"At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important."
It's hard to read that and then say Google is not being hypocritical here.
Requiring someone to play by the rules to use the data isn't being not open. The data is accessible, and you can use it, provided you follow the rules. And there really only seems to be one rule that Microsoft keeps breaking (and even admitting to breaking), which is using an HTML5 video tag to wrap the video in.
If Microsoft can't put a simple web frame in their own application and have only an iframe, video tag, or whatever it is that Google wants to display the video, Microsoft has a problem.
The data is open, and free for anyone to use, provided they follow the rules. Microsoft doesn't want to follow one simple rule. One. Simple. Rule.
A simple rule that degrades the experience that the official app doesn't follow.
It's apparently not a very pleasant rule if the largest API consumer doesn't follow it.
It's not 'open' if some users get the good API and some users get the bad API.
And it makes you sound ridiculous to put so much emphasis on 'one simple rule'. It's very easy for rules to be both simple and unfair at the same time. How about '$500 entry fee for short people'.
> A simple rule that degrades the experience that the official app doesn't follow.
And that degrades the experience how? Just because Google doesn't use the same API (nor are they required to) doesn't mean everyone else gets a poorer experience. There are a number of unofficial YouTube clients for iOS and Android, and they all use the public API.
Again (and I say again because I replied to another one of your comments), if Microsoft doesn't have a web frame for their mobile apps, and has to make the entire app web-based, how is that Google's fault? They didn't create a (in that case, because if it's not the case, I have no comment) sub-par API for their mobile OS.
> It's apparently not a very pleasant rule if the largest API consumer doesn't follow it.
Again, how so? They don't need to follow the rule because they know when their advertising is going to change, nobody else does. The overhead involved in allowing everyone to do things the same way Google does is too high compared to just saying use a web view. Would you want to monitor every use of the API and make sure everyone was up to date by a certain point of time?
> It's not 'open' if some users get the good API and some users get the bad API.
How is the public API bad? Because it requires a frame? What's bad about that?
Also, really, no users are using a "good" or "bad" API, everyone who isn't the producer has access to the same API. All users get your so-called "bad" API.
> And it makes you sound ridiculous to put so much emphasis on 'one simple rule'. It's very easy for rules to be both simple and unfair at the same time. How about '$500 entry fee for short people'.
But how is this rule unfair? You've yet to convince me that the rule is unfair. This argument only works if everyone agrees that the rule is unfair. I don't see any preference for anyone other than the producer. Everyone who doesn't manage the entire infrastructure is given the same treatment as the other people not managing the system.
> A simple rule that degrades the experience that the official app doesn't follow.
How does that make Google un-open?
> It's apparently not a very pleasant rule if the largest API consumer doesn't follow it.
The largest API consumer is also the API provider. They can (and should, and do) iterate faster than a stable API they provide to others. That's almost always the case.
> It's not 'open' if some users get the good API and some users get the bad API.
All users get the same API, but provider is using a different API (which may, and does, change every other day). And it's perfectly open. Openness does NOT mean everyone gets to be on equal footing! Google can shutter youtube tomorrow, but Microsoft can't, which is always going to be the case.
Open is about having access to the data at all, under reasonable terms and conditions, that Microsoft refuses to follow.
> It's very easy for rules to be both simple and unfair at the same time. How about '$500 entry fee for short people'.
It sounds even more ridiculous to compare "use a standard HTML5 iframe section provided to you" to "special fee for short people".
History shows that indeed, Microsoft and standards don't mix well. But that's hardly a Google problem. Microsoft could have spent a tenth of the energy (and money, and goodwill) in this case, and just hired someone who knows what they are doing (e.g. the guy who wrote Jasmine for iOS, which provides an experience way better than the official client, using only this 'one simple rule')
Anyway this is a good read from Google's official blog.
From http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html
"At Google we believe that open systems win. They lead to more innovation, value, and freedom of choice for consumers, and a vibrant, profitable, and competitive ecosystem for businesses. Many companies will claim roughly the same thing since they know that declaring themselves to be open is both good for their brand and completely without risk. After all, in our industry there is no clear definition of what open really means. It is a Rashomon-like term: highly subjective and vitally important."
It's hard to read that and then say Google is not being hypocritical here.