[notatoad]

>But by actively preventing third-parties from porting their services to WP

[citation needed]

The only history i'm aware of with google blocking app development on windows phone is when they sent C&Ds to people developing apps that stripped all the ads off youtube and played background audio. They also consistently take down and block android apps that violate the TOS in this way, and i don't see anybody saying that google is trying to kill android.

[microtonal]

Google blocked the web version of Google Maps in Internet Explorer for Windows Phone:

https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/#g...

Maps worked fine with exactly the same Trident engine on the desktop. Moreover, if you change the user agent string, maps also worked fine with Windows Phone.

[thaumasiotes]

That seems like a pretty simple fix for Microsoft to make on behalf of every Windows Phone user... Google can't compel MS to identify its phones for Google's benefit.

[arcticfox]

Google would just change the user-agent they were blocking to whatever Microsoft changed it to. It was intentional.

[thaumasiotes]

Again, there's no rule that says devices must have unique user-agents. Once you've established that Google wants to block Windows Phone from using maps, you can send the user-agent string of something they don't want to block.

[zeusk]

Hahaha

https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/15/4624706/google-blocks-win...

https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/15/4625502/microsoft-respond...

Google pulls this same bs with consoles as well, both PS4 and Xbox One (S/X) have a shitty HTML5 app that just doesn't fit well with rest of the system.

[oceanstone]

Really? I've used the ps4 YouTube app a bunch to watch videos, and movies purchased from the play store. My phone can cast to it as well. Seems to work as well as the Netflix app. I've had more issues with the ps4 store app honestly.

[snuxoll]

So does Apple TV now after the most recent update, and it’s absoultely terrible.

[snuxoll]

Nobody stripped ads offf YouTube videos - Google doesn’t provide an API you can use to display them in the first place and they had no desire to make a native application themselves to remove the necessity.

The background audio stuff, sure - that happened.