Handling billions of requests everyday is hard. Scaling storage for millions of images is hard. Rolling out updates to a live platform twice a day is hard.
Lots of software development is hard. Whilst maintaining one interface is easier, they already serve and maintain different interfaces (Android, iPhone and web). What's another subset or two for the web? Responsiveness can only do so much. The article makes out as though the majority of users are using 'legacy' hardware... even if that were the case, there's still hundreds of millions of people that are using decent screens, peripherals etc, which they're not doing "whatever's best for the people" for.
Lots of software development is hard. Whilst maintaining one interface is easier, they already serve and maintain different interfaces (Android, iPhone and web). What's another subset or two for the web? Responsiveness can only do so much. The article makes out as though the majority of users are using 'legacy' hardware... even if that were the case, there's still hundreds of millions of people that are using decent screens, peripherals etc, which they're not doing "whatever's best for the people" for.