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Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

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Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#221

Post by dalbasal »

bduerst wrote: post #189
_r_o_y_ wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open Google or Youtube in Edge an you'll see a huge banner advertising Chrome. That use to happen for practically every other browser.

A company promoting their own products on their own websites is far from being criminal. Amazon.com right now just showed a giant splash for buying an Echoshow on their home page.

Imagine your bank, alphabank has 80% of personal bank accounts and 70% of auto insurance. When you check your transactions, you see a notice: "you could save up to x% by switching to alphacar."

That's the premise behind antitrust (even though in practice, its 50 years behind the times). If you have dominant market share, things that are otherwise lawful^ aren't anymore.

^Antitrust stuff like anti-competitive behaviour isn't criminal regardless.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#222

Post by The_rationalist »

The_rationalist wrote: post #141
noname120 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> competitors such as Microsoft proved that they no longer have the capacity to develop a modern browser This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. However, they are not willing to anymore, which is a huge concern for future innovations in that domain.

"they are not willing to anymore" wtf does this mean? Have you looked at chromium commits activity? Microsoft is actively working on improving chromium, especially improving it's integration with windows 10. Convergence create synergies instead of reinventing the wheel and make Google no longer the only player in the development of chromium. Firefox has ~600000 commits Chrome has ~700000. Do you realize the order of…

Downvoting is nice, counter arguing logically is better.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#223

Post by reitanqild »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #201
StavrosK wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Why don't you do that? Every other website gives me flak for using Firefox, why are people reluctant to do the same when it's Chrome that doesn't work? "Due to a bug in modern versions of Chrome, this website only works with Firefox, Safari and Chrome 52 or earlier."

Have you ever tried to downgrade a modern browser? Every browser has an auto-update mechanism built in, usually running in a separate process (Google Updater is the Chrome one, iirc) that apparently was installed alongside its respective browser and given permissions to manipulate all of the files belonging to that browser at will. It is exceedingly difficult to remain on an earlier version because these processes ar…

That leaves the with only the best option:

Upgrading to a better browser ;-)

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#224

Post by bwat49 »

cletus wrote: post #146

It's hard to believe what a behemoth Chrome has become when it was only announced in 2008. What makes this even more amazing is it did this when IE/Edge ships as standard on Windows (which seems to be ~80% marketshare) and Safari ships as standard on OSX/iOS. It wasn't until Android 4.1 (2012) that Chrome even shipped on Android. Chrome did several things really well out of the gate: - Auto update. Words can't adequa…

Regarding your first 2 points, it sounds like you haven't used firefox in a long time...

1. Firefox does automatically download and apply updates like chrome does (at least on Windows), and has for some time.

It notifies you when update is downloaded and applied (I think it's just a notification badge on the hamburger menu), but user interaction is not required... the update would automatically get applied the next time the user happens to restart the browser, just like chrome.

2. Firefox has the equivalent of Chrome's omnibar for some time now... you can still add the second search box via the customize screen, but it's optional and is no longer the default...

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#225

Post by ryacko »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #219
vamc19 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Firefox is just not in that box at all. If you search for Chrome, Chrome will not show up in that box either. And the first browser in that box is, guess what, Firefox. You just searched for it, why include it in the box? UC Browser is pretty popular in Asia. Statcounter reports 3% market share worldwide, right between Samsung Internet and IE.

>If you search for Chrome, Chrome will not show up in that box either. And the first browser in that box is, guess what, Firefox. You just searched for it, why include it in the box? Oh, good catch, you are right. Is just a bad title for the box and does not appear to be in any way nefarious. 'Other Web Browsers' would be a lot less confusing. Am still cocking an eyebrow at 'Is Mozilla Firefox Safe to Download?' thou…

It isn't safe to download for the person asking that question.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#226

Post by [deleted] »

martin_a wrote: post #32
scarejunba wrote: post #13

What's the steelman argument for Google withholding Widevine from Samuel Maddock? Electron packaging with Widevine is a thing so this seems unusual. If you are Google and you're the good guy, why are you doing this?

> If you are Google and you're the good guy, why are you doing this? What if you aren't actually the good guy?

[deleted]

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#227

Post by masswerk »

reitanqild wrote: post #223
vanilla_nut wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever tried to downgrade a modern browser? Every browser has an auto-update mechanism built in, usually running in a separate process (Google Updater is the Chrome one, iirc) that apparently was installed alongside its respective browser and given permissions to manipulate all of the files belonging to that browser at will. It is exceedingly difficult to remain on an earlier version because these processes ar…

That leaves the with only the best option: Upgrading to a better browser ;-)

Don't ruin my hard earned "funny message that would make people stop and think"-badge by presenting simple alternatives! ;-)

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#228

Post by sfink »

kuu wrote: post #10
kmlx wrote: post #4

as a software dev, not having to deal with other browsers is a blessing. countless hours wasted on debugging various browsers gets massively reduced. second point, moving the conversation from " hasn't caught up" to "everyone's caught up" helps the web focus on technologies more so than before. discussions should now concentrate almost exclusively around the next web technologies, no more competition regarding web en…

The problem is if Chrome finally wins it all (we're almost there) and at some point they decide to remove a functionality that we all love, or they stop improving as there is no competition, or they decide to make you pay a little fee for developing a website with an extra functionality, or they decide that Chrome does not run on Mac anymore.... The problem with monopolies is that they control all the power, for the…

Initially, I'm more worried about plain bugs that creep in, get depended on, and can no longer be fixed because of web compatibility.

Next after that would be web API additions or extensions that make sense to Google but interfere with or prevent other things from being pursued (eg more pro privacy directions). They may try hard to play nice with standards bodies, but a quarterly goal can be a strong influence...

https://blog.mozilla.org/sfink/2013/02/14/browser-wars-the-g...

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#229

Post by sfink »

azangru wrote: post #108
kmlx wrote: post #4

as a software dev, not having to deal with other browsers is a blessing. countless hours wasted on debugging various browsers gets massively reduced. second point, moving the conversation from " hasn't caught up" to "everyone's caught up" helps the web focus on technologies more so than before. discussions should now concentrate almost exclusively around the next web technologies, no more competition regarding web en…

Agreed. As a web developer, I want browsers to adhere to the same specs and I want them evergreen. I do not want to deal with browser inconsistencies. Catering to different browsers quirks takes a lot of joy out of the work.

Specs cease to matter once a player gets too dominant. It becomes added work and not following the spec costs nothing.

If we're really headed to a single-browser future, enjoy those specs while they last.

https://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/08/choose-firefox-now-or-l...

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#230

Post by smaddock »

repolfx wrote: post #190
scarejunba wrote: post #13

What's the steelman argument for Google withholding Widevine from Samuel Maddock? Electron packaging with Widevine is a thing so this seems unusual. If you are Google and you're the good guy, why are you doing this?

The steelman is that Widevine is a DRM platform; to tell the difference between a browser and a ripper application it needs a lot of knowledge about the context in which it's meant to run, and how to tell the difference between a 'real' Chrome that follows the licensing rules and a fork of Chrome that doesn't. It should have been obvious to Maddock that he wouldn't be allowed to do this: I'm not sure why it's come up…

The issue I ran into was in acquiring the necessary licenses that you mentioned. Verified Media Path (VMP) can be used to verify the authenticity of the browser platform. I believe it uses public key cryptography for identification by Widevine's license servers.

It seems like it would be trivial for Widevine to revoke access if there were ever abuse.

I have more details in a blog post I wrote last month. https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked...

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