Apple just kicked Fortnite off the App Store

It could be the case if AMP grows dominant; given the market share of Google Search, it could be enough to create a controlled (er, "curated") web in a similar spirit.

We're closer than we have been in a long time to something like Google deciding to license Blink or Chromium. There are some good reasons that couldn't happen (yet), but what a world that would be.

I can't picture this happening due to the sheer size of the Electron ecosystem. Do you think there's any precedent for this?

They can't retract the open source license that already exists for Chromium. Maybe Google could start adding proprietary features to Chrome and close-source those bits, but the code that's out there is already out there.

How? The publishers publish AMP pages, and multiple link aggregators (including Bing) consume them. I could see an Apple News style system being controlled like that because it forces the publishers to directly integrate with a single link aggregator.

AMP isn't enforced though. You can say 'not yet' or 'it's kind of the same' but that applies for a lot of standards.

This is basically what happened to Android as they moved an increasing number of essential features to Play Services.

It's enforced through visibility / rankings in Google Search results.

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/about-amp

Isn't there a term for using dominance in one market to compel behavior in another?

Fuck AMP. The fact that there is no way to turn it off is one of the main reasons I don't use Google on my phone. DDG often has slightly poorer results, but I often find answers to my questions in Reddit threads and Reddit has a horrible mobile experience. Between AMP and them throwing 15 different popups at me to get their app (why would I want their single tab app?!?!), it's borderline unusable.

Still looking for a Firefox plugin to make sure I don't connect to amp versions of anything

But to fight the wrong fake news this is what they are going to have to do.

Your link doesn't say that Google forces AMP on publishers. It shows that Google displays an icon next to AMP results for mobile searches to indicate the page is mobile friendly. Bing does the exact same thing: https://blogs.bing.com/Webmaster-Blog/September-2018/Introdu...

This is not enforcing AMP on publishers in the results, and the argument that it is by using icons falls under the 'it's kind of the same' category.

I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/

Reddit has a mobile view that is almost the exact same UI as the AMP page. WHY do they allow Google to run the AMP page instead? I too have switched to DDG solely to avoid Reddit AMP pages.

To be fair, reddit also has a horrible desktop experience. Thank goodness for RES and old version.

Why would that matter to anyone but Microsoft?

AFAIK Firefox still exists as does KHTML.

I've had the best experience ever since I ditched Google for DDG on my phone, and stuck Reddit on (old) desktop mode with a text wrapping browser. Don't miss Google at all, I only now use it to search for programming stuff.

There is a term for that.... I think it's either it's "abuse of dominance" or "anti-competitive behavior"

Firefox is down for the count with the recent layoffs. It’s Google’s web to lose in the near future.

Some days it really feels like there is nothing new under the sun.

So you're proposing diverting the conversation to a theoretical that has little chance of happening but not discussing the actual example that's happening right now?

App Stores suck. App Stores with no side-loading are even worse. Platforms that are locked down so much that you can't even install your own OS are worse.

We used to bitch about Tivoization on HN all the time, it seems post iPhone, everyone seems A-OK.

Ppl still use Google for searches?

Mind.blown.

Yeah I'm really lost about the AMP doomsaying. The fact google has a standard that anyone can use that lets pages be delivered faster and shows an icon on results that do that really doesn't seem like the sort of thing to get worried about. It's weird that this gets treated not only negatively but on par or worse than closed garden platforms.

I've done exactly the same thing over the last month and wish I would have made the change sooner. The mobile web is vastly improved with fewer AMP results and new Reddit is just terrible. :shakesfist:

to put it as plainly as possible, it's absolutely hilarious that tech people buy into these insane myths about AMP, there's a reason why no serious antitrust person brings it up, it's fighting on Google's territory - it's a wide open standard, used throughout the industry, formed in response to proprietary solutions designed to tax suppliers by Facebook and Apple, immediately and fully shared with competitors.

I'm still pissed that Mozilla handled the Firefox Fenix transition so badly. I had a perfectly working Redirect AMP to HTML [1] addon on mobile, and now you can only install a set of whitelisted addon for the moment. Until then, the Firefox experience is significantly degraded on Android.

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/amp2html/

+1 for DDG.

If you're still using Google and prefer a more technical approach to your inquiries, maybe it's time for to consider a more refined tool?

John Deere saying you can’t work on your own tractor? 50 years ago this would have been an insane proposition.

I know it’s not the same but something feels similar to me.

I have DDG as my search portal, and pretty much every single search is followed by another with !g on it. The results are terrible. So please recommend something better.

You are not forced to buy an iPhone - in fact 85% of the world doesn’t.

In every day life, the number of people who think “App Stores suck” is infinitesimal.

Yes and people still watch TV.

Did you think your feigned ignorance was insightful? Google has 86% market share.

Because they have a gun to their cold cash craving heads, and will be demoted to lower positions in the results, lose traffic, and lose revenue if they dare withhold their content from the Internet’s biggest gatekeeper?

Is there any reason Electron couldn’t switch to, say, Firefox?

I'm in the same boat, except using i.reddit. how come you use the desktop version?

That's the same excuse my employer (Google) makes. Competition is just a click away. You're not forced to use Google, use Bing, use Fastmail. Brand surveys show Google is also one of the most trusted brands, ergo, the number of people who think it sucks is small.

Does that mitigate any of the concerns people have about either company?

This community used to have a strong focus on openness, open source, permission less innovation and the avoidance of checkpoints and tolls, but what it's turned into is often a battle of fanboys, who roll out excuses and lowered standards for their favorites.

Yours is an easy position to maintain, until you have invested a lot of money and work in an app which gets booted from the App Store, or because Apple decides to shake you down for even more money.

Apple fans simultaneously say Apple has a small marketshare, but also brag that earn the majority of all smartphone industry profits. If the latter is true, it means that anyone wanting to make money on mobile software has no choice but to publish on the App Store, ergo, effectively a monopoly.

And your employer is correct. We don’t need the government to protect people from their own decisions.

I’ve made the same argument about Google, FaceBook, Apple, and Amazon (even before I started working for AWS).

This community used to have a strong focus on openness, open source, permission less innovation and the avoidance of checkpoints and tolls, but what it's turned into is often a battle of fanboys, who roll out excuses and lowered standards for their favorites.

Did the open source community whine about mean old Microsoft or did they create alternatives to the point where even Azure runs more Linux VMs than Windows VMs? They went out there and built something better. They out competed.

Every single one of the big tech companies got there through better execution.

Electron is really 100% Chromium. I can't see them switching from it (though it would be nice to have a Firefox-base version).

I've done almost the same thing. DDG, reddit in old mode. Google is now just for maps and stackoverflow related searches. Been at it for 4 months.

> We don’t need the government to protect people from their own decisions.

Citation needed. Many parts of our government do just that (FDA, EPA). We need these because many decisions would otherwise be uninformed. If you don't know what is in your food, how can you make informed decisions? If you don't know what is in your drugs, or what the side effects are, how can you make informed decisions?

Yes because taking bad drugs which you can’t know that they are bad without multimillion dollar drug trials and stopping a corporation from polluting is the equivalent of typing in a url bar to choose an alternate search engine or choosing an alternate phone.

Are you really saying that Google doesn’t have the capital or reach to better market the “openness” of Android?

Then it becomes what they think is real and fake. There is no "true" standard for what is real and fake.

Yes, I know some things seem "obvious" but it's a sliding scale per person... and, well that's the slippery slope.

> We used to bitch about Tivoization on HN all the time, it seems post iPhone, everyone seems A-OK.

People were not making money by being shareholders, that's why.

I've been trying to use DDG for over a year now and it's not all roses either. Very frequent !g's.

Overall it feels a little bit like self-flagellation which I'm hoping is for the greater good, that DDG's algo will improve with use and eventually I won't need !g anymore.

Maybe DDG needs a browser extension that let's you seamlessly provide feedback with every !g to teach them what you were actually looking for.

To be fair, these are mostly integrations with other Google services. I wouldn't expect this to be an OS-level package.

Ironically, this is an example of where it is crucially important Oracle-Google case swings Google's way.

Currently, there are alternative implementations of Play Services that can be installed to replace Google's. However, if it is not fair use to use even the bare bones of an API definition without permission, then we can't even create a compatible implementation of such an API without the copyright holder's permission. In which case, we cannot replace Google Play services with anything else.

It gives Google more control over basic functionality of the internet. They already have _far_ too much control in the form of the biggest browser and the biggest search engine. Anything they do to expand or capitalize on that deserves a _lot_ of scrutiny.

Actually, Google already has closed source features in Chrome that are totally not related to Google accounts and/or sync. Take for example Android app support in ChromeOS. It is closed source even though both Chromium and Android are open-source.

Unless you keep using the old version of Firefox, which is still available and still works perfectly.

At the very least, you could use !s (for StartPage) to get Google’s results without the tracking.

My experience is DDG results are ok, I only use g! on porn searches sometimes. I dont miss google search at all.

The same model dates back to the first game consoles. As much as people love freedom the utility of curated lists of applications that work without issues is a major selling point. I don’t think effectively banning consoles and app stores is a net win for consumers as long as the option exists for a competitive open platform.

A Firefox based Electron was tried: Positron. It was scrapped for some reason or other (lack of traction?): https://github.com/mozilla/positron

Does Fenix let you install userscripts? You could use https://github.com/bentasker/RemoveAMP.

This is what I use on my Jailbroken iPhone.

>Maybe DDG needs a browser extension that let's you seamlessly provide feedback with every !g to teach them what you were actually looking for.

You are calling it seamlessly providing feedback because it is DDG. If this was about Google or Facebook, it could have sounded closer to 'tracking users'.

A lot of people who would have a problem with it are also convinced they have no power to affect its existence, so you never hear from them.

It says they use site speed in ranking, and, well, I'm sure it would come as no surprise if Google's (largely) having served a page/site increases the speed just enough.

They botched that too. On mobile (web), even if I request the desktop site and set it to the old version in my settings, always goes to the redesign. I have to manually change any link's subdomain to old.

The Reddit apps I've tried stick to the meth-addled idea to use fixed floating header bars, which are useless and really annoy me.

DDG isn’t that good. It is time to consider something more refined. DDG isn’t it.

The thing is - will that work longer term ? Mozilla will not maintain the old codebase anymore and unless someone else takes it over (unlikely) tje old version can become insecure & missing new APIs. All that while Mozilla still not providing the missing features for the new version.

> It gives Google more control over basic functionality of the internet.

How? Google controls neither the AMP specification nor the third party implementations like Bing's.

Ugh. That's depressing. Reddit used to be almost as lean and mean as HN...

Right “the silent majority”.

If you can beat AMP load times, you will likely rank higher than AMP pages from the speed factor.

This is how you do agnostic search results, and it is not putting the thumb on the scale as you're implying.

Yup, I hate DDG at this point. While having it as my main search on every browser/device. If there are better alternatives I'd love to know about them.

Using Opera browser, the text reflows to always fit the screen on zoom, so nearly all desktop sites become very legible on mobile at a glance when zooming in, without having to scroll laterally. I keep withing for a FOSS browser with that functionality.

There's also https://i.reddit.com for mobile. I personally prefer using the reddio [0] CLI and tuir [1] TUI for Reddit on the desktop.

Ultimately, the best Reddit experience is less Reddit.

[0]: https://gitlab.com/aaronNG/reddio

[1]: https://gitlab.com/ajak/tuir