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I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

blog.samuelmaddock.com

121–130 of 194 posts

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#121
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nice for Google to block the project that wrote the origins of their browser engine. In this case it's blocking the embedded Blink, which is their browser engine, so at least they're consistent?

Yeah, Blink, which is a fork from Safaris WebKit, which is a fork of Konquerors KHTML. Google Chrome wouldn't exist today if it wasn't for Konqueror.

yes, that's what the "consistent" was referring to...

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#122

I do not want a "web browser" that is also a video player. We need more "web browsers" that just browse HTML.

lynx links w3m

You forgot W3C's libwww and the "www" browser. Supports HTTP/1.1 pipelining, which curl does not, nor wget.

Why not more. I'm a satisfied links user, but would like to see more choices.

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#123
post #23
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking about creating a browser from scratch, it's nearly impossible to implement one without a huge investment of both time and money. Browsers are unbelievably complex, and the new features are being added at such a pace that you need to run twice as fast just to keep up. If we're talking about forking an existing browser, that is doable. But you still need a huge investment to understand, change and exte…

Heh, you're better off designing a new markup language and then implementing a browser to render that.

Given the current state of the web, this might not be a bad idea

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of open source software suggests there are other factors.

Such as?

I think the OP wanted to say that there are large, complex, high quality community driven software projects.

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#125
post #108

"I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me" Title is very missleading, your web browser works and google does not block you, it's all about DRM. "For the last 2 years I’ve been working on a web browser that now cannot be completed because Google, the creators of the open source browser Chrome, won’t allow DRM in an open source project." This is crap, you should probably have known that before starting the…

Users will balk if you call your application a web browser and it doesn't stream video from most of the major video providers.

There is a big difference between playing some mp4 / webm on a website and Netflix, if every random dev could implement a DRM for Netflix most likely DRM would be useless.

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#126
post #108

"I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me" Title is very missleading, your web browser works and google does not block you, it's all about DRM. "For the last 2 years I’ve been working on a web browser that now cannot be completed because Google, the creators of the open source browser Chrome, won’t allow DRM in an open source project." This is crap, you should probably have known that before starting the…

> Title is very missleading, your web browser works and google does not block you, it's all about DRM.

Google, Microsoft, and Apple effectively control access to DRM. They are acting as a cartel to prevent competitors. So, yeah perhaps it would be best to add Microsoft and Apple to the list of offenders, along with the MPA, and heck even Congress (which criminalized breaking DRM even for otherwise legal purposes). But I'd hardly call the title very misleading.

Regarding your second point, it's understandable that he focused on the functionality before the licensing, because Widevine would probably have been even less supportive if he had a working product. Honestly I don't understand your complaint; someone had to make a browser and get screwed over, otherwise the defenders of Google et. al would argue that Widevine could be licensed by competing browsers.

And anyways, these minute arguments completely ignore the overarching point that DRM subverts the premise of the web and prevents disruption and competitive.

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#127

Blog post author here. Since this post, there's now an option available for DRM-enabled Electron. However, it's only available through a single vendor, castLabs [0]. This is a closed source, downstream effort which means no modifications can be made to Electron itself. All changes must make it upstream to show up in this fork. When asked whether they would eventually merge it upstream, they didn't provide a clear ans…

> This is a closed source, downstream effort which means no modifications can be made to Electron itself.

It has the MIT license since 2 months ago. Did the closed-source part change or is that only about the non-npm code?

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#128

I'm no an expert on DRM, but maybe someone here is. What would open source programs using DRM look like? My understanding is that the whole point of DRM is to prevent the software and the user from having arbitrary control over the data, which is fundamentally opposite of open source. Say that Google desperately wanted to support any reasonable method to accomplish allowing open source tools access to DRM-protected m…

DRM is just encryption. It being open source and everyone seeing what math is used is only going to make it stronger.

They'll need to implement some kind of signing mechanism, or the users will just plug in a modified blob that pipes the output to a file.

Re: I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)

#129

Isn't this just how DRM works? It's precisely why so many were concerned about EME being adopted into web standards, and why so many are passionate about DRM-Free media. DRM is designed to put restrictions on where, when, and how media is played, including what software it's used with. This doesn't invalidate any of the author's points, and they're right to be upset. But the problem isn't Chrome per se, it's DRM-encu…

“I created a browser and Netflix blocked it” isn’t as baity a headline.
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