
Google 'discourages' users of old browsers - shazzy
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29012038
======
userbinator
_Google has started showing old versions of its search page to people using
out-of-date versions of some web browsers._

On the other hand, many of the people using older versions of browsers would
probably be the same ones who don't like the changes Google's made to its
pages.

As someone who regularly uses various browsers (including text-based), I have
a very strong opinion on this: I've noticed the "you must use browser X, Y, or
Z" trend become more prevalent over the years, and I think it's against the
basic premise of the Internet to be an accessible source of information to
all. Users should be free to use whatever browser they want, on whatever
hardware they want, with the understanding that some sites may use features
their browsers don't support. Most sites on the Internet are still primarily
sources of information, and it's rather disconcerting to see "appification"
turning easily accessible pages containing text and images into complex
behemoths that only work in the latest browsers from the big vendors. I know
there is a certain allure to using the "latest technologies" for many
developers, but if it needlessly excludes some others, there's a
marginalising, discriminatory element to it that I just can't agree with.

 _She added: "We're continually making improvements to Search, so we can only
provide limited support for some outdated browsers."_

It would help if she pointed out the particular "improvements" and what
features they need.

~~~
vonklaus
I think HN self selects for a bunch of corner cases that are atypical to the
problem google is trying to correct for. People who have refused to update due
to dislike of a certain OS, browser configuration, have extensions that limit
functionality or otherwise knowingly don't update their browser for a specific
reason based on technical understanding or aesthetic choice are the corner
cases. Obviously, there are just a bunch of non-technical people using ie7 who
have 5million toolbars and can't figure out why google looks so shitty. These
people need to upgrade their shit, because when something doesn't work they
can't fix it. Web devs are sick of having to develop with their hands tied
behind their backs because a fuckton of people are using the old browser their
computer shipped with in 2007.

~~~
radmuzom
It's not that people refuse to update. At work, we have not yet upgraded from
XP so nothing above IE8 works here - you are not allowed to install any
software on your own so no Firefox. If news sites, where the primary content
should be text and maybe a couple of images, don't work because they require
all kinds of fancy "modern web" features - then it is not a problem with users
but a problem with the developers of the website.

~~~
drivingmenuts
No, that's a problem with your IT department being stuck about a decade
behind.

~~~
arjie
Some may see your comment as flippant, but it is very accurate. Didn't MS shut
off support for that combination of OS and Browser? If so, their IT department
is exposing them to security trouble. If so, their competence is in question.

~~~
toxican
I've never understood the "well we have to keep IE6 because of this one
obscure program" as the excuse to why IT departments force their users to use
IE6. Keep IE6 for that one obscure, poorly-made program. Give then a copy of
Firefox or Chrome to use for everything else. I realize for a lot of users
that's more choice than they can handle, but those that know better must be
tortured by that awful lack of choice.

~~~
acdha
It's actually worse than that: Microsoft gives you free integrated desktop
virtualization (MED-V) and, in IE 11 they added an Enterprise Mode which works
very well with antique sites. Both can be seamlessly integrated using group
policy so a user clicks on the blue e, uses the web as normal and when they
hit [http://creaky-internal-app.example.com](http://creaky-internal-
app.example.com) the experience seamlessly jumps back a decade.

This isn't being conservative about upgrades. This about an IT department
refusing to learn to do anything they weren't doing in 2000.

------
millstone
Riiiight. "Old browsers." Which "old version" of Chrome do you think is
affected?

Google has already proven their willingness to degrade their search experience
for non-Chrome browsers, by splashing a Chrome banner ad on the Google search
home page[1].

This is about capturing more marketshare for Chrome, pure and simple.
Eventually "old browsers" will be replaced by "browsers we don't care to
support" will be replaced by "browsers that aren't Chrome." In the end,
there's a possibility that Google's client software will be required to access
Google's services.

Do you think that's farfetched? That Google is committed to browser diversity
on the web? Then look at their vision for the desktop: Chromebooks, which do
not support installing any web browser that's not Chrome.

[1]: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-
chro...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/04/firefox-install-google-chrome-home-
page/) and [http://timothycope.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/05/0529201400...](http://timothycope.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/05/05292014001.png)

~~~
1971genocide
Google has done amazing stuff for the web, so has microsoft, IBM,etc before
it. The trick is to not give any one company a lot of power and diversify the
power among many corporations etc. Google is still the most innovative company
out there but lets hope we realize the time when they will need to step-aside
and let other more innovative companies take its place.

~~~
nfoz
Genuinely curious, what "amazing stuff" have Microsoft and IBM done for the
web?

~~~
1971genocide
Microsoft allowed js in internet explorer, it was an accident but many ppl
believe that was the single point from where js took off. My statement was
meant for their time. IBM did a lot of thing of important for CS (hardware
)during its time so did microsoft. Google is doing similar stuff today with
the web and prolly with AI in the near future.

------
afafsd
I'm using Firefox 3.5, and a helluva lot of stuff doesn't work properly any
more. For instance, I notice that reddit broke a few weeks ago and I can no
longer vote or comment. Why? I have no idea.

"Why don't you just get a new browser?" you might ask. Because new versions of
browsers don't work on OS 10.4.

"So why don't you upgrade your OS?" Because as far as I can tell, no upgraded
OS that will work on this machine is still available. There's no upgrade path
from here to there. OS 10.6 would run on this machine, and OS 10.6 would run
the latest Chrome, but you can't get OS 10.6 any more.

So I'm stuck in a bind, with no other option than to throw this (perfectly
good) machine out completely. I do have a newer machine, but I keep it in the
office, and this one _ought_ to be capable of doing everything I want from it,
but web devs keep breaking things that used to work fine.

~~~
mccr8
You should check out TenFourFox. Some heroic developers have ported the latest
versions of Firefox to old versions of OSX, including, it looks like, 10.4.

[http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/](http://www.floodgap.com/software/tenfourfox/)

~~~
Torn
This looks really awesome for people with PowerPC architectures.

As part of the porting, though, are there security guarantees?

I imagine if they're re-written low-level implementation details they'll be
opening themselves up to risk (not to mention the chance for backdoors). I
wonder what their process is for fixing new security holes as they are fixed
in firefox.

~~~
mccr8
It looks like they are tracking ESR releases, which get security fixes and not
much else, so keeping it updated is probably not too difficult, in the scheme
of things. I think they don't have a JIT yet, so that also helps. When they do
get a JIT, I doubt it will be economically viable for the standard malware
writer to target such a tiny segment of the market.

In any event, it is much more secure than running Firefox 3.5, which has
published exploits.

~~~
classichasclass
TenFourFox dev here [:spectre on Bugzilla]. Yes, we run on 10.4. The best
reason to still own a Power Mac today is Classic. It's why I do.

We track ESR and occasionally backport later fixes. It was easier to do it
that way than to have widget or gfx break on rapid release -- that way we have
the entire ESR cycle to get it right.

10.4Fx does have a JIT. Right now it's a highly modified version of
BaselineCompiler (I hacked BaselineIC to have better type and shape guards
that take advantage of the greater ILP possible with the PPC integer unit),
but I've had trouble getting our JaegerMonkey implementation to come into the
Ion age. What we'll probably end up doing is blowing it up and rewriting it
based on MIPS, since MIPS does many of the same things we have to and is much
more like us than ARM (they do lui/ori to load 32-bit quantities, we do
lis/ori; they have a link register too; they have similar branch stanza
requirements). We have an unusually large stack as well, mostly for the stack
frame requirements of the ABI. I hope to have this ready by 38ESR.

Security is a concern for the browser. I hate relying on security by
obscurity, but as you say, we're a tiny segment of a tiny segment (while
10.4Fx will run under Rosetta, and some crazy people do, it's not our core
concern). We don't run Flash or Java anymore because of Rosetta Flash and
Flashback, or any other plugins, for that matter. Since Firefox implements
NSS, that means we're not beholden to deficiencies in the Apple-shipped SSL or
NSURL. Heck, since Mozilla implements its own media libraries, we don't have
to rely on the system ones either. It's going to be a lot safer than a Webkit
shell which has all of those dependencies and more.

PowerPC forever.

------
weilu
As a web dev, I'm very well aware of the pain of supporting old browsers. I
appreciate what Google did for that very selfish reason.

Google provide a "free" service ("free" as in they don't directly charge you
for it, they show you ads and have advertisers pay for it instead). Users sure
have the freedom to use browsers of their choice and search engines of their
choice, so is Google entitled to similar kind of freedom -- they are free to
set their own house rules, whether that's "old homepage for old browsers" or
"special homepage for chrome". As a user of such a "free" service either you
suck it up or leave. Bitching about something like this is like getting a free
lunch and complaining there's not enough salt, imho.

------
thomasfoster96
While I do respect Google wanting to move forward and bring along newer
features that need newer technology, is it really too much to ask for simple
fallbacks for browsers that are otherwise still supported by their vendors?

Safari 5.1 is pretty old, but it's no IE8. It supports enough HTML5 and CSS3
features to make me think that Google's just being a bit cheeky to non-Chrome
older browser users in user-agent sniffing and then not providing a current
search page with fallbacks.

By the way, are versions of Chrome at about the same age of these other
browsers also being affected?

~~~
acdha
How many security fixes have you backported to Safari 5.1? A lot of Google's
upgrade obsession is driven by the fact that they have a LOT of other people's
data which is under constant attack.

~~~
thomasfoster96
Browser security issues shouldn't mean that functionality is suddenly thrown
back 12 months for certain browsers, rather Google could simply display a
banner urging them to update if it's an issue for them. Arguably simpler and
makes a bit more sense.

~~~
acdha
The question is which browsers you invest your time and money supporting. If
the vendor doesn't support a browser, it becomes increasingly hard to justify
investing your resources on it and a single block-list makes everything
consistent.

------
growse
I'm on the latest chrome (v37) on Ubuntu, and I'm getting ye olde schoole
Google for omnibar searches. If I hit google.com and then type a search in the
page, I get the current Google layout.

Weird.

~~~
chrisfosterelli
I'm on Chromium 36 on Ubuntu, and see the current Google layout through
omnibar searches.

------
butterfly14
<sarcasm>This is great news! Now all I have to do is not update my browser any
more and I won't have to deal with the mess of google, facebook etc. changing
their UI every so often and making me search for the new locations of the
links to the features I use frequently.</sarcasm>

More seriously, I have set my "google" bookmark to
google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en because I LIKE the old style better and
don't want instant/autocomplete.

~~~
dmitri145
Any source of how to get back other removed Google features? :)

------
josteink
'Discourages' eh? I think a quote from Iain M. Bank's culture-series is in
place here:

"You might call them soft, and they might agree with you, but they're soft
like the ocean is soft, and any sailor will tell you how harmless the Ocean
is."

Google is just being 'soft' on non-Chrome browsers here.

------
diminish
Do they really discourage the stock browser in many Android 2.x devices? I
have one, and I don't see anything, anyway I can't update it neither.

------
wldlyinaccurate
Annoyingly, Google seems to consider my installation of Chrome 37 on Ubuntu
14.04 an "old" browser, so I now get an outdated version of Google.

------
dblotsky
I may be misinterpreting the article, but isn't that just graceful
degradation?

~~~
kijin
Except the degradation isn't particularly "graceful". Google just seems to be
sniffing the user agent and sending different content.

~~~
cromwellian
Capability checks and run-time tests can only go so far. You end up with a
bewildering array of code path fallbacks and polyfills that massively
complicates the readability and maintainability of such apps.

I realize web developers think it's kind of marvelous and cool and
philosophically pure to serve one page that scales from Netscape 1.0 all the
way up to today's bleeding edge mobile browsers, but realistically, it is
better to focus team resources on different tiers of functionality and in
effect, write two or more difference pages optimizes for different scenarios.

------
squidmccactus
Which companies are discouraging old browser users again? That sounds like
ageism.

------
dredmorbius
No problems with old browsers on DDG

Though I'm fond of [https://duckduckgo.com/lite](https://duckduckgo.com/lite)
for my w3m sessions.

------
dpweb
Old == not Chrome?

------
awjr
I know it's wrong, but I'd be happy if they just refused to provide any
services unless you had an up to date browser or any interaction would
immediately take the user to the what browser site
[http://whatbrowser.org/](http://whatbrowser.org/)

