Microsoft Unveils New Plan to Speed Up the Web: Competes with SPDY | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Unveils New Plan to Speed Up the Web: Competes with SPDY

webmonkey.com

57 pointssuprgeek17 comments

The title is misleading. According to the article, this is about building up on SPDY and adding further enhancements there.

So contrary to the usual MS NIH syndrome, this is about collaboration to find the best possible solution and not about competing with a totally incompatible but 100% MS solution.

I don't know about you but "building up on SPDY" triggers my memory pretty sharply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

Except this isn't MS' call. The IETF will evaluate all proposals and cobble the best bits together. The chances of either SPDY or HTTP S+M being adopted verbatim as HTTP2 are slim. Whatever the IETF ends up doing, it'll be a single standard that everyone builds to.

It looks like the usual Microsoft 'embrace and extend' strategy.

It would be if they weren't working with the IETF to have their additions become HTTP 2.0.

There's no difference between Google extending SSL, implementing that in their browser and servers and then submitting it to the IETF and Microsoft adding additional features to SPDY and submitting those too for consideration.

Only when their changes get turned down, but then still appear in IE in such a way that it only supports the changed SPDY but not the original any more, only then I would have to agree with you.

At the moment it doesn't look like that is the case though.

Microsoft has worked with standards bodies for CIFS, Kerberos and LDAP, the whole pile of web standards (and their .docx thing, but this one is a joke). It doesn't mean you can interoperate with them, because they have introduced involved bugs and matching workarounds, then enshrined them for decades by never breaking compatibility. SPDY can avoid this because it already has diverse implementations in the wild, but if Microsoft acquires credibility for mobile extensions to SPDY, they'll push a half-broken implementation to carriers and gain a competitive advantage on smartphones.

And ECMAScript which they held back for a year or more and garnering the wrath of Brendan Eich not too long ago.

> It would be if they weren't working with the IETF

Like they "worked" with ISO on OOXML?

Sorry. They have to earn back some trust after what they did there.

That's good and all, but I still have my doubts. Their attitude stills sound a bit like "yeah, we're building on SPDY, but our implementation is sooo much better...", in a competitive kind of way.

But I suppose if they can actually collaborate with Google on this and try to make the best possible implementation together, that will be good for everyone.

I can't think of how SPDY isn't for mobile, unless what Microsoft really mean is that whilst TCP is involved the highly variable delay in a response over a mobile network, and TCP's backoff algorithm, is what they wish to solve.

http://blog.davidsingleton.org/mobiletcp/

It would be great if Microsoft came out and told us what they were hoping would be the standard. Deliver a paper, or the goods, before (or at the same time as) talking to the press.

If they're also on top of TCP, then they still have some of the same fundamental problems and are likely not more mobile friendly.

If they're not using TCP, then they should come out and show us what they've got.

Of course, this is just one very small angle on it, but without much more info all they're going to do is whip up a storm of speculation about it.

They would be in a better position if they developed this in the open. Even the announcement has no details. SPDY had that problem too, you would think Microsoft might learn.

What the ___ does Microsoft have to do with mobile? Windows Phone is like 5%?

I honestly think that Microsoft is deliberately trying to interfere with anything and everything related to the web platform in order to maintain their desktop PC profits with Windows based on PC games, desktop software requiring Windows, etc.

I think that even though they have lots of geniuses doing good research and advancing things, the Microsoft business model is overall at odds with information technology progression which most fundamentally requires integration and cohesiveness of open software systems.

Therefore I think we need to pool resources and money to make sure that IETF and other standards bodies resist Microsoft's devious plots.

I guess this answers my question as to how people would react if was Microsoft and not Google which tried to come out with their own proprietary HTTP-replacement protocol.

And quite frankly I'm not surprised about the answer.

"Microsoft’s new HTTP Speed+Mobility lacks a catchy name..."

'Microsoft S&M' has a degree of familiarity to it.

It's nice to note, as pilif does in this thread, that this is about building on not competing with other alternatives.

I would appreciate a better HTTPS rather than a better but still unsafe HTTP. I hope they integrate security into HTTP 2.0.

You missed a key property of SPDY then.

Not that security is any single feature.

What obtu meant is that:

"SPDY adds a session layer atop of SSL that allows for multiple concurrent, interleaved streams over a single TCP connection."

From http://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper

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