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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

#31

Post by DoingIsLearning »

Animats wrote: post #17

It'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-los…

I fully agree with a breakup but arguably other than Search, DoubleClick, and Youtube, none of the others are solvent without ad money.

On thing I feel we are still missing is for FSF, Wiki, Archive.org, etc. to effectively gather enough cash to start lobbying in politics and in industry much in the same way Meta and Alphabet do. Politicians/legislators are ridiculously cheap to lobby in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#32

Post by ogn3rd »

skybrian wrote: post #22

This is attributing intentions to Google when it's unclear what they're going to do. Probably even unclear to them. Not all anti-fraud measures are DRM. If "holdout sets" get implemented then it can't be used as DRM, because it will randomly fail. What we know now is that they wanted to run an experiment to gather some data. Since it's in Chromium, they needed to explain it, and they explained it poorly.

It's not unclear. They "lost" 22 Billion due to ad blockers.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#35

Post by IshKebab »

colordrops wrote: post #11
ender1235 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when they use to say “Don’t be evil”?

crazy that they just unashamedly removed it.

I doubt their motivation was "now we want to be evil". Probably more like "evil isn't actually well defined and people keep pointing to this and having dumb arguments about it".

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#36

Post by pyrale »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #31
Animats wrote: post #17

It'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-los…

I fully agree with a breakup but arguably other than Search, DoubleClick, and Youtube, none of the others are solvent without ad money. On thing I feel we are still missing is for FSF, Wiki, Archive.org, etc. to effectively gather enough cash to start lobbying in politics and in industry much in the same way Meta and Alphabet do. Politicians/legislators are ridiculously cheap to lobby in the grand scheme of things.

> none of the others are solvent without ad money.

This is a consequence of Google's structuring. If the pricing is unrealistic after a split, it's also currently an example of price dumping preventing competitors from emerging.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#37

Post by DeathArrow »

Animats wrote: post #17

It'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-los…

That's wishful thinking. Politicians will never break up Google since they benefit from it.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#38

Post by danielheath »

Buttons840 wrote: post #27
ohgodplsno wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every request first goes through "trusted attesters" (read: Google and pretty much Google alone) along with some information about your device (hardware information, browser data, executable hash, etc) for them to sign it and decide whether or not you're legit. See the Play Integrity API on Android for similar implementations.

So there's some hardware level support for this? Could you man-in-the-middle the connection and alter the message to say whatever needs to be said to convince the other computer that my computer is working the way it expects?

Not without a machine key signed by a trusted (by google) manufacturer - which is held in the secure enclave, so you can’t just read it from your machine.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#39

Post by izacus »

mg wrote: post #7
saagarjha wrote: post #2

Google 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…

The next platform shift are obviously DRM locked closed app platforms like TikTok, ChatGPT, Meta ecosystem and Apple apps. No APIs, no freedom.

Everyone is very actively working on making the browser dead and serving you content exclusively via corporate controled apps on locked platforms.

You can kill off Chrome, but the result isn't going to be a renessaince of Firefox, but a move into your content being only available on locked iPhone.

Re: Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

#40

Post by ohgodplsno »

Buttons840 wrote: post #27
ohgodplsno wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every request first goes through "trusted attesters" (read: Google and pretty much Google alone) along with some information about your device (hardware information, browser data, executable hash, etc) for them to sign it and decide whether or not you're legit. See the Play Integrity API on Android for similar implementations.

So there's some hardware level support for this? Could you man-in-the-middle the connection and alter the message to say whatever needs to be said to convince the other computer that my computer is working the way it expects?

If they intend to copy the Play Integrity API, it indeed has different levels of attestation, going from software "should be alright" to hardware "actively signed in a secure enclave that the user will never have access to".

>Could you man-in-the-middle the connection and alter the message to say whatever needs to be said to convince the other computer that my computer is working the way it expects?

If you're willing to break modern cryptography for that to happen, sure. Also, requests include a hash and a timestamp to prevent replay attacks and delayed attacks too. So you better crack that cryptography _fast_

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