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Comment by dubcanada | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but Google is exceptionally good at fragmentation and confusion in regards to products. How many gmail apps do they have? Inbox, gmail, android mail (though this got deprecated), web interface, etc. Youtube now has 2 apps, a web interface.

They seem to like to make new stuff, rather then upgrade their existing stuff. Then every second year they just go through their stack and deprecate 30% of it.

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You're forgetting that they also have YouTube Gaming [1] as another separate app.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Don't forget YouTube Kids as well! https://appsto.re/ca/U1q23.i

And YT Music too!

> Inbox, gmail, android mail (though this got deprecated)

Don't forget the cleanest, best-performing one: the classic "Basic HTML" interface. Which manages to be much faster for most operations than Inbox or the AJAXified normal version despited having to reload the whole page.

You just have to love that classic approach to web development, right?

JavaScript is great for improving the user experience, but it's often vastly overused and just makes me scream for simpler times such as the classic web app.

I'm increasingly convinced that much better solutions to most of the problems Javascript and AJAX solve ("solve") would have been better frames and improved HTML forms.

Exactly! I use Bootstrap for the auto-scaling to the device, and AlpacaJS for the dynamically generated and adjustable forms... but that's it. That's all I want from JS: form management and validation, and responsive design (and I believe the latter is done in pure CSS anyway?)

"Modern" web has made me embrace back native development and see the web as HTML/CSS only, as it should have stayed.

I totally agree.

JavaScript for dynamic forms and validation, and any responsive design functionality it gives me through the use of Bootstrap/SemanticUI... that's it.

And inbox is the slowest and most non intuitive interface of all.

> Youtube now has 2 apps

At least 6 apps.

Youtube, Youtube Creator Studio, Youtube Kids, Youtube Music, Youtube Gaming, Youtube Go

One of these things is not like the others

YouTube Creator Studio of course is a different app for managing your channel - which is great - I think it's a fantastic separation of concerns. One app for consuming, another for moderation/management.

But then yes, you've got:

* YouTube (proper) * YouTube Kids * YouTube Music * YouTube Gaming * YouTube GO

and I believe more are coming.

While I agree fragmentation can be bad, YouTube is one area where I think this makes sense. What a gamer wants in an app is going to be very different to what someone seeking educational content is going to want.

Similarly, a kids app is very useful given how many kids are growing up using cheap tablets to stream videos, and I know from watching my nephews that the way they use YouTube is very different from how I use it.

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