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Comment by codedokode | Hacker News Reader

To anyone thinking it was a good deed: please remember that later Google used similar techiniques against other browsers, like Opera. They showed a warning about an "unsupported browser" but if the user changed user-agent to Firefox or Chrome, everything worked. Another example is Web version of Skype which is very picky and doesn't work in many browsers, like mobile browsers, or slightly outdated Firefox.

For example, tomorrow Google can implement a DRM that would require a plugin that works on Windows, Android (with Google Play Services) or Mac, but not on Linux. After all, Linux is not a DRM-friendly system (allowing the user to hack anything is not what copyright holders want), and almost nobody uses it on desktop, so why bother supporting it? Or Google can use it against new, not yet very popular browser, to slow its adoption.

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> For example, tomorrow Google can implement a DRM that would require a plugin that works on Windows, Android (with Google Play Services) or Mac, but not on Linux

I was reading your comment and wasn't sure if it's well hidden sarcasm or you are seriously don't know this already happened:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19553941

Basically you cannot watch high resolutions streams on Linux already even in Google Chrome because of DRM Google among others helped to push into HTML specification.

But what was the alternative before? Remember none of us could watch Netflix on Linux because they built the whole thing on Silverlight.

It's not really about alternatives. Before no one pretended that proprietary blob is some part of the web - everyone knew it for what it is: ugly black-box plugin. And any engineer knew how easily is it to bypass said DRM.

Problem with what Google among others did is that they was actually in position to push against making something like that part of the web specification. Yet they went all in and what worse become gatekeeper for new web browsers to implement Widevine DRM.

Same way Google might push for more open Android ecosystem, but it's not their interests so they did the opposite. And with all Chrome-exclusive features and AMP it's pretty much the same thing happening.

First they came for the IE6ers but I didn’t speak out because I hated IE6...

> Another example is Web version of Skype which is very picky and doesn't work in many browsers, like mobile browsers, or slightly outdated Firefox.

My Firefox is up to date (60.6.1esr), and Skype Web tells me it's unsupported and refused to work.

Here is a trick: change UA to Edge 15 on Windows (or something that's supported) and Skype will magically work (tested on Debian, audio call also works). I also recommend running this under a separate profile or user account so that Microsoft is unable to track you on other sites.

Google is still doing this on stuff like Hangouts or Meet, where it tells you it won't work in Safari. But changing the user agent has worked for me.

> Another example is Web version of Skype which is very picky and doesn't work in many browsers, like mobile browsers, or slightly outdated Firefox.

AFAIK Web Skype no longer works in any version of Firefox.

Unless you change user-agent to "Edge 15" and it starts working, including audio calls (tested on Debian and FF60 ESR).

Just because a browser is unsupported doesn't mean it won't work; it means they're not going out of their way to fix it if a problem does occur.

When Skype decides your browser is unsupported, it means you can't use it at all: https://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/original/1556784915.png

I think your parent comment was talking about why changing the user-agent 'fixes' it.

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