Why rivals Google and Apple agree on HTML5 | Hacker News Reader

Why rivals Google and Apple agree on HTML5

tech.fortune.cnn.com

35 pointscshenoy10 comments

They don't agree, they both need it to be ahead of the competition in the web arena. Microsoft lost a lot of time trying to hold the web back while they milked the most of the desktop world. Now they are catching up in desperation as they see their internet flagship IE sink to lowest levels ever.

So, all agree in HTML5, they all support it, because they all need it.

Agreed, the Fortune title should have been "Why rivals Google and Apple like HTML5".

I don't think that the idea of Microsoft "trying to hold back the web" has ever crossed my mind, but damn if that isnt true. They are even shipping an IE7-level browser with Windows Phone 7

Oh, absolutely. That was their beef with Netscape, way back when: Netscape was a platform for delivering apps independent of the OS. NS was very explicit about it, talking about "crossware", applications written in HTML+JS+Java that would work on any OS where Netscape ran. It was premature—NS's one big crossware app, Netcaster, was slow and clunky—but still very scary to anybody that sold OSes.

(Edit: actually, it probably wasn't scary to any OS vendor but MS; the others were all happy to think that users might move to applications that could run on their OSes, too.)

Google and Apple benefit from the volume of sales of apps through their "app" stores. By supporting a standard (and helping it be a good one, not one that has many proprietary interpretations), they can help extend the reach of apps, reduce development cost/time of app developers, and possibly increasing the volume of apps that get sold through their stores.

This article says a lot about HTML5 but I don't think the author actually knows what it is. He's not a programmer and he seems to start from the position that programming languages are things which can be "owned."

If a single entity controls the platform for it, a programming language is effectively owned. For all practical purposes, Apple owns the platform for Objective-C. If more apps are developed using a cross-platform standard like HTML5 than a single-platform like iOS, that reduces lock-in, so why would Google or Apple want that? That Google want HTML5 to succeed (despite their own Android platform) is pretty much given. The author, however, is arguing that Apple also wants HTML5 to succeed. Why? To prevent another platform from successfully competing with iOS, so that Apple can continue to offer the best user experience.

Oracle seems to hold that position too.

I don't think most people who use the term know what HTML5 is. Most of the time they simply mean "a rich JavaScript + HTML + CSS application" regardless of whether or not it uses the new features actually in HTML5.

At least "AJAX" was a new term, not one with an actual meaning that was co-opted for a different use.

I think he's trying to say that Apple don't view it as a zero sum game in that they either get ios developers or some other platform does. By promoting HTML5 everyone gets those developers, including them, and so if everyone developers in html5 they essentially have all the competition plus who ever is natively developing, so they have access to a host of programs that might otherwise only be available on competing platforms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com