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0 pointshalfteatree8y ago0 comments

> I don't want to be unreasonable, but Google used to at least generally support the idea of the open web.

This is a Machine Learning product, I don't think anyone at Google, at least as part of this team, is trying to "get you" or destroy the open web or something. This isn't even a case of Google using something non-standard -- WebComponents is part of the standard, you can even see it in Mozilla's MDN [0]. Firefox, Safari, Edge, et al simply haven't implemented it yet (or landed in stable). Is that somehow also Chrome's fault?

Filing a bug report is good, but ranting on HN about how this is a sign of Google trying to steal the open Internet is at best unnecessary, and absolutely unreasonable.

Coincidently, I'm working on an application that uses complicated SVG with CSS animations, and I've spent a ton of time optimizing it. I've never tested it outside of Chrome before today. To my surprise, while everything works fast in Chrome, in Safari it's bearable, but in FF it's simply too laggy to use. Now, I probably won't ever get to fix the performance issues in FF and Safari, simply because I don't have the time. Am I also out there trying to destroy the open web? Maybe I'm just bad, not evil.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components

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2 comments · 2 top-level

matthewmacleod8y ago

No, I don’t agree with you.

This is a basic audio playback widget on the web. The web is nominally an open platform. Whichever team built this decided to build it in a way that it would only support Google’s own web browser. It’s not unreasonable to expect a massive web company to build cross-browser support for their user-facing demos, especially in cases where there is obviously no reason that it needs to be incompatible.

Like I said, I appreciate that building cross-browser is not always possible. The difference between you and Google is that you aren’t one of the largest companies in the world, and you don’t publish your own browser.

manigandham8y ago

True, but clearly the marketing page of a feature service for a major cloud vendor should be accessible to as many as possible. There's no real reason something as simple as an audio player to play samples doesn't work well on all browsers.