The argument is about openness, not about rights.
It's in Microsoft's favor to damage that image. Don't take it personally.
Then what does open mean? To me it means to provide an API on an equal footing among the various platforms. If Google is providing access to secret Web service APIs to their Android and iOS Youtube Apps, but not to Windows Phone, how is that open? Requiring to show ads is still understandable, but requiring HTML5? Why do they care if it's HTML5 or something else? It sounds fishy, and Google should come out with a real reason for requiring HTML5 if there is one, after all they call themselves open.
It is probably well within their rights to screw around since it's their stuff, but lets not pretend it's open. Didn't MS get lambasted for private APIs in Windows? Why does Google get a free pass now and get away with calling itself open?
To most of the world, it means "you can interoperate with me as long as follow my terms and conditions", with those terms being considered reasonable. it does NOT mean "I must let everyone compete with me on equal footing".
>"you can interoperate with me as long as follow my terms and conditions", with those terms being considered reasonable.
I wonder if the HTML5 requirement can considered reasonable. Why does the server's web service API care if the client is HTML5 or not?
Microsoft says this in their post:
>There was one sticking point in the collaboration. Google asked us to transition our app to a new coding language – HTML5. This was an odd request since neither YouTube’s iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility. At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps.
Google's statement is totally mum on the matter except for "it violates terms of use". If they want to call themselves open, they should atleast let us know what the HTML5 requirement is about, as it is certainly strange for a web service API. And in my opinion this makes it a 'unreasonable' condition for an open API and Google's silence does not help it. I do think Google is within their rights(absent monopoly concerns) though.
