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Web by Google (TM)

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441–450 of 496 posts

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't follow. How does an open standard that, essentially, allows for CDNs to be more secure, let Google dictate how the internet operates?

Alright, an open-standard that allows Google to create a walled garden. But when has google ever been for an "open" internet? Never because an open internet doesn't make money, but then again that has never been Google's philosophy. AMP does dictate the internet in a way that forces the user to see and do how Google wants you to see and do. If Google was for open standards, I should have the ability to turn off googl…

> Alright, an open-standard that allows Google to create a walled garden.

This doesn't make sense.

> AMP does dictate the internet in a way that forces the user to see and do how Google wants you to see and do.

This doesn't follow. AMP doesn't force the user to do anything. It encourages website creators to do specific things when building certain kinds of sites. And we're not even talking about AMP, but about signed exchanges.

> If Google was for open standards, I should have the ability to turn off google amp. No?

This doesn't follow. There are lots of open standards that you can't turn off (or that you suffer significant issues if you turn off). HTTPS, for example. Not to mention HTTP.

> If I host my own email server on my own IP range with in my colocation and send to GMAIL, I am instantly put in spam. Is that not dictating that my email to my mother is spam?

What does this have to do with AMP or Signed Exchanges? But also no. It's dictating that random email servers are almost always spam. This is both true and good for the vast majority of Gmail users, who don't have masochistic techy family members who want to host their own email server for indie-dev cred. There's nothing about this that isn't for open standards. It still uses all open standards, and is solved using open standards (DKIM, etc.). If you want to host your own email server, you need to be willing to put in the work. Unfortunately, it's a lot of work. That's not Google's fault, its spammers'.

> Amp dictates the web and will as they see fit.

In what way. You still haven't explained like, what the point is. What is the intent here? So far your post is just a bunch of scary sounding buzzwords, but you have yet to make a cohesive argument about what Google is doing and why this is a bad thing.

So here's some specific questions for you to answer: What is the walled garden you're accusing Google of creating? And again: how does an open standard allow Google to create it? And how does a walled garden let them "dictate how the internet operates?

When I pushed you to answer that question, you pivoted to entirely ignoring your previous argument and instead claimed that there were other situations where Google wasn't for open standards. That may be true, or not, but it's entirely irrelevant to your accusation that in this case, the open standard will let Google "dictate how the internet operates".

You need to draw the line from AMP to "dictate how the internet operates", and so far you've avoided actually making that connection when pressed.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#442

I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a "Publish" function. You can consume on the open web just fine, but for publishing you need to own a server, not just a client. That in turn gave growth to Youtube, Facebook and Co., as they allowed people to publish content with just a web client. Search and payment are important as well, but only really become relevant when the content is on the web…

> I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a "Publish" function. The simplest approach to something like this is Apache homedirs or finger plan files [0]: you write some text in a file in your home directory and a service makes it accessible to anyone who connects to your machine. Apparently plan files were somewhat popular thing at one point; you could finger the machines at id Software and…

"The alternative would be to make a new network which gets rid of all the extra layers of management..."

In a way, what you did was describe a few of the benefits that IPv6 offers. I'd say "that's coming" or "it being actively rolled out" but we are about 25 years in & usage is still an underwhelming figure.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the tech companies people advocate breaking up Google is by far the most reasonable.

Yeah I'm not even sure how you would break up facebook, other than facebook/instagram . It would make you extremely unpopular if they forced FB to break up it's userbase into thirds or something as they'd all just flock to one third and it would just be the same thing again within a few months

As other suggested, forcing interoperability would go a long way (it should be noted that e.g. facebook messenger WAS interoperable when Facebook wasn't as large, but they stopped it when they became the leader).

Additionally, separate to instagram / facebook / whatsapp ; possibly also facebook social / facebook marketplace / facebook events ; They should have a level of access that others have. Imagine Yahoo users could subscribe to Facebook events without ever setting foot in facebook.com ... I know it sounds like science fiction, but it's possible. like email....

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#444
post #8

I think we’re in a real low point right now. Gmail, AMP, Chrome, Android. So many peoples internet experience is from one place. With Amazon dominating retail, and Facebook under its various brands dominating social media, there isn’t much scope for other players. I don’t see another option than breaking theses companies up at this point.

QUIC/HTTP3

https://pki.goog https://domains.google/ gmail..

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is actually a major force in further consolidation of email to a very few number of players. Ever increasing rulesets to be able to send to Gmail from other email servers increase the barrier to entry step-by-step until even the last holdouts will have to pick between a very limited number of parties to host their mail.

Not sure what rulesets you're referring to. I understand the spam prevention techniques (DKIM, SPF) but those are all widely accessible open standards. Could you give an example of the barriers to entry that you mentioned?

Try setting up your own email server and you'll see. There were even a few horror comments on HN from people owning domains for 15+ years with stellar security email servers setup + DKIM + SPF whose emails are going straight into spam.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, we just sit around passively and wait for something to happen to Google and friends? Doesn’t that strike you as a poor move? I don’t see why we should be relegated to put up with another x-number of years of these companies behaving (arguably) badly, just so things can change and they can be replaced with another company that will do the same thing.

What do you think could be actively done to "stop Google"? Dont use AMP? Well you will lose money / power. Dont use search? Maybe miss out opportunities. How can I as marketeer convince my clients as Google traffic is 90% source of income? I get your point but I'm not sure what could be done without harming economy (aka people).

Breaking them up would be a good start.

Obviously those tools are important, not debating that, the problem is that they’re all the product of a single hegemony with an agenda, partitioning it so that it can no longer push the likes of AMP to the detriment of everyone else.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what rulesets you're referring to. I understand the spam prevention techniques (DKIM, SPF) but those are all widely accessible open standards. Could you give an example of the barriers to entry that you mentioned?

Try setting up your own email server and you'll see. There were even a few horror comments on HN from people owning domains for 15+ years with stellar security email servers setup + DKIM + SPF whose emails are going straight into spam.

Mine was one of those. Highly frustrating.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is actually a major force in further consolidation of email to a very few number of players. Ever increasing rulesets to be able to send to Gmail from other email servers increase the barrier to entry step-by-step until even the last holdouts will have to pick between a very limited number of parties to host their mail.

Gmail consolidation is happening not because of some evil plan, it's happening because of the economics. In fact it's exactly the same reason why Mozilla is increasingly not sustainable. Email hosting is simply not a lucrative business. That's why it's all run by large portals like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, etc. which use them not to make money but to collect information about people, and monetize through ads or othe…

Well, I can't write for others but the economics had nothing to do with it in my case.

As for Mozilla not being sustainable: I think they could be, but not the way they run their business.

Email hosting is lucrative enough for Fastmail.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#449
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why we need a regulator. The old AT&T monopoly was dismantled. Based on talking to IBM insiders, IBM actively neutered itself fearing a similar fate in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But then, with Bush Sr and then Clinton, the rules changed; Microsoft started playing the political game, and essentially avoided a similar fate. There is no antitrust enforcement anymore. Breaking a company once indeed only buys…

Google is both the most dominant it every has been and the most vulnerable it has ever been, at the same time. From what we've seen with GPT-3, we can train one machine learning model by ingesting the entire scraped web and a whole lot of (online/offline?) books, and it can often produce correct answers to questions. The accuracy of those answers, presuming the questions are not subjective ones, is only going to incr…

> The iOS/Safari thing is another issue, which perhaps other anti-trust regulators will address in Google's favor.

Hopefully those same anti-trust regulators also have statistics for browser market shares :)

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said that, I don't think you really understand how 5G works. The big 3 cloud already have extensive experience in creating DWDM fiber network as backbone, it's not really all that different from internet stack anymore.

But none of them have their own ROW to do it, except around small specific regional campuses like Hillsboro. They have dark fiber leases, IRUs, and wavelength circuits. Show me a big FAANG owned and controlled cable from western OR or WA to Colorado, for instance. Doesn't exist. Show me a FAANG owned and controlled path from Hillsboro to Sacramento and the bay area. Doesn't exist. They have IRUs in infrastructure bui…

Of course they don't do it at the scale old telecos are doing it, doesn't mean they are completely new to this kind of thing. Doesn't really take a genius to do this anymore. AWS directly invests in third party companies to lay out intercontinental dark fiber for them, wouldn't take them much to do it themselves if they want to do it on the scale of a teleco, it just isn't a good financial decision to do so at the moment, not a lack of technical expertise.
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