Google used to be cool and now it’s not. Wonder which companies of today will end up completing the cycle tomorrow?
Remember when they use to say “Don’t be evil”?
crazy that they just unashamedly removed it.
Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
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Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#12Stipulate that Google itself has noble intent at the moment.
There is zero control over the future.
That is, we don't have to ascribe malice to Google while running away from this potentially evil mechanism.
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#13[dead]
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#14Google used to be cool and now it’s not. Wonder which companies of today will end up completing the cycle tomorrow?
Google was made possible by a platform shift: From desktop apps to websites. First they positioned themselves very early in the web user experience: After the user turned on their Dell computer, booted Windows and started Internet Explorer, the next step was to use Google. Then they moved one step closer to the user by building their own browser: Chrome Then they moved even closer to the user by building their own OS…
Ad Chromebooks too.
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#15In 2012, I interviewed at Google Ireland for an SRE position. I ended up not taking the job due to family issues, but I somewhat regretted having missed the opportunity to tackle Google-sized problems and make FAANG-sized money for a few years after.
This feeling has ceased entirely in the meantime, due to what Google has become, and how its understanding of its role in the world seems to have shifted. Or maybe its true corporate nature has only become more apparent? I am not sure - but I was a firm believer that Google was a force of good in the corporate landscape of the 00s, and I am fully convinced it is not any more. It actually makes me sad, and I am afraid of the damage it will end up doing to the places (the 'net) and communities (most of the FOSS world) I love.
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#16As I understand it, Google wants to add some signal to http requests which tell the server that the user is using a system made from some specific software. For example an unaltered stock Android phone. What would be the one-sentence technical explanation of how Google wants to achieve this?
Most chips have a TPM which holds a key. You can’t access the key without expensive and specialised equipment. The key is signed by the manufacturer’s key (google, in this case).
The TPM has an API that returns a signature of the running OS code. If you tamper with the OS, you get a signature mismatch.
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#17It's time to start lobbying hard for an antitrust breakup of Google. This DRM plan, as abuse of a monopoly position, provides more political coverage for a forced breakup.
It's pretty clear how to break up Alphabet, because it grew mostly by acquisition.
- Google - search, ads on search pages and nothing more.
- DoubleClick - third party ads on other sites.
- Analytics - services to web sites.
- Cloud - the money-losing data center service. Probably gets sold to AWS or Hurricane Electric.
- Android - phones and similar devices
- Chrome - browsers
- YouTube - streaming content. Probably gets sold to Netflix or AT&T or Comcast.
- Waymo - self-driving cars. Probably gets sold to a car company.
- Alphabet - all the other stuff.
Now, some of these have conflicting interests. That's a good thing. With Chrome separated from Google and Doubleclick, and forced to fight for market share, it's not in Chrome's interest to prevent blocking ads from DoubleClick or Google. Google wants people to see ads on search pages, while Doubleclick wants people to leave the search site and see ads elsewhere. Now there's competition.
Antitrust action against Google is already underway. The State of Texas and several state attorneys general have a case pending.[1] There are other cases.[2] All these cases benefit from Google's move to entrench their monopoly by technical means.
So make lots of noise politically about that. It's quite likely to make Google dump this proposal, on the advice of their antitrust lawyers.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-05/google-an...
[2] https://www.lanierlawfirm.com/google-antitrust-lawsuits-expl...
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#18As I understand it, Google wants to add some signal to http requests which tell the server that the user is using a system made from some specific software. For example an unaltered stock Android phone. What would be the one-sentence technical explanation of how Google wants to achieve this?
> What would be the one-sentence technical explanation of how Google wants to achieve this?
Denuvo for browsers. Rootkit disguised as a browser from your favorite Ads service provider.
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#19Your computing device is your agent, more than any doctor, priest, or lawyer-- you share greater intimacies with it, and you have far less ability to go about an ordinary life without access to one. Your computers mediate an increasing share of your interactions with other people, with the world at large. You need one to communicate, to obtain essential services. You take it into your home, into your bedroom. It should be required to act in your best interests and it certainly should not against your best interests.
This shouldn't be an unusual demand or even a demand at all-- it should be table stakes.
Even back when the concept of Free Software had just become an identifiable thing people advocated it in terms of respecting the user. But for a long time the disrespect was largely banal-- rent seeking, over priced, indifference to features or bugs that matter to you, rules that benefit the author but didn't care about the user's needs. The fact that software could actively and intentionally work against its users wasn't a surprise-- the freedom to inspect, modify, and share the results answers those risks too, at least in theory. But back then it wasn't a common problem. Somehow software and systems that actively betray their users became common, even normalized. And in large part it seems most people never noticed.
Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For
#20The article applies this terrific Doctrow quote about Secure Computing to WEI: > Should your computer be able to be compelled to tell the truth, even when you would prefer that it lie on your behalf? Should there be a facility in your computer that you can’t control that other people can remotely trigger? It is an apt application of the quote, and a fundamental question that is likely based on culture and each person…
Doctorow demonstrably knows more about this, and has thought about this, than me, but to me the answer seems somewhat straightforward:
> Should your computer be able to be compelled to tell the truth
In the context of the soldered chip that "can't be removed" that can report the "truth" of the kernel etc, the answer to me is a simple, "it's impossible to know if the computer is telling the truth or not." Go to defcon once and you'll know this as true as well. No matter what, there's always a way in. There's always a hack. The harder you make it to hack, the more motivated those crazy people at defcon will be to break it.
> Should there be a facility in your computer that you can’t control that other people can remotely trigger?
"Other people" will never be "just the people you want." It will always include criminals, stalkers, and authoritarian governments. So the answer is a simple, "no."