Considering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been <i>extremely</i> 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.<p>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 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.<p>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.<p>(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)<p>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.)<p>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 <i>just don't care</i>.
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.
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.<p>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 <a href="http://" rel="nofollow">http://</a> 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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
Google don't want users, they want pliant consumers.<p>The idea that young people know more about tech than their parents will become less and less true in the future.
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.<p>That's fine... Except on a Chromebook or Android, where it will be a pain.
Wouldn't this just make a ftp:// url fallthrough to the ftp client in Dolphin/Finder/Explorer/xdg?<p>Like, worst-case ChromeOS loses ftp?
Will FTP links prompt to open another program? I'm for the change if Google provides an extension/recommends a viewer.<p>If suddenly the links stop working and there isn't a way view the contents, it will be a frustrating transition
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?)<p>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.<p>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.<p>(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.)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
FTP as a protocol doesn't have interesting metadata to collect (which would be technically challenging in the first place, without redirection and JavaScript tricks) and doesn't allow advertisement, while FTP as content is hard to index and promote in ways that generate "value".
What can I say except "fuck Google"? I don't think there's anything constructive to be said here because this is so obviously a bad move (for users).<p>I feel like Google is quickly moving in the footsteps of IE; embrace, extend, extinguish and all that. I don't like how Google now has so much market share in the browser space that they can essentially unilaterally make decisions that are user-unfriendly and have a real impact. I switched (back) to Firefox for this reason. I switched away from them when they essentially purged Brendan Eich for political reasons, but they're the lesser of two evils now.<p>I guess in summary, all browsers suck and we're all fucked.
Isn't it clear to everyone now that HTTP is the new IP and TCP? That all future protocols will subsist on a web tech substrate? Is that such a bad thing? The vocabulary of URLs and cookies is much richer and less centralized than the vocabulary of port numbers and connection tuples.<p>Why <i>should</i> we keep FTP or other legacy non-HTTP protocols around? What are we buying? Slightly lower connection setup byte counts?