

Google begins barring browser plug-ins from Chrome - drgath
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57604242-93/google-begins-barring-browser-plug-ins-from-chrome/

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ykl
What's actually going on here is a lot less sensational than the title appears
to suggest: as far as I can tell, Google is just deprecating an old plugin
architecture to encourage developers to move to a newer one.

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cpncrunch
The problem is that pepper/nacl is only available on Chrome, so it's a lot of
work just to work on a single browser.

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captainmuon
On the surface, this has technical reasons, but actually it is more about
control of the platform. They are especially killing all plugins that allow
fully featured, networked applications - Java, Flash, Silverlight/.NET.

This is similar to what Apple did with iOS - they couldn't outright ban the
internet, but they made it impossible to circumvent the app store. You can't
write a HTML game that uses graphics as advanced as a native app, and you
can't write a web app that accesses arbitrary (non-cooperating) network
resources. You have to go through the app store, Apple get's their 30% share.
You can't write guerrilla apps that aggregate data from non-cooperating sites,
or that do e.g. P2P file sharing - if what you're doing is illegal (or not
wanted by Apple) in US jurisdiction, they have you're address, and you're in
trouble. You can't even write a runtime or a tweaked browser to circumvent all
this, as they explicitly forbid it.

The reasons why Google is pushing a similar strategy are a bit hazy. But it's
clear that rich clients are a threat to Google's business model. Google
profits most if everything happens in the web.

This is part of a larger war on general-purpose computing. Just look at the
Metro apps in Windows 8/RT, the fact that OS X by default now only runs signed
applications, or ChromeOS.

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malandrew
Among the popular plugins that have been _temporarily_ whitelisted along with
plugins like Flash and Silverlight are Google Talk and Google Earth are among
the plugins that will be barred. Thus this looks like a fair and logically
consistent move.

I only hope that we can keep DRM out of the open web as long as possible and
have it die when plugins die.

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na85
Well the headline seems editorialized to cash in on the predictable anti-
Google counterculture that has sprung up in the last few years.

Seems more like a case of "not invented here" syndrome rather than "Let's Be
Evil"

Plus, most plugins are proprietary shit, holding back standardization and
everyone knows it.

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serge2k
Npapi plugins banned In favour of Google's ppapi.

I'm shocked.

There are good reasons for this, but how much of it is political garbage?

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captainmuon
Are there any third party ppapi plugins out there?

