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Today Google put out a doodle on it's search page that is written only to work on Chrome, Google's browser. It then has a link that tells the user to "Upgrade to a modern browser and see what this doodle can really do.", with the term "modern browser" defined as only Chrome.
Yep, the latest version of Firefox, Opera, I.E., Safari, or anything else doesn't count as a "modern browser" according to Google. There's encouraging people to use your browser by making it better, and then there's resorting to cheesy gimmicks to garner user support. I expect better of Google.
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Dan8267 says
Why?
Their entire business model is selling ads, and doing their utmost to lock in your mindshare and data.
As Exhibit A, I invite you to look at their history with the email protocol IMAP. For years they wouldn't support IMAP only POP. And when they finally begrudgingly added IMAP it's a VERY limited command set far less featureful than software written a decade ago. Why? They want you to check into their hotel, but never check out. Adding good IMAP support would make it too easy to just use them as a utility and even migrate your mailbox out to so some other provider. There's absolutely no technical reason for it the software part should be trivial for them.
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Vicente,
On the other hand, Gmail was the first major and free email service that provided IMAP in the first place.
Does Yahoo have IMAP yet, I haven't checked. What about hotmail? Last I checked gmail was the only big service that offered it.
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justme says
Yahoo has supported IMAP since at least 2007 when I noticed, perhaps earlier.
Google has IMAP crippleware, nothing at all advanced that a smart client app likes. Wouldn't want you to find a client app offered such good utility you'd abandon their web interface. Here's the Google capability list:
* CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 UNSELECT IDLE NAMESPACE QUOTA ID XLIST CHILDREN X-GM-EXT-1 XYZZY SASL-IR AUTH=XOAUTH
Only 10 capabilities advertised. Xyzzy doesn't count, it's a gag no-op.
And here's Yahoo:
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 ID NAMESPACE X-ID-ACLID UIDPLUS LITERAL+ CHILDREN XAPPLEPUSHSERVICE XYMHIGHESTMODSEQ LOGINDISABLED AUTH=XYMCOOKIE AUTH=XYMECOOKIE AUTH=XYMCOOKIEB64 AUTH=XYMPKI STARTTLS] IMAP4rev1 imapgate-0.7.68_13.339469
For contrast here's a Cyrus mail-store server I work with:
a OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ ID LOGINDISABLED ACL RIGHTS=kxte QUOTA MAILBOX-REFERRALS NAMESPACE UIDPLUS NO_ATOMIC_RENAME UNSELECT CHILDREN MULTIAPPEND BINARY SORT SORT=MODSEQ THREAD=ORDEREDSUBJECT THREAD=REFERENCES ANNOTATEMORE CATENATE CONDSTORE IDLE URLAUTH] User logged in
The other thing that bugs me, as I'm a bit OCD about protocols and RFC compliance, is that Google doesn't even support IMAP TLS. Let me explain, the RFC-compliant and recommended way to offer encrypted services is let people connect over a "plaintext" port (IMAP is port 143), then require them to do a STARTTLS command to begin encryption before entering a password. E.g. you can "telnet imap.mail.yahoo.com 143" just fine and run command-line tests. Google only appears to support the RFC-abomination which is port 993, wrapping IMAP in an SSL tunnel. Back in the days before anyone bothered to link in encryption support in their software, you'd "shim" in encryption by running an external piece named stunnel and offering the same service on an alternate port, a now-deprecated solution.
You have to conclude either that Google programmers are terrible, or they wrote the most technically inferior IMAP implementation I've seen, deliberately crippled to run JUST well enough to say "we support that" and nudge you back to webmail so they can get back to making your eyeballs and data their prisoners. Either way it doesn't speak well of them.
OK getting off my soapbox now....
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Bob Moog died about 5 years ago, I thought it was tasteless that Google Doodle's tool tip called it Robert Moog's 78th birthday.
You think Bob would like some cake?
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Vicente says
Fair enough. I guess I was uncharacteristically being optimistic and thought perhaps they had the ethical balls to take seriously their motto of "do no evil". Not that this is evil, but it is a bit underhanded.
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CaptainShuddup says
I wasn't aware of that. Still, I don't think they intended any disrespect.
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Works in IE 9
Works in Firefox
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Didn't work in Firefox 11.0, which is like a few months old, hardly that out of date although Firefox has made another release I see. Still, there releases are quick, minor ones now.
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justme says
Netcom ISP with host of software to use their service including email clients in mid 90s !
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It actually works in other browsers, but only with flash.
Chrome is the only browser that currently supports the entire HTML5 audio API, hence the warning.
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Kevin says
Yeah, but we know they new that before building that doodle and the warning was phrased so as to persuade people to replace their browser with Chrome.