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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

#91

Post by mrweasel »

DeathArrow wrote: post #37
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.

It's like banks, it depends on your logic. We have systemically important banks, banks that will always be bailed out. You have two ways of dealing with that scenario, either prepare to save these companies when they fail or make them non-systemic so we can afford to let them fail.

What I fail to understand is why it's better for society to support these "to big to fail" companies. Why not break them up. Why not plan break them up if they become to "important" for a lack of a better term? How can you not see it as a political failing that taxpayers have to be ready to save a company, just because you failed to bring it under control?

It's mind boggling.

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

#92

Post by cowl »

It seems Everyone is taking for granted the claim that this is about DRM. The claim is that websites (not Google) will use this signal to allow or deny access but this is already possible with various means. Google or any other Browser vendor do not have a say on how websites use or misuse features.

> There is a tension between utility for anti-fraud use cases requiring deterministic verdicts and high coverage, and the risk of websites using this functionality to exclude specific attesters or non-attestable browsers.

This risk is already present and actually happening. What makes this not widespread is not that it is not possible (it is) but that it is unpopular. Websites that you are forced to use (many banks for example) do it every day and they get away it with it because you have no choice.

Many articles are just reapeating the "DRM" claim without explaining how is this different, what does Google have to do with how websites choose to treat their users or what solution they would propose. It seems to me just protest for the sake of it because it's trendy to question every Google Initiative. And yes every Google Initiative must be questioned but I don't see any questioning here beside just parroting in article after article what someone identified as a potential misuse without any critical thought going into it. Might as well autogenerate the contents with AI already because the utility of all articles i have seen on this topic is the same, just rearrange words without adding anything to it.

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

#93

Post by youngtaff »

komali2 wrote: post #23
zoom6628 wrote: post #9

I lived in china and put effort into de-googling my phone. Now I’m back in the open world and seems need do all over again. Must be a biz opp to run a proxy that strips everything google from pages and web communications. I would pay a few $/month to not be farmed without consent.

No need to proxy, you can just use https://brave.com/ . Add a pihole to strip it from other devices and non-browser web traffic.

That would be the same Brave that was replacing ads on sites with their own ones?

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

#94

Post by Tozen »

> ...as companies become less innovative, rather than creating new useful things, they focus on extracting more value however they can, while simultaneously trying to stymie and hold off innovative upstarts.

What makes them "extra" dangerous (or evil), in this this regard, is they have such broad reach and control over the Internet and tools people use in their daily lives that many have no idea to the extent of censorship, manipulation, spying, or damage that is being done. Any perceived rival, threat to their business, or to any of their products can be silenced, censored, or inhibited in ways few will ever know or realize was possible.

And to the extent they can keep getting away with it, is likely the extent they will keep pushing their control and corruption.

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

#95

Post by adwww »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #64
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…

Nit: Google Cloud has been profitable this year: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/25/google-cloud-turns-profit-... It's actually perfectly fine to lose money; you have to invest before you can start making a profit, and services like Google Cloud can be money printers once they're established. But all the cloud providers are competing hard, pumping money into 3rd parties / partners that will then sell it and set it up…

Also I don't think selling GCP to AWS really helps competition.

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

#96

Post by EMIRELADERO »

samwillis wrote: post #49
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…

This may seem like a good idea but so much of Google's power comes from the Search + Search Ads monopoly. That is where they are anticompetitive to the max, that is where a change needs to happen. Splitting everything else off doesn't solve the core problem. Within Search + Search Ads you have a platform where Google are/have: - the sole vendor of a digital asset - ads - the sole marketplace for that asset - a closed…

> The most important "breakup" needs to be the ads business from everything else, including search. That's going to hurt, and I don't have the answers to how to make it work, but changes are needed.

You can be happy then.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...

The press release doesn't mention it, but the actual court document asks the court to:

"Order the divestiture of, at minimum, the Google Ad Manager suite, including both Google’s publisher ad server, DFP, and Google’s ad exchange, AdX, along with any additional structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm"

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

#97

Post by hurutparittya »

devsda wrote: post #48
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.

Holdout sounds like it is explicitly added to ward off any criticisms insinuating DRM. If a server is not denying access for clients with no valid attestation then what exactly are the servers gaining from implementing WEI? CAPTCHAs also reasonably prove that the user is a human and legitimate but not all captcha challenges are solveable by humans in one go. Businesses have denied access for those failures and they j…

I 100% agree with this. But even if holdouts could magically prevent the abuse of this API there is still a massive issue. Once this standard gets wider adoption and it's time to boil the frog further literally all it takes to disable holdouts is editing a single value in the attester code. They will justify it by saying holdouts are no longer needed because 98% of clients are already compliant.

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

#98

Post by skilled »

I find it staggering that so few media outlets have picked this story up.

TechCrunch spends 80% of its time farming Elon Musk stories but won't lift a hand to promote a good fight.

Are these news companies so entangled in the corporate world they can't risk taking a stand because it risks them losing access to real-time news? I don't really understand it so I am kind of guessing, but it is nonetheless strange.

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

#99

Post by bombolo »

samwillis wrote: post #49
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…

This may seem like a good idea but so much of Google's power comes from the Search + Search Ads monopoly. That is where they are anticompetitive to the max, that is where a change needs to happen. Splitting everything else off doesn't solve the core problem. Within Search + Search Ads you have a platform where Google are/have: - the sole vendor of a digital asset - ads - the sole marketplace for that asset - a closed…

Let's not forget maps, where they arbitrarily decide to show you a shop/hotel/restaurant 5km away when there is one 200m away.

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #64
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…

Nit: Google Cloud has been profitable this year: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/25/google-cloud-turns-profit-... It's actually perfectly fine to lose money; you have to invest before you can start making a profit, and services like Google Cloud can be money printers once they're established. But all the cloud providers are competing hard, pumping money into 3rd parties / partners that will then sell it and set it up…

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