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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

#151

Post by eddythompson80 »

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…

> But all the cloud providers are competing hard

They are not competing hard enough. (Or maybe they competing too well? I don’t know)

I used to work for AWS then Azure, and now just do consulting for both. The amount of companies I come across with the chief complaint of “We pay too much for AWS/Azure” is staggering.

In a healthy market with healthy competition, you’d think that would never be a statement to be made. No one says “I pay too much for Chevron, I’ll only buy gas from Total”

AWS, Azure, (and wth) GCP are in the tech support business, not infrastructure resell business. You’d think a cloud only need to sell VMs but there is literally no money in that. That’s the part that “competes hard” also the losing part. As a cloud provider, you want to be out of that shitty business. You want to be SaaS. SaaS is the magic work in Cloud. Selling Software is magic. It made Microsoft in the 80s/90s. It made Oracle in the 90s/2000s. It made Google in the 2000s. Selling software is an incredibly lucrative business. It is where you want to be.

100% of companies I consult for don’t spend money on VMs in the cloud. They always spend it on “log analytics” or “data warehouse” or “serverless”

Why hire a Postgres admin when you can pay AWS/Azure 200k a month for postgresql “managed” offering where you can email them whenever things are not working and have _them_ hire the Postgres experts who would look at your usage/queries/tables and suggest an index here, or a stored proc there.

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

#153

Post by cowl »

dns_snek wrote: post #139
cowl wrote: post #92

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 t…

> 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. How about you offer a reasonable opposing viewpoint? It's hard to see this, at best, as anything other than an extremely naive viewpoint. Every feature that can be used to lock down content and/or spy on users,…

> How about you offer a reasonable opposing viewpoint

Read the proposal: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...

>That's settled then. Full filesystem, location, camera, and microphone access should therefore come on by default without a permission dialog. Why not bring back Java and Flash while we're at it! It's not the browser vendor's fault that websites are misusing it.

Now who is arguing in bad faith? if you have read the proposal, it's clear that they are being careful and are upfront about the some potential misuses and the proposed handing of them.

> to verify that your system is using a Google-approved bootloader to load a Google-approved operating system which only loads Google-approved drivers and Google-approved software (or worse, website-approved software).

again there is no such thing proposed. The "attester" is not specifically Google. anyone can become an "attester". The chain of trust is a chain that trusts tokens not specific "things". if you for example would trust let's say Opera as the attester, Opera would need to trust windows or Linux or Android as the OS attester.

The analogy here is the certificate Authorities. You may very well have a "let's encrypt" attester that democratizes the good parts (certification) without the bad parts (too much information) .

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

#154

Post by mcny »

tremon wrote: post #106
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…

Cloud - the money-losing data center service. Probably gets sold to AWS Your solution to breaking up a large monopoly is to boost another (quasi-)monopoly? I'd suggest that both Amazon and Microsoft should be prevented from taking over those assets.

Yes, we will need to evaluate and approve each acquisition but I am not sure if it is even possible to break up Google.

I don't have a solution to the problem but I know this — we can't do the stupidity of breaking alphabet into a bunch of small baby alphabets like what we did with at&t.I think that was complete incompetence, if not corruption.

We can't have a bunch of regional companies. However, we can't do what OP said either, even with your safeguards. Amazon and Microsoft don't care if they get Google cloud for themselves to buy. Either they get to buy it or it dies, they still get its customers.

I think someone else said elsewhere if Microsoft abuses MsEdge, break up Microsoft as well but that's the kicker. That will take time. Microsoft can and will abuse it's position during this time. I don't think it is possible to do a "safe landing" here. An alphabet Google will either be a nothing burger like the AT&T break-up or will be very painful to ordinary people, at least for some time.

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

#155

Post by drchaos »

jkingsman wrote: post #86
rapnie wrote: post #60

We all let it come this far, because of how we treat the services Google provides: As nice free and helpful tools. Talking about "Chrome this and that" all the time we forget what that really means, namely: Using the strategic tools of the largest Advertising Agency in the world, that allows them to ever grow their dominance. Chrome, GMail and all that jazz all fit into a global-scale ad-tech framework to push shady…

> Give them a support call. Act like a noob and keep them busy for as long as possible with "It isn't working". I'm all for grassroots change, but I really don't think that doing this to Tier 1 support staff is going to effect any real change. With all love to my helpdesk folks, what matters is ticket closure metrics and call duration -- an emotional outburst isn't going to change a thing.

"I also have an account with xyz and there I don't have this problem" might be an effective addition.

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

#156

Post by Adverblessly »

cowl wrote: post #92

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 t…

You know this is about DRM because that is explicitly the stated goal of this move.

Apologies for just repeating a previous post I made about this but:

The first goal of the proposal is to

> Allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device.

That is, to give web servers the ability to Digitally restrict (or Manage) a user's Rights to access content on a device and software stack of their choice.

The fact that this is DRM is unquestionable. What you seem to be taking at face value is Google's claim that this DRM will only be used to discriminate against bots and other abusive traffic, whereas everyone else is just pointing out that this technology can very easily be used for evil and that Google has every incentive and ability to do so.

> what solution they would propose

A man on the street stops you, points a gun to your head and instructs you to give him all of your money. How do you propose to solve the man's problem of lack of your money in his hands? Also, you cannot ask him to put down the gun before solving that problem.

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

#157

Post by rwmj »

mg wrote: post #140
tannhaeuser wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was made possible by US antitrust turning a blind eye towards Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and YouTube. Considering Alphabet is dominating both search and ads and also offers services via searches, the EU commission already hinted at a breakup as a viable measure to lead the web out of its misery. [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...

Google's market cap was already at over $100B with billions in revenue and hundreds of millions in profits when it bought DoubleClick and YouTube. So while those were big aquisitions (Around $3B and $2B) they only accelerated the process of Google turning into the web's central player. It was already set in motion before the aquisitions.

The large market cap is exactly why they shouldn't have been allowed to acquire either. (Same goes for Facebook with Instagram, Whatapp).

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

#158

Post by pocketarc »

o1y32 wrote: post #148
Joeri wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money for developing chrome is not an issue. Google search could pay chrome to be the primary search engine just like they pay mozilla. Microsoft could fund chromium based on their use in Edge. Etc…

I guess you have no idea how much money it costs to develop something like Chrome, especially at Google's salary.

Google currently plays Apple billions ($15B supposedly) to be the default search engine on Safari, and another half a billion a year for Firefox. For Chrome, with their gigantic market share, they'd pay billions (just like they pay Apple).

Browsers are complicated, but let's not pretend that that kind of money wouldn't be enough.

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

#159

Post by hutzlibu »

midoridensha wrote: post #119
hutzlibu wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Microsoft could fund chromium based on their use in Edge. Etc…" Microsoft surely will continue to develope edge. That is my main issue with this thing, because they surely would like to be the one with the dominating browser again and if google has to drop chromium, Microsoft will just overtake it. Antitrust and breakup is not a simple thing to do right.

The problem I see with this idea is that MS doesn't really have much leverage to push Edge on people any more. People aren't just using Windows PCs for their web browsing these days; lots of people are using mobile devices, and many don't even have PCs any more. Google and Apple control the mobile device market (roughly half and half, though it depends on which country you're in too). If a bunch of websites suddenly…

"The problem I see with this idea is that MS doesn't really have much leverage to push Edge on people any more"

But they do it any way they can. I never intented to open edge even once, but through various sketchy things, I had it open way too many times.

(when you click on the "learn more about this awesome landscape" - you land in edge, open a pdf, edge, saved a mhtml in chrome and open it, edge again. Search for chrome on edge? It almost tries to block you from downloading it.)

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

#160

Post by wzdd »

cowl wrote: post #92

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 t…

The difference is that currently you can lie. You can identify the fingerprinting techniques being used, and work around them. yt-dlp already does something like this, for example. In Android, there was a lot of support for making your rooted / custom ROM system look like stock Android so you could still do banking. Now, depending on the level of Safetynet the app is using, you literally can't. I'm not arguing in favour of fingerprinting, just pointing out that prior to TPM-backed attestation you had control over your own device.

With Android Safetynet attestation, you can't work around the problem because the attestation is backed by a root of trust which your custom ROM can't provide. Being able to supply your own thing doesn't matter, because everyone will just support the one that Google supplies. LineageOS is a good example of this; they have their own Safetynet implementation which has very little buy-in.

WEI is effectively an extension of Safetynet to the Web.

In summary, this is fundamentally different because it takes away your control of your own device.

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