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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

I guess we'll just throw out the W3C too

That was sarcastic, right? But I have to say that recent (last 10 years) W3C decisions seem to me to have been to the benefit of FAANG, not me.

And we should. In the past several years Google has subsumed w3c and rams its non-standards through at neck-breaking speed.

Google and Amazon speak very differently about Matter

And 550 other companies, working on a standard.

This kind of response is harmful. Google is not all bad. Orgs are complex entities with a lot of competing interests. Using shit-colored shades exclusively to view anything is too limiting & sad a way to go.

Google is pretty bad, and there’s no way I would buy any Google manufactured device (hunk of e-waste?)

Your point is valid though, there are hundreds of other companies involved in this standard, many of them will make fantastic devices and there’s no reason to ignore them all because of one bad vendor.

If you want software to improve, you need to encourage companies working together on initiatives like this. Both Google and Apple suffer from this lack of communication, and it's led to shitty protocols time-after-time. If we start with Matter, maybe we can break down other arbitrary barriers like iMessage and the App Store/Play Store. Then we don't have to resort to antitrust litigation!

The "one bad vendor" is the gatekeeper for 50% of the mobile device hardware space.

If you take a wild guess and assume that most people will interact with home automation through their handhelds, and 100% of them will when away from home and their house hubs, then that "one bad vendor" could seriously crater the health of the ecosystem.

No, it's a warning. If Google's enthusiasm for this protocol makes or breaks Android compatibility with Matter, what happens when (not if) they walk away?

I don't trust Apple and Amazon to keep the faith either, but Mountain View is the weakest link here.

Maybe be it's not all bad but it gets worse

How many companies are involved in the USB-C debacle? It seems to me like there's many companies involved with different and competing interests, yet nobody is sounding the alarm bell over USB-C 5 Pro Max SuperSpeed 2x2 10G.

Yeah, look at the insanity in Chrome. It is open source but that's just the lip service. I want Google nowhere near my home gadgets. It might play a docile role and then eventually devour the entire project with funds/influence.

Just lip service? Chromium (and blink and v8) have been used as the basis for a significant number of important open source projects.

And yet there isn’t a popular ungoogled Chrome Browser taking market share away.

Chrome’s popularity dwarfs any other project by a factor of like a million.

Getting enamored by OSS virtue signaling is how Big Tech rules the world.

Apparently, most people are happy enough with Chrome. If not, it would be relatively easy for a competitor to enter the market with a more attractive offering. And that's only because Chrome (and Firefox) are open source.

I'm sure there are many valid reasons to be critical of Google's business ethics, but keeping an important project like this almost entirely open source surely is not one of them.

Android, on the other hand, is a different case, with Google moving more and more basic functionality into the proprietary Play Services and proprietary apps.

Amazon is influential enough in home automation that it won't happen. Alexa is the most likely home assistant to respond in American homes. Apple is a long ways behind, but they have enough stubbornness and power to keep their influence in the decision making as well.

Making a hub is only part of home automation and is probably the weakest link if they decide to abandon Matter and go with something else.

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