[cooldeal]

Edit: [[[ This story is getting heavily flagged as well.

http://i.imgur.com/LiUSpCy.png

Looks like the Google fans, employees and shareholders on HN with good karma can't let this story break on the day of Google I/O? And people accuse Microsoft of astroturfing! What is this then?

If PG does not want to stop this blatant and continuous moderator abuse, he might as well declare HN a Google and Linux fiefdom so that the rest of us using other platforms and who can think for ourselves and are not Microsoft haters can stay away. ]]]

Posted this story earlier and it got flagged off the front page.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5714520

Reposting my comment here:

This is the latest in a long saga. From a post from Microsoft in 2011:

First, in 2006 Google acquired YouTube—and since then it has put in place a growing number of technical measures to restrict competing search engines from properly accessing it for their search results. Without proper access to YouTube, Bing and other search engines cannot stand with Google on an equal footing in returning search results with links to YouTube videos and that, of course, drives more users away from competitors and to Google.

Second, in 2010 and again more recently, Google blocked Microsoft’s new Windows Phones from operating properly with YouTube. Google has enabled its own Android phones to access YouTube so that users can search for video categories, find favorites, see ratings, and so forth in the rich user interfaces offered by those phones. It’s done the same thing for the iPhones offered by Apple, which doesn’t offer a competing search service.

Unfortunately, Google has refused to allow Microsoft’s new Windows Phones to access this YouTube metadata in the same way that Android phones and iPhones do. As a result, Microsoft’s YouTube “app” on Windows Phones is basically just a browser displaying YouTube’s mobile Web site, without the rich functionality offered on competing phones. Microsoft is ready to release a high quality YouTube app for Windows Phone. We just need permission to access YouTube in the way that other phones already do, permission Google has refused to provide.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...

[mtgx]

Twitter and Facebook can do and have done the same thing to other 3rd party developers, too.

This like saying Google is not on equal footing with Bing on social media integration, because it doesn't get the type of API level that Bing gets from Facebook.

Does Google want to "maliciously" block Youtube from WP8? Yes. Does Facebook maliciously block Google from getting any of their deeper level API's? Yes.

So now can we also stop pretending Google owes anything to Microsoft? I wish the situation for all platforms was different, too, and there was a lot more collaboration between them. But I also understand why Google is doing this. It's retaliation for all the crap Microsoft has done against Google over the past few years, too - the anti-trust lawsuit, the Gmail ad, the DroidRage, the Scroogle, the patent license extortion from Android (and Chromebook) makers, and on and on.

So I can't exactly say I feel sorry for Microsoft, because they are not innocent, even though they try to play it like that in the media. But this situation will become worse for any user that isn't fully committed to one platform or another, and that's just the unfortunate reality of the tech war today. Maybe it will get better in a few years.

[wslh]

At least with the Microsoft monopoly you could reverse engineer their software. What is happening with the web is much worse.

Additional copy & pasted rant:

"You can reverse engineer binary applications but you cannot reverse engineer the cloud. When Google deprecates a web service, Facebook eliminates an API, or Twitter imposes tougher API restrictions, all dependant services fall like dominoes. The weakest link in the chain is the cloud services that you can’t run or port anywhere: we no longer have control over the applications we use.

On the other hand if you want to run old applications from the Apple II, downloading an emulator solves the problem. Do you miss Borland Turbo Pascal 5.5? Install DOS on your i7 or run it in a virtual machine to achieve instantaneous happiness. Just don’t expect to take advantage of your quad core! Emulators are not created in a vacuum and reverse engineering is the key to emulating a complete platform. Reverse engineering is also very important to tackle complex issues in hardware and software virtualization. For example, you need reverse engineering skills to virtualize Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7.

It seems odd now that Microsoft was prosecuted for engaging in monopolistic practices in the 90s. Apple and Google are currently abusing their market positions without much real criticism. Microsoft must be laughing because these new companies have launched platforms far more controlled than Microsoft’s in the 90s. Ironically, Microsoft is now doing the same thing with their mobile initiatives and Windows, which would have been illegal 20 years ago. All of the above practices are contrary to the hacker spirit."

[ghshephard]

"It seems odd now that Microsoft was prosecuted for engaging in monopolistic practices in the 90s. Apple and Google are currently abusing their market positions without much real criticism."

Key, and very important points:

First - Microsoft really did have a, legally proven, Monopoly position in 1999 for desktop/laptop computing. It's hard for some of us to remember, particularly with the wealth of web-based computing in which the client really doesn't matter any more (Facebook works just fine from a Mac or Linux System) - not to mention the incredible growth of mobile (in which Microsoft has no traction). But in 1999, Microsoft had basically a monopoly role in the people's computing experience, and they then tried to leverage that monopoly to take over another market (web browsing) . They managed to squish Netscape like a little bug, but the Justice Department stepped in, and prevented them from continuing their illegal behavior [1].

Apple has a nice product, but they most certainly do not have a Monopoly.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp...

[wslh]

I agree that Microsoft had a legally proven monopoly but Google is moving so fast that laws are light-years behind.

What we watched today at Google I/O was really impressive. Not from the technology side but from the business/velocity/applied-research perspective. I don't want to stop that kind of innovation but leave space to a more healthy web (APIs).

[ankitml]

They can (and have) destroyed businesses just by blocking access to people's google accounts. Without any warning.

[OGinparadise]

"They managed to squish Netscape like a little bug"

How many "little bugs" has Google squished with their Search? Granted they didn't get sued by DOJ because they were smarter (Google's Lobbying Budget: $25 Million During FTC Probe - http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/01/04/google-spend-25-mill... ) than Microsoft but with a 70% online market share they can destroy virtually any business or niche they want to.

All the extra stuff you see on Google Search now was done by other companies and most were destroyed during Search updates for having "spammy and shallow content." If you ask Google why the clutter? The answer is something like "Because users love that content...blah blah" But users hated it when others did it and Google didn't make money on it. Of course.

[makomk]

Google haven't squashed nearly enough little bugs. Google search results are still full of crappy vertical search engines and other zero-value content whose entire business model is based on them getting in the way of finding the information I actually want.

Every time I search for reviews of a laptop, say, I get page after page of autogenerated sites that have not one iota of content to call their own, but still manage to rank highly for "<model> reviews". They're the main ones that have been yelling about Google screwing them.

[SilasX]

The ease with which people can share files, thus giving copyright laws a big middle finger, might have had a part in encouraging software design to be placed behind an API gate and into the cloud.

Just sayin'...

[joesb]

"You can reverse engineer binary applications but you cannot reverse engineer the cloud."

Umm, yes you can. It's all series of HTTP calls. Problem is not with reverse engineering, it's getting people to use your new reverse-engineered service with zero other users to provide content. You can reverse engineer Youtube and have all its features and API, you just don't get all the content and community in it.

[wslh]

No, you can't: a service that shutdowns can't be recovered, and you can't learn about the advanced Google algorithms just scraping their search engine.

One of the core ethical purposes of reverse engineering is to leave the door open for competition.

[outside1234]

The difference is that Google bitches and moans about browser ballots in the OS, bitches and moans about Facebook not being open, but forgets all of this about YouTube.

[mgkimsal]

"But I also understand why Google is doing this. It's retaliation for all the crap Microsoft has done against Google over the past few years, too - the anti-trust lawsuit, the Gmail ad, the DroidRage, the Scroogle, the patent license extortion from Android (and Chromebook) makers, and on and on."

You forgot bingiton.com

[ankitml]

Just by saying that microsoft has done bad to us wont change the tarnished image of google.

Microsoft was known evil, now google has joined the party too.

[b0rsuk]

Two negatives don't make a positive here.

[recoiledsnake]

In a number of comments on HN I get the impression that people believe Google to be a more "open" and less evil company and thus should be trusted more but here you're comparing them to other companies considered "evil" and saying it's okay for Google to behave the same way.

Also, lack of social media integration isn't that important a feature of search engines. Also it is likely that UbuntuOS/Jolla/FirefoxOS/Bada also get the same treatment from Google?

[wamatt]

There used to be an understated, but strong implication, that Google is 'good', Microsoft is 'evil', and perhaps justifiably so: Microsoft didn't exactly make a good impression on geekdom during the 90's.

These days however, and speaking from a purely subjective perspective, Microsoft appears to be slightly softer and humbler, whilst Google under Page appears to be confident, maybe even aggressive and certainly increasingly ubiquitous. It's the last part that concerns me most.

Apple, Google and Microsoft however all pale by comparison when placed on the same scale as non-profit Mozilla Corp, in terms of openness and looking after our rights and freedoms.

Personally I'm somewhat of a bannerless citizen, but at least in theory, that's an organization that could receive my support.

[georgemcbay]

I used to believe Google was more "open" and "less evil", because they were.

I no longer believe those things, because they aren't true anymore (but they did used to be true).

I still use a lot of Google products and services (gmail, Nexus 4, google maps, search, ARM Chromebook, Go, etc) because I am more pragmatic than idealist, but now I view Google as being capable of being just as dicky as any other big company when it suits them, because that's how they've been behaving for the past couple of years.

I think it is unfortunate they don't make the APIs more equally available to all platforms, but I'm not going to start a riot or boycott them over it... they are just a big business being a big business, and yes, occasionally doing "evil" (for very first-world-problem definitions of "evil").

[Svip]

Maemo never did. I had a N900, and one of its standard YouTube app allowed you to download videos, which seems to be one of Google's issues with the Windows Phone app. I never recall Google sending a mail to Nokia about that. Maybe nobody used Maemo? Or the fact that it did not have a kill switch?

[cooldeal]

From Google's About page: "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Last time when Google was intentionally blocking Google maps and then deprecated ActiveSync on Windows Phone someone posted this funny line(which seems quite true given how much of the world's crowdsourced video content is on YouTube):

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, except on Windows Phone".

Also, HN's post about Microsoft's reply is getting heavily flaggged as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889

[Steko]

"If PG does not want to stop this blatant and continuous moderator abuse, he might as well declare HN a Google and Linux fiefdom so that the rest of us using other platforms and who can think for ourselves and are not Microsoft haters can stay away."

I think an interesting project would be to reverse engineer the flag scoring and karma decay, scrape and offer an "unskewed HN" and something that shows most flagged topics or articles (maybe a flag weighted word cloud for last x days idk).

[ok_craig]

The issue is that the app is not displaying ads, which is against the TOS.

[makomk]

Actually, I suspect that it might mainly be the video download functionality that's made Google pissed off. They've mostly turned a blind eye to blocking ads on YouTube - there's even extensions on the Chrome Web Store specifically advertised as YouTube ad blockers - but they're really aggressive towards YouTube downloader software. (Though they're probably less willing to turn a blind eye in general when platform owners like Microsoft do it.)

[kyrias]

and that there's a download button.

[anonymfus]

But if app is not using official YouTube API, then TOS for API are not applicable for it. So in legal sense this must be equal to browser with built-in ad blocker. Except trademark problem.

[recoiledsnake]

>The issue is that the app is not displaying ads, which is against the TOS.

Microsoft has responded to the takedown notice.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889

(Edit: looks like that submission is getting flagged as well. I guess this story really isn't showing Google is good light if Google fans are in such heavy damage control mode. It looks like they have a veto on what appears on the HN front page. Look you may not like Microsoft and even its response but why try to bury a legitimate news item? Not enough Google I/O posts on front page? ).

"We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs.

In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers."

I wonder what happens if Microsoft doesn't back down till they get access to the ads API, will Google file a lawsuit? Interesting times!

[Bill_Dimm]

Ars Technica includes Microsoft's response about needing the API and then mentions[1]:

"It's perhaps notable that the YouTube app for Xbox DOES include support for ads, and has done since last year."

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/google-tells-microsof...

[agravier]

Did MS ask for API access first?

[cooldeal]

The issue that triggers that problem is that Google refuses to either give them access to the YouTube API like it does for iOS and Android or makes a WP app itself.

[Someone]

did for iOS (http://t.nbcnews.com/technology/apple-says-youtube-app-wont-...)

There is a Google YouTube app for iOS, though.

[CloudNine]

Apple developed the original YouTube iOS app with Google's blessings and pulled it after Google released their own official version.

[lern_too_spel]

The API is JSON over HTTP. Getting permission to use it is a completely automated process.

[cooldeal]

And I would assume getting banned from the API is also a completely automated process.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started#quo...

[rbanffy]

I guess the Windows Phone guys don't talk to their Xbox counterparts...

http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/28/youtube-xbox-app/

[MysticMan]

So what? I think the XBox YouTube app was developed by Google, not Microsoft.

http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an...

WP does not ban adding ads to apps.

If Google made a competing game console, would be interesting to see if they would have withheld it like they do on Windows Phone.

[clark-kent]

There are copyright issues involved because Microsoft needs direct raw access to the YouTube videos, this means that Microsoft can bypass the ads and other deals Google have made with their content partners. Apple and Tivo made deals with Google to be able to do this, Google has to decide if its worth it for them to make the same deal with Microsoft at this point. I personally don't think Google is being evil about it there's just a lot more involved.

[przemelek]

You see each service in Internet has something called Terms Of Service. In case of YouTube one of terms says that apps cannot skip ads. In other words it says that apps cannot steal from poor creators of materials. MS created app which is doing it. They ordinary steal money from ads from creators. People spent theirs time on creating content, uploaded it to YouTube, and now WP users thanks to MS will watch theirs work in way which will cause that creators will not get money from it. Does behavior of MS means that now anybody can download all MS products and start to use those products without paying?

[iamshs]

So suppose i access youtube through Firefox and I have adblocker and a video download extension installed .....am I in violation of ToS? Also, I have AppleTV and I have never seen any ad on youtube video, so are they themselves helping me to steal content from creators?

[iamshs]

@cloudnine : But then it is the same app (YT), and same functionality being accessed. SO why is Google adamant on showing ads for WP users?

[CloudNine]

AppleTV doesn't compete with Android so they don't care.

Well, there is GoogleTV, but it's doing way worse than Windows Phone, so they don't care.

[technoslut]

I doubt Apple would do anything without Google's permission regarding this. Google probably has the same deal with Apple with the built-in YouTube app where there weren't any ads either.

[przemelek]

@iamshs not sure here, but I'm guessing that you are not breaking TOS. But app for displaying YouTube content needs to be OK with TOS for YouTube API. And this TOS says: II. Prohibitions Your API Client will not, and You will not encourage or create functionality for Your users or other third parties to: [...] modify, replace, interfere with or block advertisements placed by YouTube in the YouTube Data, YouTube audiovisual content, or the YouTube player;

[https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms]

[przemelek]

@iamshs where you found info that Google forbidden MS to use YouTube API? I only read that MS said that Google didn't help them and that they don't have access to metadata. But I never found direct wording "forbidden MS to use YouTube API" or similar. Can you share with info where somebody from MS says that Google forbidden them to use YouTube API?

[iamshs]

Ok. Thank you for the information. So as other commentators are saying, Google did not let MS access the youtube API, so does this app still in violation of TOS rules? Interesting moves from behemoths, specially considering MS's reply.

[matwood]

The YouTube apps on my android devices is pretty poor (look at the comments on the play store). I usually just end up going to the website. Google is mad someone built a working app for YouTube.

[OGinparadise]

My bet is on Google employees. I get a good dozen or so downvotes from them when I post something negative about Google. Usually it happens in a short period of time, as if someone gave them marching orders.

I have also noticed that Googlers aren't fans of saying "Disclaimer: I work for Google" but go straight into praising Google's Product A and Feature B as if they had no bias.

"Google is good and Microsoft is evil" is getting a little tiring and IMO is no longer true. Google will do almost anything for a quick buck:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/13/google-keny... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190478740457652... http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/05/technology/google_verizon_ne...

Just imagine what may hide in their black box algorithms as Google claims fairness an unbiased results.

[blhack]

>I dislike large corporations of all stripes (especially smooth talking ones) that are trying to take over the web for their own financial good.

From you profile. You don't think that maybe this bias is showing through in some of your comments?

[threeseed]

So what if there is a bias ? EVERYONE has biases. It's what makes us different.

You shouldn't ever be downvoted for expressing an opposing position.

[crayola]

I'd call this an opinion rather than a bias.. A bias is where some exogenous factors (e.g. background, stakes..) are pushing opinions a certain direction.

[OGinparadise]

So what? People have biases, I never claimed to be unbiased and we're just sharing our opinions. I do not get paid by anyone for what I say. What I said about Google is heretic to some, only because they have this notion of an angelic Google. They'd believe it for Apple, most other companies and especially for Facebook and Microsoft.

Anyway, bed time is almost here.

[burntsushi]

> So what?

Unless I missed something, your OP was one big complaint about biases.

[pfortuny]

Not bias: abuse of power which is quite a different thing. On HN opinions only have interest, votes have power.

[burntsushi]

Abuse? Votes are influenced by bias. Abuse only happens when there is a large coordinated effort to snuff something out.

[rbanffy]

> My bet is on Google employees.

So, either your post is considered bad, deserving downvotes, or there is a conspiracy. I'd go for the simple explanation.

[OGinparadise]

So, either your post is considered bad, deserving downvotes, or there is a conspiracy. I'd go for the simple explanation.

Me too. Considering the flagging of bad-for-Google stories it makes sense.

That's what you meant for the "simple explanation" right?

[kumarm]

Looking at your posts, it appears your posts has more hate than reason when it comes to Google.

FYI: I don't work for Google. So its not just google employees that disagree with you.

[OGinparadise]

Looking at your posts, it appears your posts has more hate than reason when it comes to Google.

That's an opinion, but I no longer fall for Google's kool aid...and yes, there's some boomerang from having drunk it earlier on.

FYI: I don't work for Google. So its not just google employees that disagree with you.

The good thing is that I am not looking to get noticed, get funded or being hired here so I truly say what's in my mind. I am 100% sure that many [insert corp name here] employees disagree with me on virtually every topic.

[psbp]

"That's an opinion, but I no longer fall for Google's kool aid...and yes, there's some boomerang from having drunk it earlier on."

Why does everyone who's despondent towards Google act like the company is some sort of abusive ex-boyfriend?

[rbanffy]

I'd go with "flagging bad comments" or "flagging bad stories". I liked the Ars one better http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/google-tells-microsof...

[YeahKIA]

Rbanffy, you should look at your average rating and that if cooldeal before making that comment

[rbanffy]

It's abundantly clear I do not optimize for popular.

[brendano]

<i> I get a good dozen or so downvotes from them when I post something negative about Google. Usually it happens in a short period of time, as if someone gave them marching orders</i>

There are thousands of employees at Google. Maybe there are just are a lot of people reading HN during the day.

[belorn]

Comments sometimes get downvoted because they are off-topic (fair regarding guidelines? I do not know). For instance, this is a meta discussion about HN being biased towards one company or an other, and has nothing to do with an Microsoft developed app being declared to be in violating with YouTube’s API and Terms of Service.

[mcintyre1994]

Are Bing's ranking algorithms open source then? Or are they too just a black box? This is ridiculous - I'm a big fan of open source but do you think it's realistic that somebody can make their ranking algorithm open source and stay relevant? There's people that would abuse it ridiculously.

[ok_craig]

If people comment and don't say they're Google employees, how do you know they're Google employees?

[fuck_google]

Googlers and Google fanboys are still living in denial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model

[11hour]

Why was Microsoft evil? Because back in the day they hired only the best and brightest nerds and geeks. They had the same type of 'IQ test' interviews that Google does now. A company needs some code janitors and code monkeys, and others, to go along with the top coders.

Google are an "us vs them" company now not a "great products" company and that's why they do these things like downvoting rings that lack integrity. That's just the tip of the iceberg, and it's going to get a lot worse.

[rbanffy]

> Why was Microsoft evil? Because back in the day they hired only the best and brightest nerds and geeks.

No. Because they abused a monopoly position hurting competition, therefore artificially inflating prices and preventing the kind of progress we see now in non-PC segments that are not suffocated by them.

Also, for extorting every Android handset maker with a bogus (and secret) list of patents.

[saurik]

Google has a monopoly on search in the US due to some early advances (letting them kick Yahoo, altavista, and similar early competitors to the corner) that now seems to mostly be maintained by both having sequestered some content by unfair licensing discrimination (such as YouTube in this example) and generally by "we have more of the web cached and indexed than anyone else" (a race they have a many years head start on, and barring some disruptive advance is probably going to be true for a long while).

They are now using the money they make advertising on that search system (if you check their Q10 they don't actually get much money from third party adsense websites: first party inventory dominates) in order to build large numbers of "engh, good enough but not great" services that are impossible to compete against because Google just gives them away for free or even operates them at a loss... it really isn't that different. They are even now starting to "bundle" things together with their search platform (G+) to directly leverage their position to propel other products.

This is especially clear as what really screwed Microsoft was trying to make certain everyone had access to a web browser that could itself be used as an application platform rather than having to pay license fees to a company (Netscape, if this isn't clear) that had such a large web usage marketshare that they were able to run roughshod over the W3 (to the point where their mailing list sometimes described Microsoft as the open hero that will save them; Microsoft even was providing their DTDs for public review, which impressed the crowd).

Netscape used this position to make up features we still hate like presentation-oriented markup, to hold back the original CSS attempts by being unwilling to implement them, and to add tons of proprietary features to their JavaScript engine that they considered a killer feature that others had to bug-for-bug emulate. I mean: I look at the situation and find it surprising that anyone wouldn't think it isn't the exact same story playing out a second (arguably, even a third) time ("you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian", etc.).

[angersock]

Do you have any links furthering your explanation about Netscape? Typically the story is told much, much differently, and your allegations pique my interest here very much.

[dspillett]

I think most of what he points out about Netscape's browser are down to a mix of frontier development (release now, fix later) and a measure of incompetence, rather than malice.

Netscape did try to use their position as temporary de-facto standard to bully there way through, tough they were not very successful at it.

* Releasing DTDs for review: the were very slow on this compared to MS. Some of that was abusing their position (as the incumbent de-facto standard they had some control, and keeping what they were doing internal for as long as they could forced competitors to either guess (resulting in conflicting behaviours some of which we still fight with today) or wait and implement late). Equally though I think some of it was just their business culture: they were not open by default, they did not want to release for comments until they considered it finished, and so forth. MS had little choice but to be open and play ball with the community: they'd have just been ignored for longer otherwise.

* "Netscape used this position to make up features we still hate like presentation-oriented markup": That is the frontier development thing. "Hey!, Look at this!, Isn't it cool!". Everyone was doing it, you just remember Netscape for it more because the legacy of some of their experiments/toys is still with us day-to-day.

* MS overtaking them on CSS support, particularly positioning, once it became a strong contender for the way to go was more to do with them struggling generally at the time. The application was being killed commercially by the free Internet Explorer which had at least got to the point of being "good enough" beyond being free, they were losing money server-side too due to competition there that they were not able to fight off, and the application itself had become somewhat complex and bug ridden (IIRC the 4.x series was chronically unstable, at least on Windows, until at least 4.0.8) so implementing anything new (and implementing it well) took more effort than they could afford to throw at it. Their alternative (layers) was implemented first and they paid the "jumped first, guessed the market wrong" price heavily: having to support their own idea for backwards compatibility and find time to implement the one that won more general acceptance.

* Most of the problems with JS cause by Netscape are from its beginnings: it was rushed to market. Most of the rest were them trying to keep ahead of the slow standards process - everyone else was doing that too.

> you either die a hero or live long enough to become the villian

Exactly. Well, almost.

Netscape were far from perfect and did (try to) abuse their position a bit, but if my memory is accurate (which it often isn't that far back, so have salt pinches at the ready) most of what they did wrong was due to bad business, process, and design decisions and being unwilling to backtrack on technical decisions that didn't work out so well (for reasons of compatibility: they too kept maintaining/reimplementing their old bugs so as to not alienate people with code relying on them) rather then concentrated deliberate malice.

[icebraining]

Microsoft can complain about unfair discrimination when they stop discriminating against GPL licensed apps on their Marketplace.

It's not like users can't access Youtube on Windows Phones either; as far as I know, Google doesn't block its user agent.

[ankitml]

So can google stay un-evil by claiming microsoft is evil too? Abusing market power is not a zero sum game. You can escape by pointing fingers at others.

[untog]

Would love to see some evidence that backs any part of that up. I'll wait.

If Google has widespread rings of employees dedicated to flagging anti-Google stories on Hacker News, do you honestly think that not one single person would have exposed it by now? That all people involved- including ex employees, most likely- would never talk?

[CloudNine]

The more likely explanation is that Google fans and Microsoft haters are doign the flagging.

Even the other story about Microsoft's response is getting flagged and is far down the front page for its points.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889

What's your explanation for this constant flagging of Microsoft related stories or anti-Google ones?

Read through this thread for examples for many more stories getting flagged off the front page.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5716010

HN rankings graph showing abnormal and sudden dips.

http://hnrankings.info/5715168/

HN rankings graph showing low rank for a long time inspite of a lot of upvotes.

http://hnrankings.info/5715889/

[googleengineer2]

> The more likely explanation is that Google fans and Microsoft haters are doign the flagging.

As a Google employee: yes. We don't like this any more than anyone else does. We want to _earn_ positive feedback. The idea of Google employees flagging (or being told to flag!) stories about Google they don't like is laughable to me.

[recoiledsnake]

Agreed, I also think its just overzealous fans acting on their own. By the way, Microsoft's response is stuck on the 2nd page despite getting a ton of upvotes

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889

[ok_craig]

Maybe people who are actually just average HN users don't find those stories to really be worth reading as much as other stories.

Occam's razor, you know. Not everything is a conspiracy.

[recoiledsnake]

Note that the complaint is not about lack of upvotes, it's about people going out of their way to use their flagging powers which is meant only for spam links.

[aptwebapps]

Don't make me relieve my callow youth and go on about the evils of 'M$'. ;) The ire directed at Microsoft back in the day was due to their ruthless business practices and their attack on Linux.

Whether employees of theirs ever indulged in things like astroturfing was irrelevant because their official actions were so upsetting.

[CloudNine]

>Looks like the Google fans, employees and shareholders on HN with good karma can't let this story break on the day of Google I/O? And people accuse Microsoft of astroturfing! What is this then?

Well, obviously this is a false flag attack by paid Microsoft astroturfers and shills! /s :)

[rbanffy]

The depressing part is that they probably don't even pay their astroturfers and shills...

Lots of volunteers.

[drivebyacct2]

Ironic that two stories, actually far more critical of Google with something more legitimate to complain about, outrank this story.

I'd love to hear pg comment on if Google stories are really abused, mis-modded or flagged as you imply.