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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

#201

Post by flagrant_taco »

Unpopular opinion here for sure as I see enty of calls for regulation and antitrust suits, the easiest answer is for people to simply stop using Google products.

Sure that's easier said than done given how much we depend on them today, but is it really harder than convincing the federal government to step in and break up companies that pay huge lobbying bills, understand how tech companies work in the first place, design new regulations to prevent this happening again, and sit waiting to scrutinize any acquisitions that may come from the break up?

Call me naive, but I think if people really care they have a much better chance to avoid Google than the government has of actually fixing this on our behalf.

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

#202

Post by tim333 »

rplnt wrote: post #25

Google might have pretended to stood for something, but they have been an evil corporation since they have been a corporation. That's what corporations do by design. One relevant example is that they've been doing the "only for ie5+" with their services for 10+ years now. They killed most of their browser competition not by having a good product, but by having or buying up good services that they used to force chrome…

[flagged]

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

#203

Post by account42 »

hutzlibu wrote: post #41
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…

"Chrome - browsers" And the money is coming from where? Chrome exists mostly, so the ad buisness gets more data and they can influence the direction of the web. Seperate that and there will be no more chrome as there is no other source of income. (Except maybe a little bit from ChromeOS). Otherwise I get it, it is mostly politics to threaten google to reach this.: "It's quite likely to make Google dump this proposal,…

> But a breakup of google(alphabet) is something very unrealistic and actually not something I want to see, unless we also break up Microsoft at the same time. Otherwise we end up with Microsoft dominating the web again. No thank you, I still remember those times.

This isn't the 90s anymore. Smartphones exist, where Microsoft is irrelevant.

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

#204

Post by mandmandam »

Aeolun wrote: post #194
mandmandam wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They seriously don't care about privacy, lock-in, loss of access to resources, right to repair, etc. They care even less about this stuff than they do about plastic pollution, or systemic inequality and racism, or PFAS contaminating the world's water, or pesticides and runoff decimating biospheres. They don't care about corruption at the highest levels of government and justice, black sites and torture, or illegal…

If I’m marginally informed there is no reason other people shouldn’t be. If they already have the phone all the information in the world is literally at their fingertips.

> If I’m marginally informed there is no reason other people shouldn’t be.

That's not actually true though. That just shows a lack of empathy on your part.

> If they already have the phone all the information in the world is literally at their fingertips.

While that's sort of true, there's a mountain of propaganda and bullshit to wade through, with thin seams of truth. The education system doesn't prepare people for this, nor does our media, nor do our politicians or corporations.

The wealthy who profit on our ignorance like things this way, and (hire people to) work very hard to keep things that way. So again, blaming the victim is missing the point.

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

#205

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

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…

Your solution to Alphabet abusing their position in the market is to consolidate some parts of its business in to its present competition.

I don’t see how that increases competition.

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

#206

Post by lxgr »

flagrant_taco wrote: post #201

Unpopular opinion here for sure as I see enty of calls for regulation and antitrust suits, the easiest answer is for people to simply stop using Google products. Sure that's easier said than done given how much we depend on them today, but is it really harder than convincing the federal government to step in and break up companies that pay huge lobbying bills, understand how tech companies work in the first place, de…

You’re assuming a level of understanding of the market structure and technical details of browsers and web advertising that probably less than 5% of Chrome users possess.

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

#207

Post by kuchenbecker »

npsomaratna wrote: post #122
fuzzy2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the “nerd history”, which I mostly agree with. Normal users however don’t care much about performance and whatnot. Their PC came with Chrome, so they use it. If you give them some other browser, they probably won’t be able to tell the difference. Chrome didn’t “win” because it was good. It won because of Google’s hyper-aggressive marketing on all channels. They basically did was Microsoft was fined for by the…

I adopted Chrome almost as soon as it was released. Chrome was better than the other browsers available at that time. Firefox was a mess, and Internet Explorer... well, best left unsaid.

I started using chrome vs Firefox because each tab had it's own process, novel at the time, such that a crappy website crashing would bring down the tab and not the browser.

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

#208

Post by cornercasechase »

rplnt wrote: post #25

Google might have pretended to stood for something, but they have been an evil corporation since they have been a corporation. That's what corporations do by design. One relevant example is that they've been doing the "only for ie5+" with their services for 10+ years now. They killed most of their browser competition not by having a good product, but by having or buying up good services that they used to force chrome…

You’re correct, they’ve always been super shady:

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees...

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

#209

Post by Ialdaboth »

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…

Wholeheartedly agree. And we shouldn't stop at Google : a large part of western capitalism in 2023 looks pretty much like a dystopian landscape out of a cyberpunk novel. It's a democratic nightmare in the making.

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

#210

Post by Vespasian »

cowl wrote: post #149
drpixie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google or any other Browser vendor do not have a say on how websites use or misuse features. Seriously? Would you give the kiddies sharp knives and loaded guns, and then be shocked when someone is injured? If we let this become available, we will all have to live with the consequences. We can see clearly what those consequences will be. Let's not be stupid.

This overboard generalizations is what make me sure that everyone is just gut-reacting. Have you read the actual proposal (not an article about it)? In your knife-analogy, Google is producing sharp knifes for the cooks, not the children. the DRM crowd here is saying but what if the Cook uses the knife the attack the restaurant clients? Do you know of anyone seriously discussing that we should stop all production of k…

Google is also the biggest ad vendor on the planet.

They have every incentive to require websites running their ads to only allow ("google play" + other big players) verified software on their sites.

They can a) prevent ad blockers and b) assure their customers that ads will be viewed by real humans.

Not doing so once this is in place would be intentionally saying no to profit

Why in the world would google care about anything else?

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