to entry that you mentioned?

<comment><USER14> Try setting up your own email server and you'll see. There were even a few horror comments on HN from people owning domains for 15+ years with stellar security email servers setup + DKIM + SPF whose emails are going straight into spam.

<comment><USER12> Mine was one of those. Highly frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> AMP still makes no sense. On iOS, Android and Windows it's completely broken and friction increasing to grab a link to send to a friend in another medium.

Not only that but it seems the page slightly degrades sometimes.

For what? A theoretical page load time improvement? Maybe that's naive but we already have "request desktop mode" to allow for bifurcated experiences. Why do we need a third thats seemingly even worse?

Total "get off my lawn" complaint but how do you turn the damn AMP off? :)

<comment><USER16> It's a lot of effort to maintain AMP pages for all your site content alongside the standard pages over time. That's why they tend to degrade.

<comment><USER17> Reminds me of the old-fashioned "m. _< domain>_" sites we used to have to maintain for mobile browsing; often using wonderful tech like WML.

That sucked.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it is effectively like operating an "adaptive" site alongside your (probably) responsive main site

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It does look pretty tragic at this point. But it's worth noting that every tech business so far was talked about as if it's taken over the world, forever, and without 5-10-20 years they were overtaken. IBM, Intel, Microsoft.

I think google is overplaying their hand in many areas, and this will inevitably lead to the downfall of their dominance. Just like most other large businesses in history.

<comment><USER19> Microsoft is overtaken by who exactly?

In desktop & laptop Windows still holds a 87% market share.

<comment><USER20> Back then Windows is >90% of all consumer computing devices. Right now it's 87% of just _desktop & laptop_.

<comment><USER19> I don't think it's a fair comparison. Microsoft still dominates the exact same market they did before (desktop & laptop), with roughly the same market share. What you're describing is a _new_ market bundled with the old market.

"Consumer computing devices" is such a vague market. If you study markets at such a big scope something like Texas Instruments wouldn't even make a blip while if you're paying more careful attention you'll find they absolutely dominate the scientific calculator market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >I think it's safe to say that Google's AdWords is the dominant advertising platform on the open Web, which means it holds a commanding position in the Web's finances.

That's a very interesting observation. Google will thus prevent a native payment option at all costs, which leaves a huge opening for Brave or another payment provider. (Which is enhanced by content providers being threatened by AMP.)

I don't see Google in a very secure position. Their employees nowadays don't seem to care which will become a huge problem once Google has to actually react to a changing market. Amazon is getting product searches and Facebook can take over everything else whenever they want because Google's results don't come from analysing the web but from showing the pages that other people with the same queries are visiting.

Additionally, Huawei is forced to setup their own app store. If they have the better TikTok app, and online payment with wechat, the next generation of users will switch. China has so much more developers that a Chinese app store will become the more interesting place for new apps. With Zoom and TikTok, they have shown that they can create competitive apps.

<comment><USER22> > That's a very interesting observation. Google will thus prevent a native > payment option at all costs, which leaves a huge opening for Brave or > another payment provider.

Can you elaborate on what a native payment option would entail? How would it be different from non native payment options? How would it be different from crypto or other payment options that already exist?

<comment><USER21> Like barrenko said in another comment [1]:

>Wasn't it that the creators of Netscape wanted to put some kind of payment protocol similar to crypto in the original browser but ran into trouble with the government, can't remember anymore. 402 error was famously reserved for money trouble.

You could have one standard, in the same way that webpages are standardized. Then you could use your preferred option on any webpage. It would come with your browser, so no need to install anything. Unlike the Apple app store, you wouldn't have one player controlling everything, so the payment network wouldn't take 30% of all profits.

Of course, whatever is feasible as a standard is also feasible as a plugin, or at least, like Brave, as a new Browser, if Google limits the plugin api. The difference is that nowadays, every payment option tries to be the winner, preventing every other player from advancing. With a standard, those fights would be over and users could start paying for everything.

I think the biggest difference would be that people would pay for single articles and videos from obscure sources. Nowadays you have to hand out your credit card or register for an obscure payment network like Brave or patreon. People register for Netflix, but not for a blog they visit one time in their life. It's very likely that a webpage and a visitor use different payment options, thus payment is not possible. As a consequence, everything is paid with adverts, like the article states. With a standard, that would shift and the default option would be a clean article without ads.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24177888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24177888)

<comment><USER22> > Wasn't it that the creators of

I don't know? Was it?

> With a standard, those fights would be over and users could start paying for > everything.

What prevents anyone from making a standard? Why do we see standards for everything else but this? What would the standard entail?

I think the real issue here is that payment is a hard problem, open payment systems like bitcoin is horrible to use, and closed payment systems like visa is closed due to trust and security concerns.

To me it seems like the author is just dismissing the inherent complexity and accusing the people who put in the time to standardize the protocols we have of being incompetent. This is not worthy of hackernews.

<comment><USER21> >Why do we see standards for everything else but this? What would the standard entail?

Good question. hakfoo's answer seems to be a good start.

I would include something for automated micro-pre-payment. If you are just browsing news sites, it would be inconvenient to constantly confirm payment. Likewise, confirming payment for every played song is annoying. But that would also require some form of trust-network to take care of spam and fakes.

Like html, I wouldn't worry about getting it right the first time. It just needs to be usable and can be refined from there.

>What prevents anyone from making a standard?

Nothing. But where's the benefit for anybody to push it? If it is a standard, then all competitors can reap the profits without any investment.

This could have been Mozilla territory: Join Brave and make micro-payment a valid option for content creators.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a "Publish" function. You can consume on the open web just fine, but for publishing you need to own a server, not just a client. That in turn gave growth to Youtube, Facebook and Co., as they allowed people to publish content with just a web client.

Search and payment are important as well, but only really become relevant when the content is on the web.

<comment><USER24> > I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a > "Publish" function.

The simplest approach to something like this is Apache homedirs or finger plan files [0]: you write some text in a file in your home directory and a service makes it accessible to anyone who connects to your machine. Apparently plan files were somewhat popular thing at one point; you could finger the machines at id Software and read what John Carmack was doing on any given week [1].

The problem with this approach is that the internet (not just the web) is not end-to-end. Assuming your ISP isn't using CGNAT, I have to:

\- Punch a hole in my firewall or setup up a DMZ host. Unless my workstation is the only thing on my network and hooked directly into my modem, but nobody does that. Everybody has a LAN with private addressing.

\- Setup dynamic DNS, since there's no guarantee that my ISP has given me a static address. In practice this isn't that bad, but if I lose power in a thunderstorm you need to have the same name you had before.

\- Harden and update whatever service I run. It'll get probed regularly, and is a high value target since it presumably runs on the same machine where I run my password manager or buy things using I credit card.

A VPS is just a convenience and security measure here. You get a public IP address without any additional management (default-deny firewall, NAT) and can isolate your private data from the VPS which is more likely to be compromised.

The alternative would be to make a new network which gets rid of all the extra layers of management - just your machine, with a publicly accessible name that you can point people to. No smart network appliances in-between imposing NAT, DHCP, or firewalls beyond the one on your machine. I think there are P2P networks which work like this, or Tor if you give your machine a name in the .onion namespace. I don't know of any which are better on the security aspect though.

[0] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/plan- file.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/plan-file.html)

[1] [https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan- archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

<comment><USER25> I think this is where DAT and siblings come in.

If the network hosted "just your machine", then your website (or whatever published content you have) would disappear when your machine shut down for the night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > And let's not forget that most people now access the web via mobile devices, > 75% of which run Google's Android.

Which is a good thing, because these devices can actually run different browser rendering engines.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that devices ship with Chrome pre-installed instead of asking the user at device set-up time what browser they want to use.

I imagine if you told the user they could have a browser with extensions, ad- blocking, background playback etc they might be a bit more inclined to consider using Firefox.

<comment><USER27> Majority of Android devices in western world actually ship with Samsung Browser as default browser, not Chrome. The rest of the market ships with Safari as unchangeable default and rather small part of mobile market is the one with Chrome

<comment><USER28> Samsung only has ~50% market share of Android phones in the US ([https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone- sh...](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/)), and ~40% in Europe ([https://www.counterpointresearch.com/covid-19-weighs- europea...](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/covid-19-weighs-european- smartphone-market-q1-2020/)). Chrome isn't a "rather small" part of the mobile maker in the West.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, so half of Android market which has about half of mobile market in US.

<comment><USER28> The other half isn't a "rather small" part in _the West_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Looking at Mozilla's finances, it's reasonable to conclude that Google is keeping them on life support to keep the anti-trust hounds at bay."

There seems to be an implicit assumption by those commenting on Mozilla's downsizing that the antitrust case against Google is going to take the same path as the case against Microsoft.

Google's anti-competitive conduct under examination will not be focused on Chrome, it will be focused on the markets for search and advertising.

Mozilla does not provide any potential competition in those markets.

The case against Microsoft focused on the software industry. Today, the focus is on the onlilne advertising industry.

Netscape was a software company, like Microsoft. Mozilla however is not an online advertising services company like Google.

<comment><USER30> Mozilla serves as a counter balance to Google in web standards discussions. Without enough Firefox market share, Mozilla will be less able to shape the web's technical development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The real mystery is why nobody has ever been able to do better search than Google, or at least just as good.

Of course search is really hard, but how is it possible that huge companies with nearly infinite money and talent (MS / Apple / Amazon) were never able to do it? MS actually tried; it's unclear if the others even gave it a thought.

The rest of Google is different. I use Gmail but could easily switch. I've not used Chrome for over a year now and really don't miss it (either on desktop or mobile). Google maps are the best but others would be good enough if need be.

But search? Every time I try to use Duck Duck Go I'm extremely disappointed. Google search is something I don't think I could live without.

<comment><USER32> I suspect people optimising _for_ google over the last, c. 20 years has made the difference.

ie., people have spent years writing their sites explicitly with google SEO in-mind... add-in all the data google has via adwords...

<comment><USER33> Why can't other search engines just hook into those same signals though?

<comment><USER34> Because they don't have the traffic/market share to do that. And it's not just search. Every single Google property ultimately feeds into Google's search engine.

<comment><USER33> The traffic and market share shouldn't matter if these are SEO signals inside the application itself, like in the HTML. Those are independent from traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Two deficiencies have determined the course the Web has taken: lack of > native search and lack of native payments.

What exactly is the expectation here, that there is one integrated protocols stack that covers all of this? I don't see why.

Nothing is stopping someone from building P2P distributed search engines, and nothing is stopping someone from building "safe and easy way of exchanging funds".

Given that we still don't have good solutions to either of these problems it seems the right answer according to this person would be to just skip the internet.

This feels like a gripe without substance, yes we know these are hard problems, saying that Google's dominance is a consequence of the IETF not integrating these into HTTP is absurd and baseless.

<comment><USER32> Just read it as an interesting counter-factual: if the web had had search/payments via some native protocol, then it would have developed without google.

There is also a reasonable argument to saying that search/payments are so fundamental to what the web became that a solution at the protocol-layer would be appropriate.

<comment><USER22> Well I would agree if those things were easy to solve universally, and were solved universally, it would be nice, but nothing in the development of the web has been easily solved universally, and there is no central committee choosing to solve these problems or to not solve them. IETF has an open process, open to everyone.

If the author wants to integrate it into HTTP, well they can actually try and make that case through the open standards process.

The questions of what does native suppoert imply and in what protocol should it be integrated are still unanswered. It seems very low effort to me, at least give a high level rundown of what that practically means and what he expects to see.

Bitcoin runs on open standard protocols, why is it not native? Is it because it is not ratfied by the IETF? Same question goes for existing P2P search engines. And even with protocols, you still need infrastructure. HTTP being an open protocol does not give me free HTTP hosting, and search indexing and lookup similarly won't be free.

I think if it was easy to solve these problems and integrate them into HTTP it would be easy to solve them outside HTTP and it is not clear why the solutions must be integrated into some existing protocol like TCP, IP or HTTP.

<comment><USER32> I don't think the author wants to do anything. It's a counter-factual to illuminate how central google is, not a proposal.

<comment><USER22> I still expect them to make a more coherent case, I still don't know what native means here, still don't know why existing solutions are different from what native means.

It is not stated as a counterfactual either, it is stated as direct criticism, e.g.

> The Web's orignal architects were off base on hyperlinks; it turns out > people just want to skip right to the answer they're looking for.

Who are the original architects? Should we remove hyperlinks? Who suggested hyperlinks as an alternative to search, or even "native search".

I expect substance, this article has none.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. The article is making a case that Google has in fact captured the Web, and secondarily that there are some clear reasons for it. I had no intention of writing a dissertation on the history of the Internet. Also, filling in the missing technical gaps would be several RFCs.

As for what would native payments look like:

1\. I put the element <pay-me>$1.00</pay-me> in my HTML 2\. User clicks on Pay Me button in any browser and I get $1.00

Something like that. Anything more complicated and for most people it might as well not exist. Grandma isn't loading up a Bitcoin wallet.

<comment><USER22> > 1\. I put the element <pay-me>$1.00</pay-me> in my HTML 2. User clicks on > Pay Me button in any browser and I get $1.00

And then what? If all that is needed is a tag support then why is the problem not yet solved? I mean if it is so simple to add support in HTML, why not just add it outside HTML?

I'm not asking for the actual final RFCs, but just some idea of what everyone except you is missing which makes this an easy problem to solve for you. Just broad strokes will be awesome. At the moment all you are saying is that the architects did not know what they were doing, but can't explain what they missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > Google's capture of the Web is a fait accompli. Only legislation will keep > the World Wide Web from finally becoming Web by Google (TM).

I really hope it's not the case, because then Google will cancel it. /s

Search is probably something where there could be creative use of the p2p decentralized technologies. If when performing a search I could ask my contacts to look in their history if they have something matching, and then they ask their contact to do the same, who ask their contact to do the same, I think we could have fast and massively parallelized trust based searches. Then you can rank the results based on how many times they appeared.

<comment><USER36> >Search is probably something where there could be creative use of the p2p decentralized technologies.

Has this been attempted before? does it have a name?

<comment><USER37> YaCy calls it "P2P Mode": [https://yacy.net/](https://yacy.net/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Looking at Mozilla's finances, it's reasonable to conclude that Google is > keeping them on life support to keep the anti-trust hounds at bay.

This insight seems highly plausible and sad at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER39> I posted a while ago about how chilling it was to me how dysfunctional Google Search (and really, every search engine) is these days. It is still your best- bet "front door to the web," and it's been fundamentally broken by the pivot towards ML-based natural language search (e.g., dropping of whole search terms to fit the model of what it "thinks" you're searching for), its bias towards recency and "brands," and its inability to properly index the content on platforms like Facebook.

The result is that large swaths of the web are essentially inaccessible. It's contracting. I feel it as acutely as amnesia.

<comment><AUTHOR> The recency bias and a bias towards 'N things to X in YYYY' lists kills me. It's so bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> With our implicit mass approval, the 'Constitution' of the modern Web is being authored by a few giant tech companies.

This 'Constitution' will give us _the Web of a few giant tech companies, for those few giant tech companies, by those few giant tech companies._

Many here on HN, including me, wish we could have a Web of the people, for the people, by the people.

<comment><USER41> The individual (and so also teams of individuals) have never had more powerful technology available to build websites and web apps, and access to be able to put amazing things online than right now. We _should_ be able to do all kinds of things previously unimaginable. When people start caring about competition and a healthier ecosystem more, I don't think it will take long for good competition to arise, the issue right now is that some people don't care because they don't understand why they should care (these people can be educated) and some people just don't care (not sure what we can do about these people except give them time).

<comment><USER42> > * The individual (and so also teams of individuals) have never had more > powerful technology*

The issue, as always, is _relative_ power—which absolutely skews heavily in Google's favor. Individuals accessing the web today have far less relative power than 25 years ago, even if they can accomplish "more" with less effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Surprised the article doesn't mention Microsoft Edge built off Chromium, that was the nail in the coffin. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/08/03/micr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/08/03/microsoft- edge-overtakes-firefox-to-become-number-1-chrome-alternative/)

<comment><USER44> Microsoft is shipping huge improvements to chromium for the benefit of everybody. They prove that with enough non-google human resources, chromium can be just fine. Mozilla will die before realizing they were the most needed chromium contributors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Completely agree! Google also plays a part in majority of websites. Pretty much every website has to call at least one if not two or more domains owned by Google. Analytics, DoubleClick, fonts... it's not looking healthy.

<comment><USER46> Not to mention Google owning one of the leading front end frameworks - Angular!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> You can blame Google for a lot - however I believe if it wasn't about Google someone else would dictate the game.

In the past it was Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, XFire, .. I mean those companys were so big (e. g. XFire for gaming streaming) but they failed to stay ahead of time - lets see whats up with Google or Facebook or Amazon in 15 years.

<comment><USER48> It's also not 100% Google fault. Chrome was needed to move the web forward when it was launched. And are they now suppose to make a less good browser to help competitors emerge?

I'm not happy with the current situation and would hate to see Mozilla fail, but I can't fault Google for the current situation.

<comment><USER49> That's like saying it's OK for someone to invade Poland because they got the trains to run on time.

<comment><USER48> What... No that is not same. Mozilla failing isn't Googles fault, the opposite in fact, the've kept Mozilla alive for years.

Google misusing their position to dictate web standards, that's Googles fault. But Google-centric standards didn't cause Mozillas current problems. Poor management did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> As a non-programmar, what are some web standards dictated by google that make it worse for me, the uninformed user? Im sure they exist, but I don't know them.

<comment><USER51> Google Amp.

Whenever you see the amp symbol, avoid visiting that site.

<comment><USER52> As an end-user, AMP sites load faster and with less clutter. The only downside is a clunky URL, but I rarely care about that. AMP improved my mobile search experience.

The main AMP concerns seem philosophical, which I don't think OP was asking about.

<comment><USER51> And this is the problem for anyone outside of the CompSci field. To those it looks like URL non-sense but it's rooted far deeper then that. This isn't philosophical.

By choosing to use AMP, you are ultimately choosing to destroy the internet. You're granting the power of one company to run and control what you visit, do, use. Your surrendering your data for them to make money off to use and abuse.

Your supporting the downfall of innovation. Your eliminating development of opportunities and innovation. Denying fairness. Nothing there is philosophical, that's all real all because you choose to use Google Amp.

\---

The internet is made up from many devices connected somehow Without a search engine how would you locate information? You can't unless you knew Computer X has the information on what you need. Just as an encyclopedia has an index telling you to look which volume and page to open.

A search engine crawls from computers to computers in hunt for information and then records it in a catalog. So when you search "dogs" this is then retrieved within the catalog for any computers that hold information on dogs.

This costs money, so what's a way of making money? Sell search results. My information on dogs is not that useful but I do like users visiting my webpage because I may sell pet related items. So I pay google £100 to list my website at the top when someone searches "dog". Great, I am now top of the list. Others do the same and get their search results on the top too.

However, my friend who is a vet has a information piece on if a dog is sick, and the remedy on what to do. Unfortunately they don't have the money to boost their page to the top, so it gets buried. Some pseudo science website makes a page about dog cures and pays for it's rank. The information I need on how to cure a dogs cold is now buried further but that's okay, I now have a fake remedy on how to cure a dogs cold.

Next up is Google Amp.

Amp is disguised to load the pages faster, but all it's really doing is collecting information about the user who visits, and redirects them to a branded copy-paste version of the original website and sells the users information.

I'm really a company who sells placebo medicine for dogs, my medicine has killed a few dogs in the past but no worries, it's trusted because I'm with Google Amp.

At the same time google implements a new policy "You must use AMP to be part of google search engine pages 1 to 6" \-- This in return costs money to implement. So now the vet piece on how to cure a dog's cold is now on page 7.

Who goes to page seven on google? The average user normally stops around page three.

Well, now you've got to pay money to get a listing and now that anybody can cram an illegitimate idea into a web page and in which so long as it's encoded as AMP content – it'll look like it's from a legit new organization endorsed by Google.

On top you are at Google's mercy when it comes to how (and even if) your content is actually displayed. If google doesn't like your page, swipe, there goes your listing.

Your a vet, you don't have money to implement AMP, nor do you have the money to get your page to the top which you now can't because your not using AMP. So the vet isn't getting any visitors, your vet practice is unknown in the world apart from local town folk. So not only are you crippling businesses from thriving because of Amp, your supporting a dominated chosen google market.

Google wants you all within googles walled garden. Above is a jist of it. But AMP is bad, there is NO good coming from AMP. By supporting amp, your support death of freedom.

<comment><USER53> This is an amusing bit of sci-fi. But it's just that, and it's got nothing to do, specifically, with amp.

The rhetorical strategy used here was to make up a dystopian example of search being bad, and then say amp.

Amp isn't more expensive, WordPress templates handle it automatically today. And the whole tangent about misinformation is interesting, but it's not how things really work. While speed is a signal, reliability is also one, which means that it would be cheaper to advertise you're vet article and it would be more likely to appear near the top anyway.

<comment><USER51> No, that was an explanation of my understanding of how google operates.

And now your introducing a sack of rubbish called WordPress. What if the site is not using WordPress, may do.

You work for google, so explain it to me, how do things really work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think we're in a real low point right now. Gmail, AMP, Chrome, Android. So many peoples internet experience is from one place.

With Amazon dominating retail, and Facebook under its various brands dominating social media, there isn't much scope for other players.

I don't see another option than breaking theses companies up at this point.

<comment><USER16> Don't forget that Amazon dominates a lot more than just retail on the internet. With AWS they effectively run large portions of it as well.

<comment><USER55> Isn't that kinda like saying that the electric companies do the same thing, though?

<comment><USER48> True, that's why in some markets the electric companies have been split into transmission companies and delivery companies. You buy power from the delivery company and the transmission companies are paid to maintain power lines.

<comment><USER56> That's effectively how it already is though: there's one market for connectivity, and a separate market for cloud computing. If you don't want to build on Amazon's cloud, you can build on Azure, GCP, or one of the smaller competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Anti-monopoly legislation is important, but it is also important to create a mechanism for funding public goods. Browsers are necessary to keep the web open, and there should be a mechanism for society to fund that, even if it does cost $400 million a year. Current funding mechanisms for this sort of thing are focused on the creation of new scientific knowledge, but we also need funding focused on widely used open software.

</comment><comment><USER58> I would be very interested in seeing HN commenters' theories on the following scenarios:

A) what happens if Google decides to stop funneling money to Mozilla? What becomes of Firefox?

B) at what point do you think the $350+ million/year cash flow to Firefox will get cut off?

C) do you think Mozilla has a reasonable chance of success of replacing that amount of money with a deal with Microsoft/bing?

<comment><USER59> > B) at what point do you think the $350+ million/year cash flow to Firefox > will get cut off?

I think there's at least 3 reasons why Google wants to continue funding Firefox:

1\. To get access to 200M+ users for their search ads

2\. To have a competitor that helps Google make money and so Firefox can serve as evidence, that Chrome has competition and Google isn't trying to stomp out competition, in anti-trust cases.

3\. To stop other search engines (e.g. Bing) from partnering with Mozilla.

If Google were to not renew the contract next time, then they take two risks:

1\. What if a lot of former Firefox users switch to something other than Chrome?

2\. What if someone continues funding Firefox so Google loses out on the additional reach for their search ads?

The benefit of cutting off the funding could be quickening Firefox's downfall and, perhaps, the bulk of Firefox users switching to Chrome.

I think Google will cut off the deal when the number of Firefox users drops enough for the risks to be negligible. Until then, Firefox will continue to slowly lose users and the bulk of those will switch to Chrome/Edge/Safari. I wonder what the breakdown is. I'd suspect the platform default largely dictates which browser a former Firefox user switches to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I hate Safari, but Apple here have really good opportunity to step up. With opening Safari for PC and Android and at the same time improving Safari along, they could cut quite a share from Chrome and stop this nonsence.

But they seemed to dithched focus on web platform as it is still such mess for both users and developers, so meh.

Chrome for me is done, using it only for PWA.

<comment><USER61> Some of the market share that Safari would gain would be taken from Firefox.

That could be the last blow to any meaningful Firefox market share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Relevant here is a discussion of Google's big shift from sending you to sites into keeping you on Google controlled sites. Worth a listen: [https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2020/08/what- went-w...](https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2020/08/what-went-wrong- with-google-search) (transcript available on the same page, but auto-generated and not great)

And from the same journalist, words to not use if you work at Google and are talking about your employer or its offerings. [https://themarkup.org/google- the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc...](https://themarkup.org/google-the- giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust)

</comment><comment><USER63> The point on video is missing the real problem: relying on ads as the default funding model. It's never been easier to serve high-quality video but many places use YouTube or Facebook instead because they don't want to get an unexpected bill for bandwidth and search remains a problem in some applications.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article hits the nail squarely on the head in a number of important ways.

There is one small silver lining: when and if Google manages to successfully turn the rest of the web into ca. 1992 style information providers for their updated version of videotext there might be just enough breathing room to create something even better.

After all the web killed AOL, with Google going after the AOL playbook they set themselves up for a similar debacle. When it isn't 'the internet' anymore a service will quickly lose value.

</comment><comment><USER64> The internet economy is a winner takes it all economy. With the US being so weak in market regulations, the development of natural monopolies is just a natural effect of that.

</comment><comment><USER65> A bit late to the party here but Google's monopolistic tendencies are only increasing. When you login to any Google service, Chrome automatically recognises your login and keeps you logged in. The only way to disable this is in advanced settings. These kinds of practices should not be allowed.

We need anti-monopoly action to avoid complete dominance by these tech companies. Google services need to be split up and run independently.

</comment><comment><USER66> Why is there so little interest in helping people self-host their own content? I know it wouldn't be a panacea, but it feels like at least a step in the right direction. This is a big part of the motivation for my side-project to help people run their own private blogs - [https://simpleblogs.org/](https://simpleblogs.org/)

<comment><USER67> Hard to get paid for altruism. Who's going to pay my rent for me if I want to help humanity?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> And what are we doing about it? The majority (even webdevs) use Chrome, we don't use Firefox or other alternatives out of principle, we just pick what's easiest. A lot of us could be participating either in Firefox or a web-engine that's easier to integrate, but we aren't? What are we doing instead?

It doesn't seem as if most of us care.

</comment><comment><USER69> The original 'classic' web is still there. It's just harder to find, ironically, thanks to Google.

</comment><comment><USER70> Chromium should be taken away from Google and put in the hands of some truly neutral non-profit entity.

<comment><USER71> Use Edge instead of Chrome. If Edge's market share increases at the expense of Chrome then eventually Microsoft will have equal control over Chromium.

Microsoft is not a better company in any way, but two companies controlling the most widely used browsing platform is better than one company controlling it.

<comment><USER70> Good point. It's not an ideal situation, but it beats Google alone holding the keys and could even lead to the outcome I mentioned in my first comment if non-profit free software advocates play their cards well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Well this is all horribly depressing.

</comment><comment> Maha-pudma What happens to people like me, no Google search, no Facebook, no amp, etc if this came about?

</comment><comment><USER73> Didn't we do this to ourselves, though? The tech community did decide that vendor lock-in is okay, walled gardens are okay and also that a browser monopoly is okay.

My impression is that this is what's different this time: it was chosen by developers themselves

<comment><USER49> _Didn 't we do this to ourselves, though?_

Does it matter?

We still give cancer treatment to smokers. We still give dialysis to alcoholics. We still pull the plastic out of our own oceans.

<comment><USER74> Not for free where I live. They have to pay for the treatment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Wasn't it that the creators of Netscape wanted to put some kind of payment protocol similar to crypto in the original browser but ran into trouble with the government, can't remember anymore. 402 error was famously reserved for money trouble.

</comment><comment><USER76> > Lacking native distributed search allowed Google to grab a monopoly position > as the entry point to the web.

I am curious to hear what the author would propose instead. I'm not sure keeping a local cache of all web text would work very well.

</comment><comment><USER75> Maybe the search itself will die to this monopolization. You go to Wikipedia for basic stuff, Hacker News for drama and shame you don't know Lisp, Khan Academy for math, Facebook/IG, Twitter, et cetera...

</comment><comment><USER77> The original web didn't even have images, but you think they should have just invented the most advanced neural net ever built instead of urls? Monday morning quarterbacks...

</comment><comment><USER78> I myself only build websites with Google Authentication I don't see any other competitor in this space everyone has a Google account and I don't have to deal with Infosec. Who doesn't have a Google account? Yes Google rules the web and there's not much we can do but live with it, I also like the fact that Google gives us a bunch of things for free and many people don't take this into account. Think about all the free things Google is giving you at this moment? Do you use Gmail? Do you search in Google? Do you want a paid alternative to Gmail or to searching? Come on let us not be children.

<comment><USER79> I hate when websites do this. I don't use anything Google unless I'm forced to (work email, Google Drive for my school, etc.). And unless I absolutely need to use your site, I will avoid it like the plague.

It's not just limited to Google; it's for any site providing only third-party OAuth login. I can never remember which one I signed in with, and if that service ever shuts down, it'll be a pain to figure which of the hundreds of services I've signed up for using that OAuth login. It's much easier to change an email.

And yes, I do use a paid alternative to Gmail (ProtonMail)

<comment><USER78> I just don't understand where all this hate is coming from I don't hate Google for giving me free stuff and collecting my information I'm not doing anything wrong so I don't care. I understand that people might feel bad about being monitored and all but what can we do we live in a society full of internet connected stuff we're going to be monitored no matter what anyways I don't hate companies for it at all. Imagine this the majority of the Global phones are Android that means that the majority of the world has a Google account just because of the Android phone registration. Google is the world's largest source of information hub and I don't have anything against them or any other huge IT company if they're doing stuff good for us let it be, I'm a Gmail user and I use Google and I host my stuff in Google too so I'm all in for Google, Microsoft, Linux you name it! No hates here.

<comment><USER79> > I'm not doing anything wrong so I don't care

I'm not going to try too hard to convince you of digital privacy, but would you really be fine with me just browsing through your browsing and search history, INCLUDING whatever you do in incognito? I'm sure you've made at least one anonymous account before. Why's that? And what's right today may not be so right in the future. Are you ok with everybody from your boss to your children knowing everything you've ever posted? Shouldn't we have a right to be forgotten?

> what can we do we live in a society full of internet connected stuff we're > going to be monitored no matter what anyways

We live in a democracy, well I assume you do too. Just because it's the way how things are today doesn't mean it can't be changed in the future.

> I don't have anything against them or any other huge IT company if they're > doing stuff good for us let it be

I'm not saying they're not doing great things for the world, but it all comes at a price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> IMHO if Firefox could support publishers and creators with a kind of micro- payment, that would solve a fundamental problem that is basically killing the open web.

<comment><USER79> You may be interested in Firefox Better Web, in which Firefox partnered with Scroll to support publishers

[https://firstlook.firefox.com/betterweb/](https://firstlook.firefox.com/betterweb/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> > AMP, a technology no one asked for

I love that. Quoting for emphasis.

</comment><comment><USER82> Well, the EU should just fork or support existing open source Mozilla projects and pay developers... but looking at the budget there seem to be a lot of... unnecessary... money sinks. 80 Mil for management... 200 for dev... but the security team had to be downsized... yeah right. [https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla- fdn-201...](https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla- fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf)

<comment><USER61> I don't get why someone would downvote your proposal funding Firefox directly.

Mozilla never provided a way of donating directly to Firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I will care about Chrome being the top browser when people care about Windows being on 90%+ of consumer computers.

<comment><USER84> Actually, since 2017 most _consumer computers_ run Android. Windows is second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I thought hell will freeze first but ... can we please have Safari on Windows? Just to have one real alternative?

<comment><USER85> Safari did exist on Windows, up to version 5 or so; was discontinued a couple years ago.

<comment><USER86> Yep, my last project using it on Windows was around 2011.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Well I am fully of chrome onto ms Edge. Better performance and features, really hope ms keep investing in it.

</comment><comment><USER88> and?

I'm using the internet to buy things, research things, share memories, call people, pay, get payed etc.

Just because 20 years ago people build small websites (including me) doesn't mean the internet should be a bunch of private niche websites.

Not many people ever found my websites. No one cared.

</comment><comment><USER89> I love Google. Because the alternative is Apple which is literally an abusive relationship. Apple has the final say on what you run on your device. Apple blocks devs from developing for their devices unless you pay them thousands of dollars for inferior hardware. In comparison, Google is like an open utopia.

<comment><USER12> Google is anything but open and anything but a utopia, I can't see how they could be called 'an open utopia' by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, Apple isn't the 'alternative to Google'. The open web is an alternative to Google and Google is doing what it can to strangle it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> If Google kills the web it will be suicide as Google depends on the web for search.

</comment><comment><USER91> A good idea would be to state fund Mozilla.

<comment><USER92> Fund Mozilla by mining crypto (with permission)

<comment><USER93> CPU mining is notoriously unprofitable. If you got every single Firefox- running desktop to mine Monero or some other coin that can be CPU mined, you'd be lucky to break a couple thousand dollars a year. This would be at the expense of wrecking batteries, wrecking SSDs, and annoying all users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> This article's core premises are somewhat nonsensical.

1\. Lack of native distributed search led to Google's monopoly.

"The Web's orignal architects were off base on hyperlinks; it turns out people just want to skip right to the answer they're looking for."

This doesn't make any sense. Google's entire early innovation was to use hyperlinks as an indicator of popularity and thus a proxy metric for veracity, and PageRank was born.

Original attempts at distributed search based on other metrics like text analysis were tried (Webcrawler, AltaVista which was used by Yahoo, Inktomi which was used by Lycos, HotBot, etc) but didn't produce better results, and Google eventually grew to #1 by 2004 (6 years after intro).

Google could not have existed without the hyperlink. The reason it has a monopoly today is largely due to investment cycles and intellectual property law: after the dot com bust, there wasn't exactly an appetite to build new search engines given PageRank was patented and would need to be licensed (it expired in 2019).

This monopoly doesn't matter as much: generic search engine use has been declining for years in favour of other approaches to finding content (social media, syndication, domain specific aggregators, etc).

Decentralized Index/search (not just distributed but truly decentralized) remains an open research problem. it may be possible to improve and deploy with the right incentives and investment, but it's ludicrous to think this was possible in 1992-1998.

2\. Lack of native payments led to advertising to take off.

This has no factual basis: CGI-bin scripts to purchase things with HTTP POST calls existed as early as 1993. Amazon and eBay launched in 1995. PayPal started when Google did, in 1998.

More importantly, most viewed the web as another visual media like Television, which was ad-driven. People generally didn't like paying for things that felt free, like information, or music, or movies.

But again, the Ad Words monopoly remains tenuous. Facebook has been steamrolling it in growth and will eventually eclipse it. We are also seeing a lot more willingness for people to pay for content to avoid ads.

3\. "poor native video support (it is hyper_text_ after all)"

It was called hypermedia widely by around 1995 when images and audio (Real Networks in particular) took off, there just wasn't the processing power, bandwidth, or compression algorithms available to make this real until 1998 when MP4 came out.

Google's early attempt at video, Google Videos, was a market failure. They had to buy YouTube which (most importantly) made it easy to publish videos compared to others, but it took many years for it to reach #1.

And that position too is threatened between Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, etc.

In summary, Google is #1 in a number of markets due to a combination of smart business moves, smart technology, being an early player, and the business/investment climate at key inflection points of the industry. There are a large number of competitive pressures against Google that make this lead tenuous. Google is as vulnerable as AOL or Microsoft were in the late 90s, when they were thought to be unassailable.

As for the health of the web, let's remember that regardless of all the claims of the death of the web, whether native mobile, or WebSockets, or walled gardens, GraphQL, or single page apps or accelerators like Amp (which had to change offer direct hyperlink access due to complaints), the web remains entrenched, omnipresent, and has no clear replacement.

This matters because the core architecture of the web: URLs, HTTP, MIME, and (to a somewhat shrinking extent) HTML remains the foundational glue that holds all this mess of media and technology together, and is fundamentally about enabling decentralization. URLs still are the main way that native mobile apps integrate with the network. HTML is still the default fallback UI. HTTP is still the primary application protocol by far.

All of this was the design intent of the architecture of the Web: to last decades, regardless of how the origin servers or user agents evolved. It's an architecture ripe for innovation to make decentralized alternatives to today's incumbents.

To paraphrase John Lennon, centralization is over, if you want it.

But this requires the experience to be actually better for users, and not just in an "eat your vegetables / don't give your privacy away" manner. Starting a new venture to take this on requires a combination of investment, insight, and commitment that's not easy to assemble. But it can and probably will happen, relative to legislation or very possible social catastrophes that entrench the current players longer than needed.

</comment><comment><USER95> > AMP, a technology no one asked for

!!!

</comment><comment><USER96> A lot of talk in this article about Google capturing the whole web, all valid points, but I find the Facebook walled garden even more terrifying. I see people now, often in online school parent groups I'm a part of, etc. who cannot even use email anymore, who don't use web pages at all, they get all their information through Facebook groups and Facebook, and only talk through Facebook messenger or sometimes SMS. E-mail is seen as arcane and tricky, lots of these people do no searching, and rarely leave Facebook. If they can't find it through Facebook (or a Twitter feed sometimes) they act bewildered. This may sound like exaggeration, but there really are people like this. I think this is even more problematic.

<comment><USER97> Something we (people who work in tech) should be acutely aware of is causing unnecessary distractions from important issues. When there's a discussion about the Google _very often_ the first few comments are about how some other tech company also does something unsavory. This is a thread about how Google's engineers are actively working to take over the web as we know it and become the gatekeepers to all the benefit (not to mention profit) the web has to offer, and now the top comment isn't about what Google are doing.

While your point is valid and reasonable in it's own right, posting it in a discussion about Google isn't really the right place.

<comment><USER98> Worth noting that all sorts of entities employ people to do PR on internet forums, and redirecting and deflecting is a crucial part of their tactics.

Not saying that this is happening here, but forums need to be resilent and really focus hard on the issue at hand or be completely played by the professionals.

<comment><USER99> They don't need to be so Machiavellian. This forum is filled with Google and Facebook engineers. Some of them sincerely don't see anything bad in their companies. Others probably want to protect their stock options.

<comment><USER100> I am always amazed that being negative about Amazon is stomped out quickly in general. Just my experience where I wonder if this is by a team or they just have a lot fans.

<comment><USER101> Probably fans. It's not easy to get support against Amazon when they are still delivering the majority of people'a packages.

<comment><USER102> I don't think we need to be that charitable. Seems well in line with the Amazon ethos to proactively control the narrative around them in online discussions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> 302 Redirect: Just an observation that whenever there is something critical of Google here, the leading comments always are talking about something besides Google. There is sort of a redirection at work.

</comment><comment><USER104> This is depressing, we as developers have to take the bull by its horns. Simply stop using their services, advocate against AMP etc.

But in the end, the US government will most likely have to split the company in order for stuff to really change.

<comment><USER105> I'm posting this from Firefox Mobile. Works just fine for my day-to-day surfing.

DuckDuckGo is my default search engine, and it's not perfect or a panacea, but it works well enough (and there's "!g" for when it doesn't).

What we really need to do is be willing to pay for our tools, though.

Wikipedia estimates there are 21 million developers in the world, so if one out of twenty developers donated $1 / month to Mozilla, they'd be getting $1 million / month. You could sustain a few small dev teams on that. Not tons, but it's something.

If you took it to $5 / month, now you're looking at a lot more manpower.

If donations are given to specific software projects rather than the foundation as a whole, and bookkeeping is in the open, you can have decent confidence your money is actually going where you'd like it to go, too.

Just some half-baked thoughts.

<comment><USER106> Yeah I believe many programmers don't like their donations going to a non technical overpaid CEO's salary or activism instead of browser or technical projects like rust.</comment></comment></comment>


He got to name two moons of jupiter - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/cvseur/i_got_to_name_two_moons_of_jupiter_this_is_amazing/ <comment><USER2> they could of been named after halfgods offspring of jupiter and his mistresses :D then the moons would be the kids of jupiter :D

google says this: Jupiter Consort Juno Children Mars, Vulcan, Bellona, Juventas Parents Saturn and Ops Siblings Roman tradition: Juno, Ceres, Vesta Greco-Roman: Pluto and Neptune

pehraps they were taken already for some other celestial bodies. idk too much about that.

super cool for the dude though that his names got picked :D must be feeling like a champ :D

<comment><AUTHOR> That actually would have been cool. Not sure if they were taken. He has a video where he explains more about it and the background to the names he picked.</comment></comment>


Upcoming Debian 9.0 Stretch - <AUTHOR> https://bits.debian.org/2017/06/upcoming-stretch.html <comment><USER2> If anyone wants to start testing with a Vagrant based project, there are VirtualBox _and_ Parallels boxes on Atlas: [https://atlas.hashicorp.com/koalephant](https://atlas.hashicorp.com/koalephant)

The current boxes are based on RC5, and we'll be creating updated boxes as soon as release-version images are available.

Lastly: is there any demand for VMWare based boxes? We don't currently build them, but if there is demand I'll try to get that happening too.</comment>


Polymail (YC S16) looks to unify business email tools into a single web app - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/31/polymail-looks-to-unify-business-email-tools-into-a-single-web-app/ <comment><USER2> I enjoy using Polymail. It has a very nice user experience, in fact probably one of the best experiences of any email app I have used personally. I have been using it for 3yrs at least.

That said, Polymail does nothing for me business wise. I don't use it for my team, nor do I intend to any time soon. It serves me well as a simple email client for personal needs, but that's as far as things go.

They, along with a few other SaaS companies seem to be intent on solving problems I don't need solving or prioritising the wrong ones.

It's all good and well to say that other apps failed in this space because they didn't have a strong business model, which is fair enough but if you're not solving the right problems for your users, you're not going to get very far.

I really can't believe, that in 2018, we still dont have decent solutions for email collaboration for teams and for customer relationship management. We have one app in this space that has done a half decent job , which is Front but I still can't persuade myself to move to it. It has a confusing user experience and is not well priced.

So we're left with stitching things together through various tools which Polymail claims to solve but doesn't.

<comment><USER3> The biggest reason I believe for there to not be a unified tool at this point is that requirements are superficially the same, but when you dig deeply almost every company has a different set of needs, even locally contradictory ones

So you have stuff like Salesforce, with huge barriers to entry... But you can basically do everything. Sure, you might still need a Salesforce expert , but that's easier than 2 or 3 developers for a hand rolled thing that doesn't really integrate with anything.

Say what you will about paper workflows, but being able to paperclip stuff together, copy, write anywhere, etc. makes it pretty flexible. Lots of the cheaper tools with "easy onboarding" on the other hand...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are so many email apps and clients out now that a user never knows which ones are worth trying.

For me the killer features would be:

1\. Look through my entire history of emails to figure out who my friends are

2\. Remind me to email them more frequently

Like a CRM, but its just to email to friends.

<comment><USER5> On that request - I would try contactually. Pretty good on that front.

<comment><USER6> I really liked Contactually as a personal CRM because it could look into all the different messaging systems and tell me when I talked to someone last, but then I believe Facebook / LinkedIn etc shut down that functionality.

Is there anything of this sort out there for individuals for networking purposes? Not trying to sell these folks anything. I want to be told what my last touchpoint with someone was, when, where, regardless of what platform that was done on. That would be so useful.

I think Accompany was supposed to do that originally but they pivoted into something else?

<comment><USER4> Exactly. I wonder if contactually would just get rid of the team features and give a personal use price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've found good use of Polymail and pay $20/m for team pro. It's a love-hate relationship though due to small but disruptive UX patterns. Some examples:

The MacOS app does not follow normal keybinding conventions. Specifically, ESC causes the app to exit full screen and cmd+shift+f doesn't enter full screen. No option to customize either.

The iOS app will instantly show notifications for new emails, but upon opening up the app you have to wait 5-10 seconds for the emails to appear (while gmail is instant).

That said I enjoy the inbox zero image, snoozing of messages, and overall style.

</comment><comment><USER8> Semi-related, but I love how when I did a password reset to login to their web ui, it redirected me to "welovepg.polymail.io"

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome job, guys! We have several team members (mostly sales) using Polymail as a default email client.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell This service fails [https://www.emailprivacytester.com](https://www.emailprivacytester.com).

Where is the setting to disable loading of remote resources?

<comment><USER10> Apple mail.app does very well if you disable loading of images.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Does this mean Google Wave was that far ahead of its time?

<comment><USER11> I always like google wave for its unified stream/UI. I - for one - think it was ahead of its time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish there was a matrix client plugin that integrated with a slightly improved Thunderbird. Email plus awesome decentralized chat for the win!

</comment><comment><USER12> Tried it, didn't care for it. May work for some.

(Personally, I'm loving Missive - [https://missiveapp.com/](https://missiveapp.com/) \- which seems targeted at a similar niche and has some very slick execution.)</comment>


Expensive cities are killing creativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/expensive-cities-are-killing-creativity-2013121065856922461.html

<comment><USER2> Al Jazeera wants you to move to St. Louis.

As someone living in New York, my most common response to these sorts of article is:

1: Okay, but I can't just pick up and go to some artist's utopia. I have a job and (hopefully) a career to think about. I made the decision to move to New York years ago and now for better or worse I'm here, and working in a job that is not super common elsewhere.

2: Okay, New York Sucks (Big Cities Suck), so where should we go? Portland, OR where there are no jobs? Austin, same? St. Louis, apparently?

3 (Bonus/most confusing): If you work in tech, are just starting out in your career, where is the intersection of a city with robust tech scene to provide you jobs, and yet low rent and thriving art scene?</comment>


Home More Secure Than Cloud, Says Consumers - <AUTHOR> http://ipvm.com/reports/home-cloud-secure <comment><USER2> The cloud is a herd that, when attacked, all members fall, making the attack worthwhile. An individual in that herd falls because he was in the herd.

My laptop and disks at home are just me. The payoff just isn't that great.

The best way an individual can protect himself from a list of personally identifying information being stolen is to not be on the list.</comment>


Ask HN: How can we use tech to prevent another Grenfell tower fire? - <AUTHOR> Just a few days ago in the heart of London, a 24-storey tower block burnt down killing at least 30 people.  It has since emerged that residents were aware of many fire-risk issues but did not have an effective way to publicise them. I am wondering what tools the residents could have used to prove that the building really was at risk. If I lived in a tower block right now I'd be desperately seeking information on how to evaluate the fire risk and fix any issues. If there aren't any solutions out there, this could be a worthwhile project for someone to work on. <comment><USER2> Tech is actually a big part of the problem - inequality is driven by anti- monopoly laws not being enforced for decades; power and money aren't trickling down to the poor so they get what they get - housing that's cheap deathtraps from fire, or lack of earthquake proofing, or Flint-like water.</comment>


Port Squatting - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2674602 <comment><USER2> SRV records, used in DNS-SD and notably in Zeroconf, provide you the port numbers dynamically. Assigning port numbers to internet services globally across the entire internet was a mistake, and one that we can avoid for newly defined services. It creates two problems:

1\. The one mentioned in this article: the namespace is finite and small, leading to conflicts over the administration of its allocation;

2\. virtual hosting — you can only have one instance of a service per IP address, unless you kludge into the higher-layer protocol ( _every_ higher- layer protocol) some way of telling the server which instance of the service you were _trying_ to connect to. And even then, all your "virtual hosts" have to be running on the same software — you can't run some of them on Courier IMAP and others on Dovecot, say. By contrast, if you just bind them to different ports and publish those port numbers in DNS SRV records, these problems go away.

TCPMUX on port 1 was the first attempt to solve this problem, but it didn't catch on. DNS-SD/Zeroconf/Bonjour/Rendezvous/SRV records seem like a viable and highly usable alternative, as long as we don't get lost in the alphabet soup.

<comment><USER3> I agree entirely. You'd still have a string namespace, but that string namespace is more easily subdivided.

One key downside, though: for a conversation with any service not in your cache, you need to resolve the service before connecting, rather than knowing in advance. So there's still an advantage to any service that can use a well- known port. That advantage partly goes away if you can resolve a hostname in the same DNS request as a service on that host, but that would require improving the current level of integration between clients and system resolvers.

<comment><USER2> Really? I didn't realize there was a client-side problem there. I guess there's still a _security_ problem, though, if the SRV record points to a hostname that nameserver may not be authoritative for.

Edited to be more specific: I mean, if you want to cut the time to resolve a service name to an IP:port pair from two round-trip times down to one, then you need to get the A or AAAA record from the same nameserver as the SRV record. Getting the nameserver to include that record in the "additional" section, like a glue record for NS delegations, isn't hard; but if it's in another gTLD, how does the client know that nameserver is authoritative for that domain? It could be sending you a false A record. You wouldn't want to cache that; it could enable a MITM attack! Better check with the gTLD servers. But that means another round-trip-time delay.

<comment><USER4> _It could be sending you a false A record. You wouldn't want to cache that; it could enable a MITM attack! Better check with the gTLD servers. But that means another round-trip-time delay._

If the nameserver you're connecting to is doing things like that, this is a problem for _all_ your traffic, not just traffic that relies on SRV records.

<comment><USER2> This is not necessarily the nameserver local to you; this may be the nameserver that's authoritative for the SRV record you're trying to look up. Maybe you're trying to talk to a machine in North Korea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One absolutely excellent reason for not tying services to port numbers is that it instantly undoes a large amount of strangling currently done to the peer- to-peer nature of the net. If you could run a web server with a url sans :port/ combo on any port that you wanted to then ISPs would have no easy way of blocking access to your self-hosted service without doing deep packet inspection.

It's totally ridiculous that with 100 Mbps 'down' and 20 Mbps 'up' you still need a hosting account for a small web server.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, for home users mapping services to ports statically makes it easier to apply QoS at the router. But when ports are randomised, or shared, it's hard to do anything about it.

For example on a rather high-end netgear home router I can apply QoS by port, but that means Crashplan, Web and Skype use the same port. Even though I'd like them to be low, medium and high priority respectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Port numbers as the next ipv4 "problem", oooh I like it. No amount of garbage collection for careful allocation will solve it. Expect another heavy-handed, non-memorizable, rear-ward-looking solution from the IETF that involves reimplementing the whole Internet.

Oh, SRV records, right that's what I was going to post about. Yes, once again, SRV records would have solved this problem in quite an elegant and simple way. And it's backwards compatible until we hit an actual port number crisis... cool!

<comment><USER8> The article claims 90% of the space is still available.

<comment><USER9> Because nobody actually registers their ports. It's a multi-month process with little benefit to anyone.

<comment><USER10> And even then, it doesn't matter because it's still simply convention. The internet won't break for anyone if I serve something other than mysql on port 3306. There's only a few port numbers where the public edifice around them is so huge that they really can't be that mobile - web (two ports), mail (six or so), dns (one port) and so forth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Unlike IP addresses, port numbers are only conventions, they are not technically required to be unique.

If I want to run an ssh server on port 80 (HTTP) then I can, and it will work just fine, and it won't bother anyone else.

<comment><USER12> In addition, you might want to run a process on a non standard port for security through obscurity such as not running SSH on port 22.

<comment><USER13> Yes, because if nothing else, it almost eliminates failed login log messages (talking specifically about ssh here).

<comment><USER14> true enough... the fail2ban messages are bad enough without running SSH on port 22... on the flip side, it sucks in other ways if you want to use SSH for something that isn't complete host access (terminal based BBS for instance).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Decline and Fall of an Ultra Rich Online Gaming Empire  - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-12/ff_ige?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> I've always felt that MMORPG companies really missed out on a market opportunity by not having auction sites tied to their game for the trade of goods. A 3% cut of $2 billion is a lot better than spending time trying to fight it.</comment>


Bill Gates pledges 120 million to boost African, Indian farmers - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091015/ts_alt_afp/africaindiausfoodfarmcharitygates <comment><USER2> _applauds effort_

A lot of people hate on Bill, but the man sure knows how to invest his money wisely.

<comment><USER3> But it's all dirty Micro$oft money! That can't be good!

<comment><USER4> How do you define "good" ?

<comment><USER3> The same way you'd define "sarcasm," I imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does the news always only cover the "pledging" and not follow up with how/when and if at all that pledge and subsequent giving has helped the people they were supposed to help?

<comment> bjelkeman-again Maybe we could convince them to use a system like <http://akvo.org> which has reporting tools from projects that have been funded. Soon we will have SMS field reporting tools as well, so you don't even need an internet connection to do it.

Disclosure: Yeah, I am a cofounder of Akvo.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He doesn't say what area or which country but I spent a few weeks in Burkina Faso in West Africa. ( it will rank as one of the poorest countries in the world) I hung out with a friend who was working on a food security program for a US based NGO, so I have a good idea about the current conditions. The farmers are trying to grow crops in terrible conditions and I don't think any amount of money is going to help them. It's just an arid barren soil with absolutely zero infrastructure. Which doesn't really matter because these farmers are trying to grow food just to live, not to sell. I think most of the country has conditions not suitable for human habitat, but those are the people that need help the most.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand your argument. There are farmers trying to grow food on dry, possibly salty, soil without infrastructure, without fertilizer, without much irrigation, without knowledge of modern agricultural methods, without access to good seeds, and you're saying better methods and better infrastructure, more knowledge, etc would not help them? Why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know Bill Gates is in no position to do this but the best way to help farmers in third world countries is to stop paying out the stupendous subsidies that the developed world pays to keep their farmers "in business".

</comment><comment> bjelkeman-again If anything, they should look into supporting the One Acre Fund.

<http://www.oneacrefund.org/our_results/program_dashboard>

They are doing an incredible job and and a question and answer session about their work can be found here:

[http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/forum/topics/global- swadeshi-...](http://globalswadeshi.ning.com/forum/topics/global-swadeshi- dialogues)

<comment> bjelkeman-again Some more info on the One Acre Fund.

The One Acre Fund a group operating in Africa doing incredible work: doubled food production, halved (or better) infant mortality, as shown below. Sample size was 4000 farms, now they are involved with 12000 farms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used to admire such humanitarian actions, but I've come to question the effectiveness of it. Bill Gates, and many others in the West like him, want to prevent suffering in the world, and I admire that, but I think it might actually create more suffering by creating means for more people to survive and create more offspring who in turn end up being just as poor, suffering just as much, creating an even bigger humanitarian crisis.

<comment><USER10> What we have now is the product of exactly what you are advocating: doing nothing. So how do you think it will get better?

<comment><USER9> I understand your point and I don't have a clue as to what will end poverty, I really don't think it's possible. I do know this, you say that the current state is a result of doing nothing, I don't find that to be factual. Billions of dollars (probably trillions) from the Western world has been given to poverty stricken areas, technology has been given and shared, schools built, peace keeping forces have been put in place in some areas, hospitals have been built, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is no Corruption-Free delivery system in India because 85% Indians do not have any Bank Accounts.

<http://tr.im/kJHv>

And this is the way Indian Leadership will keep its Voters SUBSERVIENT.

<comment><USER12> It's all about the Benjamins, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't mean to be an idiot, but at this point all life saving charity should aim to secure a reduction in population growth to offset the lives saved.

Being merely a humanitarian is a moral luxury with an environmental cost.

<comment><USER14> Well, the only (+) way we know to lower population increase is urbanization and increased living standard. So democracy and industrialization are the ways forward on the population bomb.

Arguably, Gates' grants works towards that. It will result in better agriculture, in the future leading to mechanization -- which means people moving to cities.

(+) Let us leave discussions of e.g. reintroducing the plague to Al Qaeda. 1/2 :-)

Edit: I might add that I think human lives are worth the environment, inside sane limits. Pollution go down with increased wealth, anyway.

<comment><USER13> Actually I've heard a quite compelling case that the emancipation of women is the single biggest factor in reduced fertility rates in the developed world. Obviously it is a corelate of democracy and development, but the former without the latter may be insufficient.

<comment><USER14> You can of course make a long list of additional preconditions, starting with "good governance".

It isn't relevant to my counter argument that Gates' grants in fact works towards stopping the population growth you feared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How will the farmers who don't get any money be able to sustain their business when the farmers who do are able to lower their prices due to the subsidy?

<comment><USER16> I don't think there's going to be a problem with the demand-side for food in Africa.

It will be critical with how they structure it. Less aid, more investment.</comment></comment>


The 'Hole' is 12' Below Street Level and a Century Behind the Rest of New York - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/2015/07/24/hole-lot-nothing-352623.html <comment><USER2> "The three have lived in the area for 3 years and prefer to live off the grid."

lolwut? "Off the grid".. while they watch a basketball game, use electricity, 1 guy on a laptop, another wearing headphones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it just me, or is this a terribly written article? It's filled with hyperbole and void of anything really substantial. I read the whole thing and can't think of more than one or two interesting points.</comment>


Why Apple Isn't Japanese - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/73236

<comment><USER2> The thing to note here is that some areas, especially (pop-)cultural (Nintendo (as mentioned in the article), anime, food products, candy, gadgets, vending machines, etc.), Japan is absolutely bursting with creative energy.

The ailing big business sectors mentioned in the article must (perhaps inadvertently) be doing a lot to suppress that creative spirit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I buy the broader point around Google, but I think they make too much of the iPod / iPhone - those are down to one man's passion for design, it could have come from someone in Japan, Steve Jobs just happens to be here.</comment>


Imran Khan: The World Can't Ignore Kashmir. We Are All in Danger - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/opinion/imran-khan-kashmir-pakistan.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.indiandefencereview.com/spotlights/op-topac- the-k...](http://www.indiandefencereview.com/spotlights/op-topac-the-kashmir- imbroglio-i/2/)

Read about: "Pakistan's Aims and Plans"

<comment><USER2> This will give you a picture of how Kashmiri youths where radicalized and poisoned by years of propaganda and turned into fighters for Pakistan.

With the current situation, a plebiscite is out of question.</comment></comment>