[allenskd]

I usually just download and self-host for this reason. A software should never rely or be dependent to content delivery networks/repositories like Google Fonts. There's nothing wrong with Google Fonts as a service and repository (tracking stuff aside), but I've never felt comfortable at the idea that we just link, lets say, jQuery or Angular through CDN and call it a day.

I should add that most of my work is through intranet applications with servers only accessed through VPN and I've seen the firewall disrupt Microsoft services one too many times so... it's more of a "yea, it's just a save-as or copy file to my app assets folder" versus users sending me emails that the pages stopped working.

[Havoc]

> A software should never rely or be dependent to content delivery networks/repositories

Not sure that's viable in today's cloud-y world

[HelloNurse]

It's the cloud that is not viable in a software world. Software is too important to introduce unnecessary dependencies and weaknesses.

[unlinked_dll]

Eliminating weaknesses to provide services that are faster and more robust is exactly why CDNs exist. Whether or not you find them necessary is up to you. Personally a world with content closer to my machine with more robust servers that can handle high traffic is better than the alternative.

[mneubrand]

You can get the best of both worlds by self-hosting and putting a CDN in front of that. This way you get robustness and your app will still function in isolation

[chiefalchemist]

I'd add that the nature and value of the internet itself is in having interconnectedness. Perhaps, not initially for a site's infrastructure, but only because no one saw that far ahead. None the less, the ideal was there.

If there's that much fear in connecting elsewhere then we've done something wrong. Of course, there are exceptions. There always are. But the arc of the internet is the natural ability to connect.

p.s. Using a CDN ideally saves the browser time. If I've already visited a site that used the same version of jQuery from the same CND then that's in the browser cache.

Sure. Maybe we need to refine this. I'm not sure. But let's not make connecting and sharing sound like a bad idea.

[Havoc]

>that's in the browser cache.

As per article that's no longer true. Thanks fingerprinting.

[pmoleri]

Isn't that like not trusting AWS and have your own reliable data center for website hosting?

Edit: Removed cache statement.

[sideshowb]

You have to accept that a server may fail to be accessible, whether it's yours or Amazon's. If this is an issue you add redundancy.

When you load lots of resources from God knows where in a way such that any single failure takes the page down, you are reducing the reliability that you could have had if the resources were all in the same place which you concentrate on keeping available.

[marcosdumay]

If your site runs on AWS, it should run on AWS, not on AWS + Google Fonts + React CDN + Github + ...

But actually, there's nothing wrong with adding dependencies, granted that you correctly do your risk assessment. Are those developers assessing their risks and making an informed decision to add them?

[pmoleri]

I agree on that, I just don't see fonts as critical for your site, provided that you have a fallback. But I see how hosting the fonts is pretty easy to do and you avoid one point of failure for the user experience.

[Havoc]

Pretty much.

I'm really starting to doubt whether it's competitive to do your own thing anymore. And this seems to be getting worse.

Hard to compete with the combo of features & scaling that cloud provides. Attempting it pretty much guarantees you a gnarly trade-off somewhere (reliability, complexity etc).