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Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

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Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#91
post #17
post #2

It's okay, they're not a monopoly according to this administration. Nothing to see here, carry on!

This administration has done nothing to end or undermine the antitrust cases against Google. In both cases the judges found Google in violation of antitrust law, but both handed down fairly mild remedies, despite the administration (prosecutor) pushing for much stronger changes. The judges were appointed by Clinton (Leonie Brinkema) and Obama (Amit Mehta).

This admin likes when entities lose in court because then they can dangle non-enforcement.

Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#92
Google is playing a dangerous game here and I think it's going to bite them in the butt. First, some history.

One thing that made Microsoft successful was a strategy called embrace, extend and extinguish ("EEE"). This is what they tried to do to Java back when it was believed that Java was a threat to Microsoft's platform monopoly since the Java mantra was "write once, run anywhere". Microsoft added all these proprietary extensions after licensing Java.

Well, Microsoft basically did the same thing to knock Netscape off its throne. It was the whole basis for the antitrust suit. This was aimed at Java too because Java introduced applets. MS added ActiveX controls. MS did succeed at killing Netscape but the antitrust suit (and probably the victory over Java and Netscape) led us to more than a decade of hell with IE6 compatibility as MS basically abandoned their browser.

Google did something in the mid-2000s that nobody thought was possible: they created a browser and got mass adoption without having a platform. People willingly downloaded it. And when it was first released, it was magical. They pioneered one process per tab. At the time, Netscape had faded into Fireforx and it was pretty bad. Your entire browser could hang since it was one thread per tab and it absolutely did hang.

At this time and really through the mid-2010s, Google was a good actor with Chrome (IMHO). Chrome was secure, stable and a pretty open platform. Unfortunately for Google, this became a problem as use of ad blockers became more widespread. Where Chrome once became a posterchild for standards support, other parts of Google weren't so... open. Youtube at this time started playing games when people were using non-Chrome browsers.

Anyone who uses Chrome knows that the anti-ad blocking really stepped up. Changes to what extensions are allowed to do killed uBlock Origin. Google has risked regulatory wrath by special-casing their own user-tracking and ad cookies while blocking other third-party cookies. They also tried to phase out third-party cookies in favor of what sounded like a first-party only tracking (FLoC? I think it was called?).

Another issue is that Google always wanted people to be logged in with search and for the longest time they weren't. Well, people basically opted in to this by using Chrome and using a Google account. I used to really like the Google account syncing with Chrome. A lot of that for me has been replaced by using a password manager.

My point is I once was a huge Chrome fan and now I really want there to be an alternative. I trust Apple with Safari/iOS more than Google with Chrome/Android at this point. YMMV. I find myself using Firefox a lot (again).

Anyway, this whole messing with user tracking and ads I think could be Chrome's downfall and might invite regulatory scrutiny.

Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#93
post #87

Chrome may be an excellent browser, but the venn diagram overlap with malware keeps getting larger.

This is just a sound bite, not engagement with reality. Write enough to defend your position.

> This is just a sound bite

I agree it sounds like a sound bite.

> Write enough to defend your position.

But it also feels to me their point was clear, despite their more… mathematically poetic way of putting it.

I believe their argument is something like: “As time goes on, Chrome keeps adding more and more user-hostile features. At some point (perhaps now) we should consider if those outweigh its positives.”

Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#94
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the first screenshot is a totally empty browser window (just to show the address bar) made me lose faith about reading the rest of your writing...

Huh? I can't make sense of this criticism. What "faith" do you need? Every screenshot in the blog post is the same size, which made it easier to do the tags. (I write my blog in raw HTML.) Also, the first screenshot shows that my start page in Chrome is not Google Search, which is in fact quite relevant to the content of the blog post. For the same reason, I showed a screenshot of Chrome sign-in disabled. Nonetheless…

About half of all comments are completely tangential and/or from people who only read the headline. Another 25% are contrarian bickering. You just have to ignore all that if you want to stay sane.

Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#95
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who do you think makes these behavioural decisions? There is no “corporation”, there are, however, those currently on that company’s payroll. It’s their fault. The people. The humans. The ones working there. The ones knowingly employing their knowledge in service of the company. It’s always the humans.

If the structure doesn't have any influence at all on the behavior, why do we have regulations against monopolies (at least on paper)?

No one says structure doesn't influence behavior. Intended behavior is not the same thing as actual behavior, and groups of people don't behave like individual people. Metaphors to organisms are just: metaphors. We've known for a very long time that mobs of people will do nasty, destructive things that individuals in the mob wouldn't otherwise do. Corporations will also do nasty destructive things that individuals in the corporation wouldn't otherwise do.

Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#96

>> I’m personally inclined to cite Hanlon’s razor here rather than engage in conspiracy theories. That is a likely case. Chrome is their closed source software unlike the Chromium browser.

Hanlon’s Razor applies to human behavior, not corporations.

It's also just a razor, and not a very useful one.

Re: Chrome again exempts Google from user site data settings

#97
post #92

Google is playing a dangerous game here and I think it's going to bite them in the butt. First, some history. One thing that made Microsoft successful was a strategy called embrace, extend and extinguish ("EEE"). This is what they tried to do to Java back when it was believed that Java was a threat to Microsoft's platform monopoly since the Java mantra was "write once, run anywhere". Microsoft added all these proprie…

Microsoft did attempt the EEE strategy against Java with Visual J++, but Sun slapped that attempt down and Visual J++ was always a pretty minor footnote. The end result of this effort was C#. I should note that the much more successful EEE strategy against Java was Google's Android.

MS was successful at killing Netscape largely because paid software is difficult to compete against free software. The ActiveX controls weren't a feature with a lot of use--I can probably count all the sites I usedwith ActiveX controls on one hand. More common were the four big plugins: Java (for applets), Flash (counting Shockwave as part of Flash), Adobe Acrobot Reader, and Silverlight.

Netscape famously rewrote its codebase to try to implement the new web standards (like CSS2) more quickly, which contributed greatly to its ultimate collapse. After Netscape collapsed, MS laid off most of its browser development team, which let IE6 languish for years without improvements, going from the most standards-compliant browser on the market to the least standards-compliant. The rise of Firefox caused MS to pay attention again to web browsers, eventually restarting development and leading to IE7 being finally released. Only subsequent to that (and Firefox taking a large chunk of the browser market) did Google Chrome come out.

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