

Google Maps redirect issue on Windows Phones is a matter of competition - coloneltcb
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/05/calling-shenanigans-on-googles-windows-phone-8-maps-narrative/?awesm=tnw.to_i0aEv

======
untog
The Windows Phone browser does not send touchstart or touchmove events. This
alone makes it damn near impossible left to implement decent maps, so the
claims that its the equivalent of IE10 is incorrect.

Its a pretty huge oversight by MS given that WebKit, Firefox and Opera do it
just fine.

~~~
glass-
If you alter the useragent on a developer device, Google Maps doesn't redirect
and works just fine.

~~~
untog
WP8, presumably? I tried with 7 but gave up, and since I can't upgrade, gave
up on the platform entirely.

------
magicalist
It's not shenanigans, it's browser sniffing instead of feature detection, and
Google does it on too many of its sites.

What's annoying about this "controversy" is that the minuscule marketshare
slice that is windows phones merits this much coverage, when this is daily
life for the _significantly_ larger (in absolute number) set of Opera users,
on desktop and mobile. There's also a very real reason that Mozilla has
considered adding (and is going to add?) webkit prefixes to a few CSS
properties.

So, sorry WP users. Unless the claim is also that the Opera/Google war is
heating up like crazy, I'm pretty sure you're just being neglected. Welcome to
the world of built-in user agent string spoofing just to make sites that would
work fine not redirect you first.

~~~
azakai
> I'm pretty sure you're just being neglected.

First of all, when "neglect" gives Google leverage to harm a competitor in a
different market (using maps to harm a mobile OS vendor), it is reasonable to
think it might not be _just_ neglect, but also strategy.

Second, neglect is bad enough by itself. Google has been phasing out support
for Opera in properties like blogger.com on desktop, and now is officially on
record as saying that google maps for mobile is WebKit-only. That goes against
the very basic principle of an open web accessible to all, that Google used to
champion.

~~~
magicalist
1) any kind of anticompetitive argument like that is a dangerous road to walk
down. Is Google leveraging the popularity of maps.google.com to also
marginalize rockmelt? Is a "install chromeframe" interstitial on IE6 some
strategy beyond "we don't want to support your browser"? there is always a
line, and considering how widespread UA sniffing and webkit-only prefixes are,
you would need a considerably higher bar of evidence to demonstrate any sort
of strategy at work instead of just lazy front end developers.

2) This we agree on. There are very few reasons to UA string sniff to
determine functionality, and redirecting based on it is about as low as you
can go on that axis. Yes, there will be users that click through the "this
won't work in your browser" button and still get mad at you that your site
doesn't work in their browser (just see app reviews for plenty of evidence of
this), but there should still be some way of trying the content for the many
browsers out there that a developer just doesn't have the incentives to
manually test in.

("that Google used to champion" is just dumb rhetoric, though. it ignores the
very simple fact that any organization is made up of people with very
different opinions and attempts to trivialize the efforts of all the people at
google still working hard on web standards and their implementations. I don't
agree with all of Mozilla's decisions with regard to the open web (in fact,
working group mailing lists are 90% disagreeing with each other on how to
advance it), but that doesn't mean that you guys now no longer champion it)

~~~
cooldeal
From <http://www.google.com/about/company/>

"Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful."

~~~
magicalist
Please engage with substance or just misquote "do no evil" and be done with
it. If you're just providing a counterexample to "universally accessible": as
I already said above, maps clearly doesn't work in Opera Mobile and it's
barely useable in Firefox Mobile. It probably doesn't work on a teletype or a
Speak & Spell either.

"Universally accessible" doesn't seem at odds with the fact that there's
always going to be a browser support cutoff point. Google just picked a poor
cutoff point in this case. It's only in light of google's commitment to cross-
browser standards that this disappoints me.

------
codeka
_> Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone 8 uses the same rendering engine as
the desktop build of Internet Explorer 10, which is certainly capable of
loading and running Google Maps._

This argument makes no sense. Google Maps _desktop_ works on IE10, but Google
Maps _mobile_ is clearly a totally different site.

I think people are jumping to conclusions here.

~~~
joenathan
>a totally different site.

Did you really just type that?

~~~
codeka
Why not? It's obviously not the same codebase as the desktop version of the
site, why would you expect because the desktop version of the site supports
IE10 that the mobile version of the site would as well?

~~~
SirPulse
The desktop version of maps.google.com does not work with mobile ie10 as well.

------
dkulchenko
This argument is ridiculous. What business sense would there be for Google to
restrict access to Maps on one platform in the interest of "competition"? It's
not like any potential WP8 users will be swayed over to Android just because
of GMaps, considering Bing Maps is a more than adequate alternative.

Occam's razor: it's more than likely that they just don't want to invest the
dev + support time to support WP8 (web or native app). It's a relatively small
demographic that isn't growing that fast (yet).

~~~
jsnell
Maybe in isolation. But combined with two other similar WP8/Google stories
within the last week, both clearly driven by commercial issues, the case for
this not being a technical issue either becomes stronger.

~~~
Tuvaloon
Or its a no one uses wp8 issue that applies to all of gooogle's portfolio.
Google didn't keep maps of iPhone, even though that could have sold 10 million
androids.

~~~
jsnell
It's totally reasonable for Google to decide they don't want to spend the
resources to support WP8 due to low usage. But here they were taking an
apparently already working (even if not officially supported) site and
breaking it. That's a bit less reasonable, but it could admittedly still be a
technical issue.

But that clearly can't be the case for the GMail and Youtube issues. Google
still continues supporting the Exchange sync protocols for business users, so
there's little technical benefit in disabling it for another class of users.
Likewise Google is under no obligation to make a native WP8 Youtube app -- but
given they've given partners API access to Youtube in the past, clearly
there's no technical reason why they couldn't also open up the API for MS to
use. In either case there's no plausible way the low market share of WP8 could
be the explanation.

Now, of course both of these cases could have totally benign explanations.
Maybe the licensing terms of ActiveSync make it undesirable for Google to
support it for free users in the future. Perhaps MS and Google can't come to a
reasonable agreement about Youtube API licensing terms, and the real villain
of the story is MS for trying to now score cheap publicity points with it. Or
maybe Google is trying its best to smother WP8 in the cradle. And you can't
ignore these other data points when looking at the motivations for these petty
Maps changes.

~~~
fpgeek
If anyone has a counterexample I'd love to hear it, but so far as I know no
one other than Microsoft (and, until recently, Google) offers Exchange
ActiveSync to free users. In my opinion, that strongly suggests that
Microsoft's licensing terms for ActiveSync make that economically
unsustainable. If that's right, you would expect Google to drop free EAS
support once the major benefit of better iPhone support was superseded by a
native Gmail app, Windows Phone or no Windows Phone. One of the planned
benefits of buying Sparrow, I suspect. That ''under $25 million" needed to be
justified, after all.

------
starmole
The real problem is that it is a slap in the face for html. What does Google
think it is? Is it a presentation layer standard with ideally many
implementations or is it a file format for web kit?

~~~
garuda
It's just a platform they use to deliver their services to their customers -
the same way that everyone else does.

~~~
starmole
Not quite that simple. Google does at least partially own the platform and
made a lot of noise about html being a better platform for being open before.
Everybody else just makes a business decision what they need to support.
Native, Flash, HTML, browser variations. For Google this is more of a power
play, and a bit of a bait and switch as HTML was sold as being free of those
power plays.

~~~
garuda
Google gives away all their client platforms as open source (i.e. Chrome and
Android), so it's hardly a power play when compared with the other options.

~~~
Locke1689
Neither chrome nor android are fully open source. I don't see why that
matters, though.

~~~
Intermernet
True, Chromium and AOSP are open source. I think the point is that Google are
playing both games here. They can quite happily compete with the Microsofts
and Apples of the world when it comes to power plays, but they also want to
see what comes from giving huge amounts of code to the developer community to
play with. There are logical, long term business reasons for open-sourcing
projects like Chromium, AOSP, Go, V8, WebM etc.

------
andmarios
As a Linux user I encountered countless "Internet Explorer only" sites. I even
had to postpone the adoption of e-banking for a few years due to this.

I never saw Microsoft fight for me, I never saw TNW fight for me. Things only
changed because Firefox and later Chrome became popular but my favorite
browser (Konqueror) and its engine (KHTML, dad of webkit) still aren't
supported.

Is this a matter of competition too?

------
azharcs
First they block access to Youtube API. Now they decide to block access to
Google Maps. Free and Open Web BS is just going too far. I don't think there
is absolutely any part of the web which is free and open. It is conveniently
used from time to time to convince people to contribute to their platforms.

~~~
ok_craig
"Free and open web" doesn't mean unfettered access to private parties'
services, it means unfettered access to the internet itself. I.e. access to
the services on the internet that private parties are willing to let you use.

~~~
wonnage
Most everything on the internet is owned by _someone_ , and the whole meaning
of things being free and open is that putting something up is putting it up
for everyone. Your interpretation is just "you can use the things I let you
use", which is a tautology...

~~~
ok_craig
I'm not sure about tautology or whatever (it seems like you're confusing the
network for the endpoints), but I'll give you a metaphor.

In the US you are a "free" citizen in an "open" country. You are free to go
anywhere you want on open roads. This doesn't give you the right to trespass
and go into anyone's private property. If they have a fence up, you have to
stay out. If they're having a yard sale, you can come in.

If Alice wants to let Bob on her property and not Eve, that doesn't make the
US any less of a "free and open" country.

This is what is meant by "free and open" web. You can attempt to reach any
endpoint you want without restriction, but the endpoint itself has private
control over whether you are allowed to its contents or not.

Anything less is not actually freedom, because then the endpoints' freedom to
determine who can use its private property is being denied.

A web that is not "free and open" is one in which your _attempts_ to reach
endpoints are interrupted and allowed or denied by a third, censoring entity.
(Usually the government.) It has nothing to do with how those endpoints would
respond to you on their own.

------
ghshephard
I'm very confused. Isn't it in Google's best interests to have everyone in the
world using their mapping product? Why would they want to get people on new
platforms used to using alternative maps, like, say,
<http://www.bing.com/maps/>?

Something doesn't sound right here...

~~~
garuda
They see Google maps as a strong enough brand that they think people will
avoid Windows Phone if it doesn't have it.

I think it's a good move. The last thing we need is our one chance at an Open
Source OS being undermined by Microsoft.

~~~
lostlogin
Whatever ones views on Android's openness, this is one interesting way to
defend open.

~~~
garuda
They're just trying to avoid having a single company, Microsoft, dominate the
industry again.

~~~
dr1337
Microsoft will never have a shot at dominating the mobile industry. What I
don't understand is your willingness to support a duopoly, which is almost as
bad as a monopoly.

~~~
garuda
It's not a duopoly - anyone can use Android for free, and many do.

------
brudgers
Google's decisions around Windows Phone are probably why:

(a) Ubuntu for mobile will not radically alter the mobile OS options for
carriers and hardware manufacturers (despite its appeal to many hackers).

(b) Apple is suffering the pain of developing their own maps application.

~~~
coopdog
If Google will reverse the decision once IE10 is standards compliant (touch
start/end) then go Google you the people's champion.

If not, then boo Google, are you becoming the new MS?

Time will tell

~~~
magicalist
There is no pointer event specification, just fyi. The previous one was
scuttled by Apple's patent claims before it left Working Draft status.
However, the first Working Draft of the new Pointer Events spec[1] was
published about a month ago, and rapid progress is being made. It's built on
Microsoft's submitted spec for the pointer event system they created for IE10
and looks like it will be better than the proposed spec it's replacing.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/2012/WD-pointerevents-20121211/>

------
aguki
I might be missing the point here but what's to stop developers from building
a Windows Phone application that utilizes the tile sources from google maps
which uses the Google Directions API for routing purposes?

See: [http://dotnetbyexample.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/google-maps-
fo...](http://dotnetbyexample.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/google-maps-for-windows-
phone-7.html)

I did a similar project a couple months back on the WP7 platform and ended up
using OSM + ORSM instead.

------
tantalor
Where's the repro? What's the mechanism? Header redirect? Meta tag?
JavaScript? Magic? Can this effect be replicated without a Windows Phone?

I tried setting my User-Agent to "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows
NT 6.2; ARM; Trident/6.0)" and could not repro.

~~~
glass-
Try making your useragent:

"Mozilla/5.0 (compatiable, MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0;
IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch)"

I did it in Firefox and maps.google.com redirects.

Making your useragent anything that contains "Windows Phone" makes it
redirect.

~~~
tantalor
I see <http://maps.google.com> -> <http://maps.google.com/m/local> ->
[http://www.google.com/m?site=local&](http://www.google.com/m?site=local&);

    
    
      > GET / HTTP/1.1
      > User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatiable, MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch)
      > Host: maps.google.com
      > Accept: */*
      > 
      < HTTP/1.1 302 Found
      < Location: http://maps.google.com/m/local
    
      > GET /m/local HTTP/1.1
      > User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatiable, MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch)
      > Host: maps.google.com
      > Accept: */*
      > 
      < HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
      < ...snip...
      < Location: http://www.google.com/m?site=local&
    

The final site looks like regular Google search.

------
skc
Curiously, a simple miss-spelling of "Windows Phone" in the user agent seems
to get it working again.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd7RiMCrZFw>

------
so898
We really should not rely on the map service from these big companies. You
have no idea when they will force you to do something, such as change your
phone in this case.

~~~
dr1337
Hear hear! Isn't that the reason why the FOSS movement came into existence? To
prevent large corporations from owning the right to the software that we use
in our daily lives?

------
aphexairlines
What about Opera, Firefox, or Chrome on Windows Phone 8?

------
recoiledsnake
What I am totally flabbergasted by is the fact that Google is redirecting to
Google.com without even a simple message saying that your browser is not
supported. That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Can anyone explain the reason
that Google can possibly have for this?

Edit:

>For the record, here is Google’s formal statement on the issue:

>The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such
as Chrome and Safari. However, since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit
browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the
mobile web

Wonder what this means for Firefox OS then.

~~~
dkulchenko
Probably for the same reason iOS app crashes are just an exit to the home
screen (compared to Android's visible "force close" message).

~~~
mistercheese
Except this isn't a crash, it's something that Google is explicitly doing on
their end from the reports.

I too can't help but feel like I'm missing some context, seems like Google
would at least warn the user.

------
wildranter
Google is the new Apple just as once Apple was the new Microsoft.

This is not an evil conspiracy. It's just companies working to increase their
market/mind share.

------
cmccabe
Yes, how dare Google not spend engineering resources to support a niche
platform which lacks many features run by a patent troll. Truly they are worse
than Hitler.

For the record, the number of Microsoft products that support my platform is:
0.

~~~
pantaloons
What is your platform?

~~~
cmccabe
linux

