There's a difference between something like Buzz (run on goog's servers) and something like Angular. Google could discontinue Angular tomorrow, and we'd still be able to run our websites on version 1.2, and the angular.js library would still be out there, open sourced using the very permissive MIT license, for people to continue hacking on.
If you look here: https://github.com/angular/angular.js/graphs/contributors you can see who contributes to angular regularly. Similarly, there's no percentage in Google building MSIE-breakers into angularjs. We're all trying to get wide acceptance of our sites, it's not like we're going to use a platform that explicitly breaks that, especially when the platform itself is (see above) free and open. I'm not sure how much money google makes off of chrome in particular, I've always thought it existed in order to push other browsers to support emerging web standards. But hey, this is all IMO. e On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 10:53 AM, jorupp <[email protected]> wrote: > In the course of a couple of recent projects, I've gotten some push-back > from others related to the project with a couple of fears I've been trying > to put to rest, but I figured there were better arguments available than > what I'd found so far. > > The first is a fear about using a core technology (AngularJS) for our > application that comes from Google, a company that has in the past dropped > services for one reason or another - Reader, Wave, Buzz, etc. ( > http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/map_of_the_week/2013/03/google_reader_joins_graveyard_of_dead_google_products.html). > There's a fear that one day, Google may decide that they no longer need > AngularJS and discontinue an updates for it, leaving us on an orphaned > platform. I know we'd always be able to continue to use the last-released > version, and I'd like to think that the community would continue to push it > in that case, but the fear still persists. Several of the current heavy > contributors are Google employees, but are there many contributors that > aren't affiliated with Google in some way? > > The second also is related to Google - basically, there's a fear that good > IE support in Angular isn't a priority since it's made by a rival > (Microsoft). I tried to explain how dropping IE8 support in 1.3 ( > http://blog.angularjs.org/2013/12/angularjs-13-new-release-approaches.html) > isn't something aimed at Microsoft specifically due to a rivalry (which I'd > argue is more of a Microsoft -> Google thing than a Google->Microsoft > thing), but rather trying to focus efforts for new APIs on browsers used on > the modern web. Dropping IE8 doesn't seem to have in any way changed the > focus on excellent support for all modern browsers. Besides, unless IE > suddenly goes to near-0 marketshare, not supporting current versions of IE > well would be suicide for any project (like Angular) aimed at building > slick, general-purpose websites. Chrome/FF/Safari-only isn't something any > general framework could realistically do. > > Anyway, any thoughts/references on the subject would be appreciated, > > - jorupp > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "AngularJS" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/angular. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "AngularJS" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/angular. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
