Comment by tedivm
6 months ago
This seems pretty unequivocal then- they're clearly using this to provide additional functionality to their own applications (at least Meet) that other companies who don't control the browser can't match.
6 months ago
This seems pretty unequivocal then- they're clearly using this to provide additional functionality to their own applications (at least Meet) that other companies who don't control the browser can't match.
This is not the case. That API is available to any extensions for chrome. Including those made by other companies that don’t control the browser.
Here[0] are the docs for the specific one discussed above, for example.
0. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/api/s...
Other extensions, not other websites. This functionality is a feature of the Google Meet website that other video conferencing websites cannot offer.
They can, if those other websites provide an accompanying extension for it. Are you aware that the Zoom website can use the Zoom extension to have that exact same type of interactions?
In fact, that’s literally how other videoconferencing websites operate and have been since forever (the dreaded cisco webex extension comes to mind). The only difference is that GMeet can be counted as a part of the browser itself, so it requires no additional extension.
3 replies →
Unequivocally, why can’t other video chat companies provide their own browser? They could presumably fork chromium and change a single string (if it’s really just “*.google.com”).
Obviously that’d go nowhere and no one would use it, but I can’t imagine this really matters to any competitor anywhere.
Why stop there? Why can’t other video chat companies provide me their own operating system? A computer?
Think even bigger, why not reinvent the wheel every time every product is developed? Why have a common platform for anything?
If you think about it, what value is there in all these companies using the same roads to ship products? Can't they build their own? And is it really important that every business accept the same currency?
Yes, platform independence and shared universal access to common standards that consumers can consistently trust to provide similar experiences across products and ecosystems does admittedly reduce wasted development resources, increase competition, and makes the market more accessible to new businesses. And sure, I guess technically it reduces consumer confusion, and sure it benefits consumers by making products and services more interoperable. But who are we to say that any of that is good? /s