Reconsider including Google branding and product in WordPress core (Google Fonts)

[johnstonphilip]

In this ​Gutenberg Github issue, a Google Fonts integration is being added directly to WordPress core.

I know the great work being done is with the best of intentions: to help streamline things for users.

However, despite copying the font from Google Fonts, including this Google integration in WordPress core has a few problems.

• It is a "vote of confidence" in Google by the WordPress project
• It's free advertising for a brand in WordPress core
• It opens up future political problems for WordPress leadership to deal with

Are we willing to say that the WordPress project is giving a "vote of confidence" for Google, the brand? Are we willing to provide free marketing for Google in this way?

Furthermore, any other brands we might add to WordPress core in the future would also be getting that same "vote of confidence" from the WordPress project. Are we also willing to do it for them?

If so, how are we deciding who gets these "votes of confidence"? Is there a process a brand should go through to earn this vote of confidence? What steps should they take? When do we/they know it's enough?

If we add this Google integration by default in WordPress core, it opens up a bunch of problems we can avoid. WordPress has a plugin interface for this exact type of thing. Why not use it? This could surely be made into a plugin, right?

So my request here is to reconsider adding a Google Fonts integration to WordPress core itself, and allowing it to be a plugin instead.

While I believe that manually uploading fonts is good enough, if a core integration with an outside font API is required, I would propose that it should use Openverse. This has already been done with the Media Library.

Additionally, (and this is somewhat beside the main point) but Google, specifically, doesn't have a great track record for keeping its products alive. The number of products killed by Google is astounding: ​https://killedbygoogle.com/

They also just sold their domains service to Squarespace, a direct competitor to the WordPress project.

In my opinion, these are reasons enough to be wary of adding Google products and branding directly to WordPress core.

[johnstonphilip]

@azaozz ​Had a good point about other 3rd party services that are already in WordPress core, and they should probably also be part of this conversation.

Things like YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Speaker Deck, TED.

Is there a standardized set of criteria to get your brand/block into WordPress core? Is it more of a wild west situation?

Should we just ignore these kinds of things?