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Comment by gkoberger | Hacker News Reader

A few random thoughts:

* "he left out the part where Google recently sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it remove the YouTube app from its Windows Phones" has nothing to do with interoperating, but rather Microsoft not showing ads (among other infractions).

* "Mozilla guy" is Dan Buchner (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dandonkulous), who's working with Google on web components. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2cpEUw1...

Larry gave an impressive non-answer to the relatively basic question ("Hey, any chance web technologies will replace Java on Android?"), and went off on quite the interesting tangent about just about everything.

I can only assume he's been wanting to say these things for a while, and jumped on basically the first open ended question he got. I bet the Google PR team was freaking out a bit.

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>has nothing to do with interoperating, but rather Microsoft not showing ads (among other infractions).

Says who? Microsoft offered to show ads but Google refuses to give them access to the API since almost 3 years.

Perhaps you haven't read this story because Google fanboys on HN are flagging it heavily to keep HN readers like you in the dark.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5715889

The public YouTube API documented at https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/ appears to have all the functionality required to implement a TOS-compliant client. In particular, it has support for fetching the HTML required to embed a video player that obeys uploader settings for advertisement and device restriction.

Microsoft's original request is for Google to create a new API which would allow querying of richer metadata about videos. It's not apparent why this new API is required to write a TOS-compliant YouTube client.

Windows Phone has tens of millions of users and YT is a really popular app so it would hit the quota limit real quick and get banned.

https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/getting-started#quo...

(reposting an earlier comment)

To my knowledge the YouTube API doesn't ban users for excessive use of the API, it just throttles them temporarily.

The exact throttling values are not posted publicly, but there are multiple third-party apps using the YouTube APIs successfully, so I expect the limits are high enough for a standard client to work without problems.

---

If Microsoft wrote a TOS-compliant YouTube app and put it in their app store, but it was written in a way that bumped up against the quota limits, I'm sure they and Google could work out some way to grant them more quota.

>If Microsoft wrote a TOS-compliant YouTube app and put it in their app store, but it was written in a way that bumped up against the quota limits, I'm sure they and Google could work out some way to grant them more quota.

MS has been requesting API access since three years, so I think there was no amicable resolution and MS was forced to do this.

From their statement:

"We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs," says a Microsoft spokesperson.

There is a difference between

1) Requesting Google design, implement, and publish a set of new APIs specifically to support a particular low-population platform owned by a self-vowed enemy of the technology stack Google is built on.

2) Requesting Google increment a few numbers in a database somewhere.

You realize that if ads are required by the TOS, but you don't have the ability to include ads, that it doesn't mean it's just okay to ignore the TOS and distribute the app anyway?

Whether it's fair or not for Google to not provide a way to include ads is a different argument entirely. It sounds like it's just not even technically legal for MS to distribute their YouTube app in its current state.

>You realize that if ads are required by the TOS, but you don't have the ability to include ads, that it doesn't mean it's just okay to ignore the TOS and distribute the app anyway?

Microsoft developers didn't have to read and accept the TOS to access Youtube videos. Perhaps they're trying the legal precedent of the equivalent of 'clean room reverse engineering".

Is it legal for Mozilla to distribute Adblock on their site which is a program that disables Youtube and Google ads and hurts content creators?

Would Mozilla be forced to remove it from https://addons.mozilla.org if Google sends a C&D to them?

>It sounds like it's just not even technically legal for MS to distribute their YouTube app in its current state.

So what? Google can sue them for billions and win and stop all Windows Phone users from easy access to YouTube videos despite their stated mission of "Organize the world's information and make it accessible to everyone".

Not sure why you're so worried about Microsoft's finances, they have 75 billion in the bank and some pretty good lawyers. No wonder they snuck in a "download video" button too. The WP Youtube app is the best Youtube app on mobile platforms because of that.

Nothing you said is actually a justification for MS's actions.

> Is it legal for Mozilla to distribute Adblock on their site which is a program that disables Youtube and Google ads and hurts content creators?

Yes. This is because AdBlock is a service that modifies the way your own browser - your property - works. It is not in itself a service that pulls YouTube content from YouTube.

For this same reason, it is available even in the Chrome Web Store itself.

I don't understand how you can say "so what" to pointing out that one of these companies is acting illegally, and expect to be taken seriously.

Also I think you meant to say "Google" in your last sentence instead of "Microsoft"? I can't tell and it doesn't seem to make sense otherwise.

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