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by mcmc
5678 days ago
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I think you may have missed the point of the Web Store, which, like Apple & the iPhone, is predicated on the idea of selling applications that are compatible with the platform -- in this case Chrome. There will obviously be some applications that are easy to port to other platforms, depending on the specific APIs used, and some that will be more difficult. (For instance, you can't actually use an application that depends on the WebSocket rev76 API in Firefox 3.5/4, Opera, or Safari 6.0 or less.) If a developer has an application that works in other browsers, then hey, they should go distribute those apps in more places than just the Web Store. But it only really makes sense to position the Web Store as a Chrome-specific application repository b/c Google is only really guaranteeing that these apps work in Chrome. Google isn't lying, much in the same way that Apple isn't "basically, lying" when they fail to point out that you can play Angry Bird on Android just as easily as you can play it on an iPhone. |
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My point is that for the last decade we've been trying to move towards a web where any browser can be used perfectly well, and Google are now trying to reverse this trend in order to lock users in to their platform and make it unnaturally difficult for developers to port their 'apps' to other 'platforms'.
When did a browser become a platform?! I thought the web was the platform? The damage that this does in the short term is that the web is divided into the Chrome-enabled web and the rest of the web. If the idea catches on then the medium term damage is that the web is divided into the Chrome-web and the Firefox-web and the Safari-web and so on and so on.
> For instance, you can't actually use an application that depends on the WebSocket rev76 API in Firefox 3.5/4, Opera, or Safari 6.0 or less.
There was a time when CSS3 wasn't supported in some browsers. We didn't make a 'Firefox app store' for people who wanted CSS support in their web apps, we made fallbacks for older browsers with the knowledge that the other browsers would catch up eventually. That's a good approach because over all it makes for a more open, platform-agnostic web. What Google are doing with the web store is destroying that openness in order to push their own proprietary platform.
> Apple isn't "basically, lying" when they fail to point out that you can play Angry Bird on Android just as easily as you can play it on an iPhone.
That's totally different - the Android version is a completely different piece of code to the iPhone one. Whereas http://nytimes.com/chrome works just fine on firefox.