Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category.
Also, I can't be the only one who's absolutely sick of hearing that bloody "security" argument again. Yes, everyone knows FTP is plaintext, and so is HTTP. But drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use, are almost always themselves signed anyway, and I don't think malware is widely distributed via FTP either (I'm curious why FTPS/SFTP doesn't see to be indexed, or why they didn't decide to add that to the browser instead --- or at least I've never come across a search result that links to one.)
There was a time when www was just a part of the Internet and we had www search and ftp search engines. The one I used to use was called "ftpsearch" and the only thing (besides the name) I remember is that it used to say "This server is located in Trondheim" on the front page. A quick web search turns out that it still seems to exist in some form [1]. Unfortunately it apparently doesn't really work anymore.
You mean no one knows that FTP is plaintext except a minority of users which happens to be on HN.
Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Maybe they'll add an option to enable ftp or something.
> drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use
I'm not sure how that's true.
Every time I used FTP, it was not for drivers. All the drivers I downloaded were over http(s), from constructor websites.
Indeed; by the same "security" logic, why not get rid of HTTP too then? (Or SMTP, for that matter?)
The point of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is to do precisely that: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful -- long tails included. But I guess for them it's not...
(Also, I can't believe the Chrome team is so strapped it can't afford to support or harden the feature, as some in the bug tracker suggest [1]. This is Google we are talking about, not some tiny open source project!)
I would say that the reason is not FTP insecurity or anything else technical. They see no monetization in it as they cant put their ads in it, they cant track you (well this is wrong, they track you with chrome) and nobody is buying adwords for FTP. Why keeping it?
I’m really unhappy with Chromes roadmap as of late. Particularly their effort to kill the URL. At one point Chrome was the gold standard and I think it’s gotten to their head.
The drive towards "HTTPS everything" has merely caused users to forget what it is and therefore simply trust Google. Needless to say, this is exactly what they would want.
There are 100,000s of resources on publicly accessible FTP servers and the removal of direct access to these files via one of the worlds most used browsers is major blow for information storage and retrieval on the internet.
It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them.
(I don't understand why they can't just keep FTP support in, but with a security dialog that warns users the connection and data will be non-encrypted)
So much is going to be lost when this happens, it's really sad. All because Google want to recreate the internet as the Googlenet, with HTTPS URLs only, most of which link to their own walled garden servers (AMP etc.)
The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates. The worse thing is... the general public just don't care.
Nah. Average consumers almost never touch ftp anymore. I'm a tech pro and even I haven't used ftp in years. Having ftp servers accessible from a browser is a fairly useless luxury at this point. Dedicated ftp clients are very easy to come by for anyone.
> There are 100,000s of resources [...] major blow for information storage
Thats a very small fraction of all the resources.
> It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them.
This is a worthy concern, for sure. Although how do you know they haven't already done this? Do you have a search that shows ftp: urls?
> The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates.
I'm trying to think of the period when the internet wasn't driven by corporate interests. Before the dot com boom, I suppose? When newsgroups thrived, and email servers roamed free without spam? That was fun but theres a fuckton more information on the internet now.
True. They're very much the new Microsoft and Chrome is the new IE. But the general public also doesn't know what it used to be like. I logged in just to up vote you. I wish we had functioning anti-trust laws.
> It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them.
Why would it? Seems like the relevant model is file types the browser can't open, and there are lots of search results for those?
I'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.
I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment.
There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change? Many well maintained webpages will have to expend resources to migrate off ftp. Less maintained webpages with FTP links will not be updated and put the burden of installing an FTP client on the user, reducing accessibility.
This is Google externalizing the cost of updating their software by forcing everyone else to update their webpages to following Google's specification.
Chrome still displays bitmap images. (S)FTP is still used, there's a lot of legacy stuff on the internet, and Google does not dictate what technology people use. It's still a web browser after all, not an Instagram viewer.
> It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up.
While I see that it is shared by many here, I do not get this sentiment. It's still out there and rarely used, yes. But similarly would not require much maintenance for the time being, remove it when users decide it's dead, not just your shiny modern partners. The codebase cannot be that burdened by support for the protocol, why even take action?
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is the reason why this even came up, is that to soothe some weird code base / maintenance metric?
A lot of Google hate in this thread. Normally I'm on board, but I think you guys are making a big deal out of nothing.
When I click magnet:// links, my bittorrent client opens. When I click slack:// links, my slack client opens. With this change, when I click ftp:// my ftp client will open. Chrome has simply decided it only wants to spend resources focusing on http:// and make the unrelated protocols separate. I see 0 problem with this, it's not like they're killing the only or even the most popular ftp client out there. We should all be using sftp anyways...
I've always felt browsers are gimped FTP clients and found it weird they had support for the protocol in the first place. In fact the first time I used an FTP url in Netscape I was surprised it actually worked.
That said, I find the viewpoint "users should not be impacted by this deprecation" the height of arrogance. Note that phrase is lifted from the article, and is not present in the dev team's post.
I know for a fact that HP distributes software and drivers over FTP files that they link to on their website.
FTP isn't used much anymore, but IMO/IME, it's still nice to have for those rare times when you come across a file that you need to download and it's served over FTP.
The FTP link can still use xdg-open or whatever the local equivalent is to spawn the user's FTP app and connect to that URL. I think that's how most URLs with unsupported (by the browser) protocols are handled nowadays anyway.
Agreed completely, but Google don't care about "nice to have"; if it doesn't ultimately make them money, they couldn't care in the slightest, yet people here will often applaud this attitude as if it were progress.
No one really uses FTP to transmit anything secret or confidential. Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication.
Sensible move. I'm sure they have data showing it's used by an absolutely tiny number of users, and getting rid of it removes a source of potential security issues down the line.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Windows and most Linux distros both come with usable ftp clients in general. So an ftp link will result in the OS handling it, right? And so it opens in IE or Filezilla or whatever.
That's fine... Except on a Chromebook or Android, where it will be a pain.
Good. Honestly it was always weird to me that browsers ever supported FTP in the first place, it seemed so arbitrary. (Why not gopher and telnet too?)
You'll still be able to download an ftp: link by your browser opening your local FTP client, same as a magnet: opening your local torrenting client -- as it should be.
And honestly, if you're one of the few people who actually need to regularly download files with FTP, don't you want a better standalone client anyways?
FTP isn't such a good protocol anyways (and there are better programs for accessing FTP than most web browsers); there is Gopher, HTTP(S), Plan9, TFTP, SSH, and other protocols.
(I also invented a httpdirlist format (I have been told that httpdirlist is like WebDAV but not as bad; but I don't know WebDAV so I cannot say if it is or not). But, sometimes, the other protocols is better than HTTP(S) anyways.)
I think it is fine to have them implemented in separate programs, although sometimes you might want to display the result in the browser; one possibility is that the user can configure a program to execute and can configure it to treat the data that program writes to stdout as a HTTP response (possibly with different permissions than normal; it might allow some things that are normally disallowed, and some things that are normally allowed might not work). You might then also want to support other MIME types. You can do this also with external programs; so one configuration option could be to allow treating the program as a filter to convert it into a format the browser understands (e.g. plain text, HTML, PNG, etc; perhaps farbfeld should be supported too, even only for the purpose of these external filters).
My take is that they didn't want to invest resources into making the FTP client secure in Chrome because it's usage is low, so they just decided that it'd be better to just remove it entirely. Whatever.
Anyway, it's not like Chrome couldn't send the URL to a dedicated FTP client. Hell, it could even be another browser like Firefox. It's not going to be the end of the world -- just not as seamless of an experience and one would like.
I've used FTP for many years, and I still use it to manage the file system of my blog, which is running on a cheap VPS. I doubt, though, that even 1 in 100 non-technical Internet users knows what it is. There are several good clients available. I think you can even still use Windows Explorer. I can't think of a strong argument for Google to maintain support in Chrome.
I always liked FTP support as a part of the browser platform. Of course, it would not have the capabilities of a standalone FTP client. And for those who needed those capabilities, lots of tools exist.
The web is not just HTTP. FTP has been the binary companion to the text-based HTTP protocol, and I think that for the sake of the browser being a platform and not just a viewing tool, it should stay.
Not for this reason alone (mostly because I can never sign out of the browser and it's trying to auto-sign-me-in to sites I don't want tracking me) I uninstalled chrome yesterday.
End of an era. I imagine it would take the better part of a decade to earn my loyalty back if they ever pulled a 180, but seeing their direction the writing has been on the wall for a while.
[+] [-] userbinator|6 years ago|reply
Also, I can't be the only one who's absolutely sick of hearing that bloody "security" argument again. Yes, everyone knows FTP is plaintext, and so is HTTP. But drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use, are almost always themselves signed anyway, and I don't think malware is widely distributed via FTP either (I'm curious why FTPS/SFTP doesn't see to be indexed, or why they didn't decide to add that to the browser instead --- or at least I've never come across a search result that links to one.)
[+] [-] weinzierl|6 years ago|reply
Maybe it's time to bring ftp search engines back.
[1] http://www.mi.uni-koeln.de/~jbe/ref/ftpsearch/
[+] [-] elcomet|6 years ago|reply
You mean no one knows that FTP is plaintext except a minority of users which happens to be on HN.
Google is optimizing its browser for the majority, chrome is not a power-user browser. Maybe they'll add an option to enable ftp or something.
> drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use
I'm not sure how that's true. Every time I used FTP, it was not for drivers. All the drivers I downloaded were over http(s), from constructor websites.
[+] [-] gone35|6 years ago|reply
The point of "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" is to do precisely that: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful -- long tails included. But I guess for them it's not...
(Also, I can't believe the Chrome team is so strapped it can't afford to support or harden the feature, as some in the bug tracker suggest [1]. This is Google we are talking about, not some tiny open source project!)
[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=333943
[+] [-] stiray|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CGamesPlay|6 years ago|reply
But my gut reaction to reading this concern is actually: why do you think this is “bullying” and not “opening the door for a niche competitor”?
[+] [-] pmarin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t34543|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clouddrover|6 years ago|reply
Bully them back. Don't use Google search and don't use Chrome.
[+] [-] marble-drink|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrwyway9448|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Jaruzel|6 years ago|reply
It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them.
(I don't understand why they can't just keep FTP support in, but with a security dialog that warns users the connection and data will be non-encrypted)
So much is going to be lost when this happens, it's really sad. All because Google want to recreate the internet as the Googlenet, with HTTPS URLs only, most of which link to their own walled garden servers (AMP etc.)
The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates. The worse thing is... the general public just don't care.
[+] [-] shscs911|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tln|6 years ago|reply
Thats a very small fraction of all the resources.
> It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them.
This is a worthy concern, for sure. Although how do you know they haven't already done this? Do you have a search that shows ftp: urls?
> The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates.
I'm trying to think of the period when the internet wasn't driven by corporate interests. Before the dot com boom, I suppose? When newsgroups thrived, and email servers roamed free without spam? That was fun but theres a fuckton more information on the internet now.
[+] [-] waspleg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalist|6 years ago|reply
Why would it? Seems like the relevant model is file types the browser can't open, and there are lots of search results for those?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35287?hl=en
Lots of worry in this thread from people who apparently don't use ftp enough to know that your OS will already open ftp links for you.
It's also a shame that the actual technical discussions are like half a page down.
[+] [-] tripzilch|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morpheuskafka|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim58|6 years ago|reply
I'm of the mindset that code written 20 years ago should run today. This is a breaking change on a critical piece of internet infrastructure. Google, by nature of operating the most popular web browser, has a moral obligation to the community to provide a stable environment.
There are something like 10^9 webpages out there. How many of these will become less accessible because of this change? Many well maintained webpages will have to expend resources to migrate off ftp. Less maintained webpages with FTP links will not be updated and put the burden of installing an FTP client on the user, reducing accessibility.
This is Google externalizing the cost of updating their software by forcing everyone else to update their webpages to following Google's specification.
[+] [-] tastroder|6 years ago|reply
> It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up.
While I see that it is shared by many here, I do not get this sentiment. It's still out there and rarely used, yes. But similarly would not require much maintenance for the time being, remove it when users decide it's dead, not just your shiny modern partners. The codebase cannot be that burdened by support for the protocol, why even take action?
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is the reason why this even came up, is that to soothe some weird code base / maintenance metric?
[+] [-] m463|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abdullahkhalids|6 years ago|reply
Rather, there are no ads on FTP pages, so Google is going to use it's power to stop countless people to stop using FTP.
[+] [-] nyxxie|6 years ago|reply
When I click magnet:// links, my bittorrent client opens. When I click slack:// links, my slack client opens. With this change, when I click ftp:// my ftp client will open. Chrome has simply decided it only wants to spend resources focusing on http:// and make the unrelated protocols separate. I see 0 problem with this, it's not like they're killing the only or even the most popular ftp client out there. We should all be using sftp anyways...
[+] [-] OrgNet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkagerer|6 years ago|reply
That said, I find the viewpoint "users should not be impacted by this deprecation" the height of arrogance. Note that phrase is lifted from the article, and is not present in the dev team's post.
[+] [-] rahuldottech|6 years ago|reply
FTP isn't used much anymore, but IMO/IME, it's still nice to have for those rare times when you come across a file that you need to download and it's served over FTP.
[+] [-] rocky1138|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toby-|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duskwuff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] altmind|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TylerE|6 years ago|reply
No one should be running FTP in 2019. It sends passwords in plain text for christ's sake.
[+] [-] kccqzy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedisct1|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perl4ever|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kerng|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] userbinator|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] subsubsub|6 years ago|reply
The idea that young people know more about tech than their parents will become less and less true in the future.
[+] [-] Pxtl|6 years ago|reply
That's fine... Except on a Chromebook or Android, where it will be a pain.
[+] [-] bvttf|6 years ago|reply
Like, worst-case ChromeOS loses ftp?
[+] [-] Forge36|6 years ago|reply
If suddenly the links stop working and there isn't a way view the contents, it will be a frustrating transition
[+] [-] crazygringo|6 years ago|reply
You'll still be able to download an ftp: link by your browser opening your local FTP client, same as a magnet: opening your local torrenting client -- as it should be.
And honestly, if you're one of the few people who actually need to regularly download files with FTP, don't you want a better standalone client anyways?
[+] [-] kayamon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzo38computer|6 years ago|reply
(I also invented a httpdirlist format (I have been told that httpdirlist is like WebDAV but not as bad; but I don't know WebDAV so I cannot say if it is or not). But, sometimes, the other protocols is better than HTTP(S) anyways.)
I think it is fine to have them implemented in separate programs, although sometimes you might want to display the result in the browser; one possibility is that the user can configure a program to execute and can configure it to treat the data that program writes to stdout as a HTTP response (possibly with different permissions than normal; it might allow some things that are normally disallowed, and some things that are normally allowed might not work). You might then also want to support other MIME types. You can do this also with external programs; so one configuration option could be to allow treating the program as a filter to convert it into a format the browser understands (e.g. plain text, HTML, PNG, etc; perhaps farbfeld should be supported too, even only for the purpose of these external filters).
[+] [-] MiscIdeaMaker99|6 years ago|reply
Anyway, it's not like Chrome couldn't send the URL to a dedicated FTP client. Hell, it could even be another browser like Firefox. It's not going to be the end of the world -- just not as seamless of an experience and one would like.
[+] [-] markbnj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edaemon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arvidkahl|6 years ago|reply
The web is not just HTTP. FTP has been the binary companion to the text-based HTTP protocol, and I think that for the sake of the browser being a platform and not just a viewing tool, it should stay.
[+] [-] alexandercrohde|6 years ago|reply
End of an era. I imagine it would take the better part of a decade to earn my loyalty back if they ever pulled a 180, but seeing their direction the writing has been on the wall for a while.