Google launches new “portal” HTML element • Hacker News Board

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#211

Post by kermitismyhero » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #200

kermitismyhero wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Technology exists to solve problems. One of the greatest problems in today's world is the metaphorical tsunami of advertising sewage flooding our mental shorelines. Browser-based adblockers neatly solve that problem. As for the "But how do we pay for all these free things then?" counterargument, I'd suggest voluntary restraint on the part of website creators. I can live with a few modest JPEG-only banner ads…

> If a site promises to not use animated images, streaming video, streaming audio, any sort of trackers, any sort of third-party content, and if they keep the screen-real-estate ratio of ads to content relatively low, then I'll whitelist them in a heartbeat. I just don't think this is a workable model for most users. "You want me to do extra work so I can see some (admittedly nonintrusive) ads? No way, figure out you…

>I really wish uBlock Origin at least had the option to enable a blacklist model

It effectively does have this capability. Just disable all the standard filter lists, and manually add one's own entries to the "my filters" section.

This method has the added benefit of enabling other useful privacy features that don't directly relate to display advertising, like killing off the nastiness of hyperlink auditing, CSP reports going to 3rd parties, prefetching, and remote fonts.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#212

Post by ne01 » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

EastSmith wrote: post #195

Looks to me as an effort to make any user visiting google.com to not actually leave google.com FOREVER. Users will get portal-ed to a result page (with the browser's url bar showing foo.com, instead of google.com), but the user will be tracked the entire time from google, since they would be still on google.com.

I'm so happy that duckduckgo.com is getting better and better over time.

I tried to use it for a month 2 years ago and switched back to Google.

Now it has been 3 months and I don't notice -- which is a very good thing!

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#213

Post by andrekandre » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:39 PM UTC

Touche wrote: post #101

ccnafr wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're right. Portal is effectively iframe without all the security protections.

I don't understand the cynicism people have for this idea. All they did was say "wouldn't it be cool if you could have nice animations in between pages" and built a proof-of-concept. It's not a finished product. They aren't forcing it into a standard. It's a demo of something that would be cool. So why the heck are people opposed to that?

when you are google, unilaterally releasing and pushing a major new feature for “the web” has an entirely different meaning and implication to it compared to, sadly, mozilla, or some other player (even apple to some extent) because of their huge market/mind share.

in that scenario “wouldn’t it be cool” is not a good enough reason, and for a major feature such as this, skepticism is healthy and warranted... the “web browser” is slowly being transformed into “the google browser” and we have no one to blame but ourselves

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#214

Post by AJ007 » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

EastSmith wrote: post #195

Looks to me as an effort to make any user visiting google.com to not actually leave google.com FOREVER. Users will get portal-ed to a result page (with the browser's url bar showing foo.com, instead of google.com), but the user will be tracked the entire time from google, since they would be still on google.com.

This is for all of the sites that either won’t use AMP or made the mistake of adding it and had to get rid of it.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#215

Post by partiallypro » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:43 PM UTC

I don't know why anyone would truly adopt this. It's very Google centric and didn't have any major benefits outside YouTube ad sales.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#216

Post by Liron » Fri, May 10, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

tbirrell wrote: post #185

ehsankia wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is prefetching taking the imperative away about what you see? You can click or not click. As for "tracking", the website could already ping as many servers as it wanted in the background, it's not like it can do anything new here. I honestly don't see how the server gets any more "power" than it already did.

If I go to foo.com, I generally expect that bar.com, baz.com, and qux.com are not also loading. We already have enough issues with tracking pixels, but now we'll have to worry about multiple sites worth of trackers (which I'm sure google will do their absolute best to obfuscate behind the background network call and other sandboxing shenanigans)? No thanks.

But the Portal element won't exacerbate this issue vs what sites are already doing with iFrames and custom JS.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#217

Post by Liron » Sat, May 11, 2019, 12:08 AM UTC

So many snarky comments here. Chill. Portal is just an iFrame that has the ability to smoothly transition itself into being the top-level URL while maintaining its inner state.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#218

Post by vmware » Sat, May 11, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

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Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#219

Post by coolspot » Sat, May 11, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

zavi wrote: post #206

EastSmith wrote: post #195

Looks to me as an effort to make any user visiting google.com to not actually leave google.com FOREVER. Users will get portal-ed to a result page (with the browser's url bar showing foo.com, instead of google.com), but the user will be tracked the entire time from google, since they would be still on google.com.

If mywebsite.com embeds the portal for othersite.com, and user navigates into it, is there a way for mywebsite.com to keep tracking user interactions inside othersite.com?

No, after you navigated to the portal page it is like you have clicked a link - whole browser context is replaced with portal's.

Re: Google launches new “portal” HTML element

#220

Post by skybrian » Sat, May 11, 2019, 12:12 AM UTC

sebazzz wrote: post #139

skymt wrote: post #60

Am I reading this wrong, or is Google pushing a fairly complex element with substantial security considerations into HTML exclusively to solve their UX problems with AMP and the pre-load search carousel? Like this seems like it would be a fair amount of work for browsers to implement, and Google is the only party who would benefit.

Like HTTP signed exchanges, these are solutions for problems Google has.

While they are solutions to problems Google has, with some work, they can perhaps also be solutions to problems many other websites have, using browsers not written by Google. That's the benefit of making something a standard.