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Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

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Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#201

Post by knowriju »

blagie wrote: post #189
kweingar wrote: post #92

I've brought this up before, but I never got a response and I'm really interested what people think the business case is here. I keep wondering what a buyer would actually value beyond Chrome's userbase. Chrome is just Chromium with Google integrations, similar to how Edge is Chromium with Microsoft integrations. If a company acquires Chrome, they don't have many choices: re-establish Google integration deals (so the…

Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine. The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences are three-fold: - Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for placement - There can be no central directives to shove things like Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats - Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge in…

If Meta buys Chrome (which is a real possibility) why do you think they will not try to push similar stuff like ManifestV3 ?

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#202

Post by ferbivore »

mdhb wrote: post #131
mixmastamyk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor WEI, which Ars Technica described as a "nightmare." The final solution to general purpose computing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Quoting from Wikipedia here: The stated goal was for sites to be able to restrict access to human users instead of automated programs and "allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device". Which on the surface seems like a legitimate use case I have to be honest.

It's legitimate if you believe companies should have the right to provide or deny you service by arbitrary criteria and on arbitrary terms. This belief has some unfortunate real-world implications.

The most likely outcome of WEI would have been - and might still be - that users of any operating system or browser that does not comply with the Trusted Computing agenda (secure boot, verified OS, full encrypted path from company servers to the user's screen & input devices) find themselves locked out of large portions of the internet.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#204

Post by Ygg2 »

wincy wrote: post #190
Ygg2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did? AJAX of jQuery fame, is extremely similar to ActiveX XmlHttpRequest. The problem isn't XmlHttpRequest, but everything else they added/removed. Same with Google. The problem isn't they made request more secure, they made ad blocking impossible.

My custom user scripts from Tampermonkey that I used to make my life as a developer easier are just gone. I can’t even access the extension to grab them, some of them are complicated workflow stuff that made my life easier in some pages that are poorly designed. Like I’m often looking at the contents of JWTs so I added a global function into my global scope to parse JWTs. There wasn’t even a “hey we’re getting rid of…

What do you mean? I've ported JS code from ActiveX to modern (circa 2017) browsers. It mostly works with some renames.

I'm not sure what your message is referring to.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#205

Post by zitsarethecure »

fmajid wrote: post #187

The DOJ's proposed remedy is structural separation, which is really the only way to prevent malicious compliance. I'm actually surprised they went for it, given how thoroughly neutered American antitrust has become under assault from the noxious Chicago School.

IMO there is likely another agenda at play. For example, perhaps they will be told later that they could earn a reprieve if they "adjust" their search algorithm to silence critics and political enemies.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#206

Post by hoppyhoppy2 »

youngtaff wrote: post #173
orionblastar wrote: post #4

We can always use Chromium https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/ This is like if Microsoft was forced to sell Edge or Apple sold Safari. I am thinking of switching from Chrome to Brave https://brave.com/

I’d pick a different Chromium based browser maybe Vivaldi if I was you

I personally wouldn't trust all my most valuable personal info to a small, closed-source browser like Vivaldi

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#207

Post by npodbielski »

I started reading this article and was immediately hit how biased it seems, like in this meme 'leave multi-bilion dollar corporation alone'.

Unfortunetelly we are in the times when any split of any of those multi-bilion dollar corp would be greatly benefiting humanity as a whole. How many people are taking their profits really? Hundreds? Thousands maybe?

And that is it. What humanity have from existence of those? Like one thing?

Some may say that we will have an AI, self driving cars or androids pretty soon. But ask your friends, or neighbours, ordinary people that work in non-tech jobs what they need. I am 100% sure that any those things above will be not their first need.

Better heath care. Less work. More money. Less stress. Vacation to recuperate and relax. More time for hobbies. Just possibility to have relaxing walk in the woods without worry.

Does any of those companies work on any projects that will help suffice any of those needs? Author of an article mentions 'good of the web' because probably his livelihood is the web.

But regular person does not care if their banking application or Netflix app on TV dongle is written with latest CSS standards or with Jquery.

Till that point in our history all big empires fell because of buearacracy and stagnation caused by millions of people trying to retain status quo. Momentum of conquest was not enough suply enoug resources to feed the empire. With the tech giants this may be first time in history when one entity will rule the entire human population caused by sheer momentum of technical progression it is making.

Will this be a good thing? I am entirely sure it will not be.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#208

Post by xnx »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #10

Google is a web business, that’s their whole thing. They made a browser to invest in the web itself because what is good for the web is good for Google, and happens to be good for all of us. This is a panglossian take that belongs in the year 2005. Google is less a 'web business' than it is an 'advertising business', a 'surveillance business', and a 'finance business'. Consequently, it is false that 'what is good for…

Google's core competency is machine learning. So far they've most profitably applied that to search (matching web pages and ads to queries), but is also applying it to automating all human work: drivers with Waymo, knowledge work with Gemini, and manual work with Gemini robotics.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#210

Post by ruszki »

OccamsMirror wrote: post #149
hkt wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: your first paragraph, this is exactly what Google does now. They maintain such an incredible pace of development and such a unilateral attitude that nobody can stop them from developing web standards even if they want to. When was the last time anyone said no to a Chrome feature and expected it everywhere else? Developers treat it as the go to to the extent that some don't even bother testing in other browsers. G…

It makes you wonder if Microsoft had given developers what they wanted, i.e. modern CSS and Javascript support, more browser features, etc., would they have actually moved off of Internet Explorer?

No, we wouldn’t have moved. The two main reasons back during IE6 times were tabs, and as a web developer: debugging. Firebug was something which was way ahead of everything else.
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