But Eric Schmidt did not say that the app was submitted:
“You’ll need to discuss that with Apple” (at around 17:50). “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t,”
This is ridiculous. How hard is it to import an OPML file into any of the other feed services that already exist on the web, or those popping up everyday. Do we really need to keep regurgitating this story?! it's been dominating the front page for a week now.
Here are the differences between Reader and Keep: Reader was an abandoned and an unclaimed product, kept on life support.
Keep is a feature of Drive, a product which actually is acknowledged to be under someone's management
I hope Evernote will exist as it is now forever and that the author won't have eat his words someday.
It's just hard to tell what's going to stick around, and what's going to disappear. Microsoft gave you a disk, and they support a crazy amount of backwards compatibility even on the newest os. I think apple has been fairly clear, old stuff won't run on new machines. Google, just kind of turns stuff off. wave had a manager. buzz had a manager. the finance api had a manager.
I get it, they need to get rid of old stuff. It just feels like a new way of doing that. People stick to windows because stuff keeps working, even if MS would rather it dies. People avoid OSX, because stuff stops working with new versions of the OS. There's nothing wrong with people abandoning google forever over little things.
Frankly, I'd be super sad if i had to leave gmail, i've used it for almost 9 years, and i really love it. But, will gmail be around in 5 years? 10? For almost a decade, i was utterly convinced gmail would live forever. I'm not so sure now. What happens when google wants us to all move to NewSocialNowWaveBuzzPlus thing, and puts gmail on life support to encourage that? Is it likely? no, of course not. Is it within the realm of possibility? Yes.
Google served a giant turd sandwich to a bunch of journalists by closing Reader. Now Google is eating the shit it created. Google is going to continue eating shit until they grovel.
Unfortunately for Google, no one is responsible for closing Reader, thus no one will step up to the plate and fix this PR disaster.
There is a clear path to fix this mess, and I guarantee no one at Google has the humility to fix the problem.
It's hardly a PR disaster or a mess needs cleaning. It's just some pissy folks that are taking a little longer to get over it. It'll pass I'm just tired of hearing about it.
How long to you have to be tired of hearing about it before you admit it is a PR mess?
If the Google reader closing is mentioned in new Google product announcements a month from now, will you admit this was a PR disaster? How about a year from now?
Google needs to grovel to get their hands around this. By admitting mistake, they can actually redirect the message to something positive.
BTW, I agree with you completely. It is trivial for me to switch services, and I am tired of hearing about it. That being said, Google is eating its own shit sandwich. Google has no one to blame but themselves.
Really, groveling? yeah if anyone mentions Reader in a month's time it will be an issue. It's not a main new story, and Google won't get anything back by reversing their decision, the damage is already done. Some people are being overly dramatic and hypersensitive, they'll realize that and they'll get over it, as always.
Forget about "Reader" per se. Given that Google has sunsetted so many products recently, would you bet a key part of your small business infrastructure on an Evernote-killer by Google, or would you prefer to pay a company for Evernote?
You could be correct that this will just blow over. We shall find out.
The problem is that journalists tend to follow their leader, and this was written by Om himself. If I were a gambling man, I'd bet you will be proven wrong.
> How hard is it to import an OPML into any of the other feed services that already exist on the web, or those popping up everyday. Do we really need to keep regurgitating this story?
I think you have missed previous discussions about the irreplaceable parts of Google Reader. Hints: going back in time for articles that are not present in the current feed, autotranslation of posts.
Well, the issue is not closing one service but how they just closed one widely used product and are keeping Google+ around, which sends less traffic around the web.
Apart from that, it's about Google's departure from "we do what's best for users" to "we will keep only a few things around and kill others even if you use them daily".
Personally, I never used Reader that much. Instead, I went for Feedly which used Reader as back end and Feedly is going to transition smoothly, so I am not affected. And even if they allow exporting, how long is it before they start killing other features/apps that I use? That's my(and others') concern here.
Re:Microsoft, they are the favorite scapegoat for tech press. Apple, Google and everyone else is becoming next MS. ;)
It's almost too late to do that. Products that were slowly grinding are now seeing much more traction, and the initial exodus has passed. There may be a second one when it is officially stopped, but it would be difficult to compete with those products that grabbed customers already.
There will definitely be a second exodus. People such as myself are waiting to see what "wins out" over the next few months. I'm still adding feeds to my Reader account.
I'm still using reader because I don't care for feedly working as an extension to my browser and the news blur interface doesn't appeal to me. I'm waiting to see if something else pops up that offers the syncing feature of reader with a decent web app.
I agree. I'll also add that TheOldReader is a bit of a pain to add to. You have to search for your feed in another window, then find the RSS or Atom link, then manually copy link to add it as a subscription. That's a lot of stepa. Also, I used their import queue, and nothing has happened for days.
You must be some sort of savant, being able to manage the switch from Google Reader in 3 seconds.
How is the concern over first-adapter respect at all deserving of the dripping-with-sarcasm snark of your comment? Why is it so terrible that someone brings up the fact that Google now has a reputation for simply deadpooling products they no longer wish to support but that others have begun to rely on?
Why, on earth, should I trust a product that is meant to keep a record for me, when I can no longer trust the long-term support of said product.
But such concerns, to you, are pointless to discuss, because if this eventually gets deadpooled, all we'll have to do is take 3 seconds to pull out our data and move to a different product.
It has less to do with my superior intellect and more with the fact that every wannabe reader has an import from Reader button, which is made possible by Google allowing data portability.
You could buy more Drive storage to put your mind at ease (free v paid and all that), but keep in mind that the chances of whatever you're using getting bankrupt or "acqui-hired" away are just as likely.
I still believe that "3 seconds" was figure of speech for all practical reasons.
Switching is not just: [1. download GR OPML -> 2. upload to some Feed_Service_XYZ -> 3. Bingo!].
Not for a person who had curated his feeds over the years. Starred, tagged and have been using GR's sync services almost everywhere. He might be using it subscribe to new feeds on the web. Share. Etcetera.
But you might be knowing better(I mean about your comment).
Yes I'm not a huge fan of Google, what is your point? They are a for profit corporation, so I'm not sure why I'm obliged to like them.
There has been a lot of Google news the last week, and loads of submissions on HN, so I've made quite a few posts on them. That is hardly comparable to having an account for a year or more but only ever posting in stories about a single corporation to defend that corporation.
I don't know why you linked my submissions, only 4 out of the last 30 of them, going back ~560 days were about Google or Google products.
I don't think anyone is saying that you're obligated to like them. The problem they have is probably with your tone, which suggests that Google is obligated to literally never, ever shut down any product they experiment with.
Both of the api are still available. Translate is the same as before but you must pay for it, google web search has been replaced by google custom search and you must pay for it.
But Google has retired quite a few APIs before. Search API, CalDAV, Google Base Data API, Social Graph API, Translate API, and the list goes on.
Google Docs looks like it has a healthy future, but they very easily could decide they don't want the API out there. Particularly with Google's newfound lack of fear of pissing people off.
Well, there is a fundamental difference between some of these retired API in the past and this one:
in the first case the developer is the user adopting the API, and enhancing his own service with it, without the end user noticing it.
With this new API the end users of the product will be people with google accounts which will be able to seamlessly interact with 3rd party products. This greatly benefits the company as a platform, which seems to be the recent focus (which led to unpopular unfortunate choices as dropping "leaf" products).
It's ok to criticize that choice etc, but that's another topic.
I guess that if you want to build an application which leverages on the google's ecosystem, it's a reasonably safe bet it won't be dropped soon, as google has a immediate return from it (unlike translate API for instance).
Nothing lasts forever and I obviously can't guarantee you anything on Google's behalf, but the difference here being APIs and products launched before Larry Page became CEO and those launching after.
That's not really a great difference though. Couple years time and Larry will be doing other things or working on some newer, more interesting problems. I don't see this API surviving more than a couple years considering the speed that Google Docs/Drive continues to change.
The difference is Drive is a flagship "L-team" product, so it's pretty much on equal standing to Google+ in terms of priority. When Larry Page took the helm he created 7 core focus areas + accompanying SVP's (A nice summary: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/03/google-larry-page/).
Last weeks reshuffle which had the Maps and Commerce units absorbed into the Knowledge and Ads units respectively and Pichai taking over Android brings it down to 5 focus areas:
SVP of Knowledge/Search — Alan Eustace, SVP of Identity/Social — Vic Gundotra, SVP of Advertising and Commerce — Susan Wojcicki, SVP of YouTube/Video — Salar Kamangar, SVP of Android, Chrome and Google Apps — Sundar Pichai
The key distinction between Drive and Reader is that Drive is pretty much the embodiment of Google Apps itself, whereas Reader was an orphaned product which didn't have a home in any of these 5 post-Page areas.
Any change to this API in a couple of years will be the introduction of v2.
Drive is now a pillar of Google's services, not just Apps but Google Now and search rely on data stored in it, and with many competing storage services around any differentiating feature is worth having.
I'm not the OP, but I don't think he was necessarily talking about the Google Reader API (rather just the service). If you're getting hung up on documented/undocumented APIs, pick any one of the deprecated examples from this list (http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/spring-cleaning-for-s...) and substitute it in for Google Reader.
I was talking about the service, it doesn't really matter for the user if it's in a form of API or not. I do "PAY" google with my wasted brainpower when I see ads they serve (adblock possibility aside). Seriously though, there's nothing free but it works both ways, it's only fair and long lasting when both sides treat the arrangement as a contract.
How is that arrangement a contract? If you came to Starbucks every morning and bought a cup of coffee, would you consider that to be creating some kind of contract with them?
First: Adblock for Android was purged from the Play store. Adblock for Chrome is still available.
As to why it was removed, it is said that it is in violation of section 4.4 of the Play Store Developer Distribution Agreement:
4.4 Prohibited Actions. You agree that you will not engage in any activity with the Market, including the development or distribution of Products, that interferes with, disrupts, damages, or accesses in an unauthorized manner the devices, servers, networks, or other properties or services of any third party including, but not limited to, Android users, Google or any mobile network operator. You may not use customer information obtained from the Market to sell or distribute Products outside of the Market.
> How so? By rootless-ly changing proxy using an exploit that was patched in 4.2.2
I'm not certain I buy this explnation. AdAway (a alternative FOSS adblocker) was also kicked out of the store for a violation of section 4.4 and they do nothing like use a proxy exploit. They simply let you customize your .hosts file and explicitly require root.
Yes, it looks like from the link that they are kicking out every adblocker. I can't see any explanation for how what you describe "disrupts, damages, or accessses in an unauthorized manner" anything. Seems like a purely greedy, evil move by Google to me (and I try really hard to be a Google fan too....).
I truly don't understand how this can be described as a 'purely greedy, evil' move. Some of the money that those ads generate go to independent developers looking to make income from their hard work, many of whom use this site. The more people that see the ads, the more ads Google sells, and the more money both Google and developers make.
Personally, I think it's selfish to block ads on applications and websites.
>Some of the money that those ads generate go to independent developers looking to make income from their hard work, many of whom use this site.
If the developer chose a model of making money that pisses of their users so much they go to the trouble of getting other software that does literally nothing but stop the developer's annoying monitorization model maybe the dev should work on a less offensive way to make money. After all, they've shown that users are invested in their app in some way, there must be a way to turn that into revenue.
It doesn't step between anyone. It takes content that was delivered to a person's computer and post-processes it (or changes the settings of the machine). What I do on my machine with content I access should be up to me, and if content owners don't like it, they have the choice of negotiating a different deal with me before serving me the content. I view adblock as the equivalent of paying someone to paste paper over newspaper ads before you read it. (By the way, I don't use adblock or any similar stuff.)
More correct analogy: You are allowed to pay someone to paste paper over newspaper ads before you read it. You are just not allowed to hire such a guy inside the shop selling that newspaper, as per that shop's policies. Feel free to hire anyone outside the shop.
i.e. Google is fine with downloading AdBlock independently. They just won't allow it in Play store which is closed (unlike the OS, which is open).
The analogy does make sense, but I don't think that Google's stated policy applies under any reasonable interpretation. If they changed to a policy like "we don't allow apps we disagree with", then fine. But to ban these apps on the grounds they gave is disingenuous in my opinion.
Well, you could apply your own words here... if don't like it, you have the choice of negotiating a different deal with them before using the Play store.
Indeed. This demonstrates Google is committed to delivering audiences to advertisers rather than letting users control their devices. Never give root to your users...
If an app developer says, "Hey, you can use this app if you let me show you ads!" you can agree to that or not.
Google is committed to letting an app developer offer you that deal, and they're taking a step towards making sure you hold up your end of the bargain.
If a farmer's market set up shop in your town, and little kids stole the merchandise all the time, you'd want them to hire a security guard, wouldn't you?
And you can still install from the APK. So, you're really just whining that Google doesn't THEMSELVES make it easy for you to bypass the ad market.
Yeah, but no app developer is explicitly saying that.
> If a farmer's market set up shop in your town, and little kids stole the merchandise all the time
I've found that comparisons between physical theft and digital "theft" are always going to be flawed due to fundamental differences between the two domains.
Then they release it to users who have control over their devices and can modify how their device displays the app. Users are under no obligation to ensure that the app runs as-designed, and if it's not explicitly disallowed they should be free to modify how the app runs. They could modify it to show another language, or put tape over part of the screen to hide some content, or they could download a tool that modifies their hosts file to alter how the app runs.
Point being, you can't count on ads being shown to all of your users as you can't guarantee control over their devices. If you don't like that, then don't make apps that rely on ad revenue.
Removing this from the Play store merely makes it inconvenient.
Google is trying to make a convenient API for app developers to earn money by showing users ads.
Seeing an ad is an inconvenience to users, granted. They have several options: APK install, pay for the premium version of the app, find a no-ad competitor to the app, or just don't use the app.
Wow! That proxy-bug means that the author of every app is able to read all of my network traffic! Its really amazing what kind of glaring security holes Android devices have. And how little media attention is spent on it. Is it still so, that on Samsung devices every app has full memory access? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4931944)
This was in January. Updates and patches are usually rolled out staggered, that is, not every device gets the update immediately. That helps in not overloading any servers and also helps in finding potential problems before every customer is affected. So I'd guess by now they should be all patched.
Yep. No excuse for delaying security updates by anything other than a bare minimum. There's other ways to spare your servers if that's the real problem.
Updates take a while... devices should be updated by now... or in the case of most devices more than 3 months old... ever
I swear, between this, Reader, and iGoogle.. I'm pretty disenfranchised... I may have to go with FirefoxOS, WinPhone or iThingy for my next cell purchase (just got my N4 & N7 a few months ago too)
Look at the commenters history. They only ever post on stories that are negative towards Google, and only ever post comments defending Google and often use generic attacks like 'blogspam'.
Oh look! -It's a Google fanboy apologist! Obviously, this is a good thing because it lets all Android users enjoy The Full Open Web, now that it's been Opened up a bit more.
Open is Good. Google is Open. Google is Good. Open open open.
No one ever insinuated that Google is completely open with Android. That would be a ridiculous claim. However, I think it's hard to argue that the ecosystem is more closed off than iOS or Windows Phone.
Until Firefox OS and Ubuntu for Android get a foothold, your argument is just not very compelling.
I beg to differ. Plenty have tried to say that. In fact in pretty much every attack (yes attack, the threads feel very orchestrated) on iOS, one of the principle benefits touted is that Android is open. Even Rubin tried to declare it 'open' with his now infamous tweet (https://twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429). Let's keep those goalposts static.
TBH I wouldn't mind them blocking AdBlock Plus for simple reasons of harming content creators. If people don't want ads that's fine, they don't have a right to view my content.
I know HN isn't, but it should be, on the sides of creators.
If you want to be paid for your content charge for it. If you put it open on the web then I have the right to consume it how ever I like. That's kind of the point of the web...
Its probably worth noting that the first response is the following:
"As a developer for Adblock Plus I am looking forward to a resolution to this issue which indeed is a serious problem.
Here are our proposals on how to fix this security hole without compromising Adblock Plus and similar apps:
(A) Add an additional permission for apps that want to act as a proxy
and/or
(B) Add an API to Android that is similar to Gecko's nsIContentPolicy and Chromium's WebRequest (access to this API may require the permission mentioned in (A))"
The value proposition just isn't there for them to give ad block the boot from desktop chrome. Ad blocking functionality is a major driver of browser adoption. Google is better off with ad blocking extensions and a larger userbase to scrape data from.
"Adblock Edge is a fork of the Adblock Plus version 2.1.2 extension for blocking advertisements on the web. This fork will provide the same features as Adblock Plus 2.X and higher but without "acceptable ads" feature."
“You’ll need to discuss that with Apple” (at around 17:50). “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t,”
(via http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/googles-eric-schmidt-says-t...)