AngularJS/Google relationship

[jorupp]

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

[Eric Eslinger]

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

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[Jens Melgaard]

The first fear is either irrelevant or should make you stop using quite a widespread of frameworks. While Google founded AngularJS and still does a heavy part of the contribution, AngularJS is open source and has a community to support it, so Google can choose to pull all their efforts in AngularJS, but it's not likely to kill it off.

I would think there is a bigger chance that a rival framework would kill of Angular than Google pulling the plug.

As for the second one, while we all keep talking about "dropping IE 6, 7, 8 etc" support... That also inherently means dropping support for older versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari. I think the reason why we focus on IE has to legs... One is the fact that IE was more widespread back then, so when you see an old old browser pop up, it often happens to be an IE browser... The second might be the pattern in the updates... Seriously... Chrome and Firefox comes with new versions so often that I think tracking the ones you support is something we all gave up on at version 10... When I write apps for the web I honestly has NO idea how they behave in Chrome v. 16... and I don't really care...

[KamBha]

As mentioned by others, the first fear is probably moot.

A more relevant concern is if there is a risk Angular is going to be the new GWT.  I don't think GWT has fared well in a post Google environment.  Probably not a concern for Angular due to Angular being significantly simpler and the community being stronger (GWT was a bit niche product due, so I think it was doomed from day one from getting a significant community behind it).

Anyway, thought I would mention it.