[ABCLAW]

The tone of the article and the posts in this thread are literally the most important piece of content.

This is the person who was directly called out for a specific action which broke one element of Edge functionality. His commits and comments have a very strong "well, fuck them" vibe to them.

I read the initial post that led to this blog reply. It accused google of not playing well with others. The engineer in question is in this thread saying he doesn't give a shit what people think about his tone and that he isn't diplomatic.

He is literally the criticism personified - the hubris made person.

No wonder people are talking about it.

[jnoring]

Author here. I do not work for google. I mistakenly thought that obvious, but clearly it's been misunderstood.

And here's where I take umbrage with your response: I'm an engineer. I'm not here to sugar coat shit for people. There are a dozen different legitimate reasons someone may position some element over a video rendering window, and it is 100% MSFT's bad for not even considering this test case when they wrote their rendering engine.

And what really irks me is: thousands and thousands of people on the Internet seem to take this story by some MSFT intern as not only plausible but probable. And that's bullshit. Our standards for truth as engineers should be higher than that.

[ABCLAW]

Hi, thanks for replying.

I'm a lawyer. I get paid a lot to communicate directly and precisely. While many people in our field are viewed as assholes, the best of us are able to be blunt while also being tactful. Being an engineer isn't an excuse for communicating poorly or having your tone override your message. Luckily this is a trait that can be worked on - I used to have the same issue and am getting better.

Let me take a deeper look at what's irking you: You state Google may have had a valid reason to do what it did. Okay. Let's conceed that. Despite that concession, does that actually address the problem you raised?

1) Google may have, despite having had a reason to do what it did, done it for the wrong reason. The timing of advertising which specifically required the negative effect of the change upon Edge's metrics certainly seems to point that way. You've described a plausible alterative rationale for their actions, but nothing more than that.

2) Incentivewise, Google has every desire in the world to maintain their browser marketshare numbers.

3) The full claim made by the intern is that this was one of an onslaught of changes made by Google to make their sites less performant on other browsers. Other people in the same thread indicated similar issues, and Google staff indicated that they were actually planning on resolving some of these issues in the future, an admission that the issues do, in fact, exist.

4) The intern further makes an allegation that the Edge team attempted to inform Google about the behavior, but did not receive any redress or explanation regarding the issue. One would expect that the Youtube team would have raised the issues you addressed regarding Edge's handling in a quick reply. They didn't.

Overall, if you were Google staff, your objection would deal with a number of these points I've raised, but as it stands that isn't the case.

I did appreciate the article's technical discussion, though, so thank you for that insight.

[lern_too_spel]

> This is the person who was directly called out for a specific action which broke one element of Edge functionality.

No, the intern called out Google, not this guy.

[ABCLAW]

If my organization is called out, and the citation given is my specific work, I would consider that someone called me on my work, even if they hadn't named me.

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

[lern_too_spel]

He doesn't work for Google, nor did he implement the YouTube feature the intern called out. He implemented something similar in his own project. This was clear in the article.

[ABCLAW]

That could be the case! But was it clear in the article? I just reread it and the author doesn't indicate where he works at all. He does, however, quote himself saying: "[...] I’m pretty sure I’ve written that exact code?"

Not 'related' or 'similar' code, mind you. Maybe that's where I assumed he was part of the team.

If you're right and he doesn't work for the company the piece becomes pure speculation.

[richrichardsson]

Here's how an editor would quote that : "I’m pretty sure I’ve written that exact (same) code?" I'm sorry, but you have misunderstood the author. To me (and others) it's quite obvious that he doesn't work for Google, but has simply implemented a workaround for Edge that matches exactly what YouTube did, and (as you correctly surmised) speculated their reason for doing so. Edit : I have changed my mind a little! It's not beyond the realms of possibility that he works for Google. However, I suspect not.

[ABCLAW]

The author has replied to me! He does not. Just a poor choice of words.

[lern_too_spel]

> If you're right and he doesn't work for the company the piece becomes pure speculation.

He says as much himself: "Here’s what I suspect happened at google:"