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Comment by cosmic_cheese

6 days ago

Google also turns every link tap in their iOS apps into an opportunity to upsell Chrome for iOS when it should just open the link with the user’s default browser.

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cosmic_cheese

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dwetterau  6 days ago

I'm shocked that Apple hasn't cracked down on this process through App store reviews. It's such an awful experience.

  • lxgr  6 days ago

    I’m not surprised, though. They’re not exactly on the most solid ground with them preventing any engines other than their own WebKit for third-party browsers or even apps.

robocat  6 days ago

How else is Google supposed to "integrate" within iOS?

Safari and Messages etcetera link to within the closed Apple ecosystem - just like Windows. It can be between difficult to impossible to send an email or create a calendar item unless you use the iOS apps.

I'm definitely no Google fanboi but every answer being "Google are arseholes" feels dishonest.

The Chromium developer team absolutely kick arse and being open source is a true gift. Mozilla is badly failing to compete. Microsoft failed to compete with their first Edge rewrite, and now ironicalky MS "competes" using Chromium open source.

And why did Chromium have to split from WebKit? As an outsider it just looked like "because Apple don't want to play nice".

The story is always simplified to Google greedy arseholes. A typical response: you can never ever ever satisfy open source proponents... The stereotype that every open source user greedily wants more.

  • plorkyeran  6 days ago

    iOS has an option to set your default browser and mail client, and it works fine. There is nothing even vaguely difficult about sending an email or creating a calendar item without using the Apple apps. Google is in fact being an asshole by prompting every time if you want to ignore the default app and use chrome in the hopes that you'll finally accidentally hit it.

    • robocat  6 days ago

      > default mail client

      Thanks - I never discovered that - sorry.

      > There is nothing even vaguely difficult about sending an email [] without using the Apple apps.

      While offline, I can attach a photo to an email with the Apple mail app and Q it to send later. However Gmail pauses or fails if slow connection. I've always assumed (perhaps unfairly) that was due to an iOS API issue - but perhaps the Gmail app is buggy?

      > or creating a calendar item without using the Apple apps.

      Not sure what I'm doing wrong then - I don't even have the Apple calendar app installed and somehow I hit problems.

      I guess I default to blaming Apple - over the last year I have found my iPhone to be unreasonably buggy. Or I could be emanating anti-tech radiation.

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  • cosmic_cheese  6 days ago

    > How else is Google supposed to "integrate" within iOS?

    Like everybody else. If the user wants Chrome on iOS, they can install it and set it as their default browser. To link to other Google apps, Google can use Universal Links[0] to directly open Calendar, Sheets, etc or open the corresponding App Store page if they haven’t been installed yet.

    Google forked WebKit because they wanted to take it in a direction that was fundamentally incompatible with the direction Apple wanted to go: Google wanted more core functionality (process management, etc) to be written as part of the browser (likely to serve as a moat) while Apple wanted all that to live within the engine itself so third party devs could take advantage of it without having to fork a whole browser (just drop WebKit into your app and go).

    [0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/allowing-app...

    • robocat  6 days ago

      > Google forked WebKit

      Yes - working code that everybody uses now including a major competitor - Microsoft. Where's the alternative timeline with a WebKit browser on Windows? Oh, Apple killed v5.1.7 Safari on Windows in 2010 - their choice. Windows Safari had its issues but it was a great browser when it was released. Virtually nobody has chosen to base their browser on WebKit - and they choose not to for good reasons. Similarly why nobody forked Gecko - they didn't want that code.

      > without having to fork a whole browser (just drop WebKit into your app and go).

      But Apple failed at that goal - saying that WebKit works better as an engine is just not what happened in reality. WebKit was certainly a worse choice for open source engine on Windows back when Windows really mattered. Nobody used it.

      > likely to serve as a moat

      That is just making shit up. If Google wanted a moat then they could have built a moat. History has shown that the multiprocess design of Chromium was no moat. You might argue there are other moats - and that is what the DOJ seems to be arguing.

      Link to the reasons the Chromium team wrote: https://www.chromium.org/blink/developer-faq/

      Edit: I guess I would also like to link to a great response to "you must be the product": https://danfrank.ca/most-businesses-dont-work-that-way/ and we should always refer to Spolsky's "comoditize your complement" https://gwern.net/complement

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