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“Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

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Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#231

Post by fbender »

Endy wrote: post #208
fbender wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla did multiple times and is doing it, sometimes even doing the work that Google is supposed to do (see e.g. the Webcompat project [1]). The point is, this problem is basically unsolvable without having the reach of Google and thus everone (incl. Microsoft!) is forced to spoof the UA. See also https://webcompat.com/

No company is "supposed" to do anything in my eyes; and I'd rather if they all did a lot less that wasn't defined as "produce this one very specific product that does one thing well". If anything, the agencies that are supposed to do anything for the infrastructure of the Internet are the various governments and the UN, to support an open Web. The problem is that at present the US, UK, Russia, China, North Korea, and…

So you're saying Google and the likes should ignore the very principles of the web that made them successful and even possible unless they're sued or regulated? That they can do whatever the freak they want without respect towards the environment (meaning both the web and economical/legal/political environment) they operate in? That's how you destroy ecosystems, economies, even political unions.

That's probably my biggest grief with many big companies today (and probably most big companies ever), the lack of respect and decency (in general). The few big tech companies I see that show a decent amount of respect (but still a long shot from perfect) are either run by Elon Musk or Apple, with Microsoft slowly but steadily digging themselves out of their rabbit hole.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#232

Post by outoftacos »

Jonnax wrote: post #12

Google are really shitty with their web browser especially on mobile. If you run Firefox you get a stripped down version of Google Search also with no infinite scrolling for images and low resolution. Use a user agent spoofer like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/chrome-ua-on-... And it seems to work fine on Firefox. I'm sure their official excuse is that they only support WebKit based browsers on…

I abandoned chrome two years ago, I had no idea it had gotten that mad. It's worse than the IE6 days, my god.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#233

Post by dralley »

wilun wrote: post #62
kuschku wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're manually spoofing your user agent, then Google figures that you know what you're doing and it's "use at your own risk anyway", and that if you get a broken experience, your first thought will be to disable the user-agent spoofing. Actually, some browsers, including Firefox Mobile, now spoof the user-agent by default on some sites, because of Google's broken systems.

Web history repeats over and over. This might lead to an even more interesting browser UA string in the future. Like "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36 MOZILLA IS FUCKING WRITTEN AT THE BEGINNING ANYWAY POOR SUCKERS!" 10 years latter, Firefox will take over the world again (when people will have enough of calling Google evil all day wit…

Unfortunately, I find this unlikely for one simple reason. Back when Firefox first took over during the worst days of Microsoft's complacency/fuckery with Internet Explorer, a significant proportion of web users were techies, or people who were in close proximity to techies. A browser like Firefox could win based on technical merits and word of mouth.

Nowadays, not only do a significant portion of the population not know or care what the difference is, they just use Chrome because "Google" and "the internet" are indistinguishable.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#234

Post by Endy »

fbender wrote: post #211
dabockster wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a new and proprietary web engine that's not beholden to Apple, Google, Mozilla, or any of the major firms I wouldn't necessarily go as far as proprietary, but I agree everywhere else. Now that we essentially have a bunch of Chrome flavors, I'm finding myself missing the browser wars of the mid 2000s. Real competition producing real results.

Have a look at what Mozilla is doing with Gecko (Project Quantum) and Servo. Even Microsoft is moving in a much better direction with Edge in the recent years, doing a lot of work and opening up parts of the engine. I don't know why parent put Mozilla into the same bucket as Apple and Google, they are not comparable in any conceivable way.

Because I don't trust Mozilla to put the user first and not give in to Google's demands anymore. Between the Australis UI ("Looks like Chrome") and now WebExtensions ("Works like Chrome"), the fiercely independent and unique Firefox (and by extension all of Mozilla) from days/years past is forever gone. Losing Thunderbird & SeaMonkey as fully developed projects was really the first warning of many; but many people were willing to let it go. I don't trust any of their new projects to actually remain stable and different from Google's desires, and really I don't have any reason to believe that they give a tinker's damn about their long-time users or their original ideals when they split from Netscape. They are no different from Opera who capitulated completely (and we see that Vivaldi, while calling them out, isn't announcing that they're creating their own engine, or switching to raw KHTML), and I'm just waiting until the day I have to start laughing because Mozilla announces that, in order to develop for the mobile space of Android & iOS, they're switching the desktop browser from Gecko to WebKit/Blink. Because I'm sure, given the track they're on, that day will come. I can no longer summon the appropriate dread. I can only laugh.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#235

Post by _tulpa »

studentrob wrote: post #170
_tulpa wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. And saying what exactly? That we should just roll over and let them do whatever they want because empowering the user is hard?

> we should just roll over and let them do whatever they want because empowering the user is hard? We're talking past each other. Your "them" is Google. My "them" is every company, many of whom do not announce the extent of their data collection. If breaking up Google means going after every company that collects too much data, then I suggest we first (a) take a look at how much data companies are collecting and then…

I picked on google because this whole post and the OP of this thread is about google. And you're using a lot of words to mostly say nothing.

The point is users are never going to have the power to force un-evil behaviour because the business model of data-mining companies (all of 'them', not just google) relies on social manipulation and exploiting weaknesses in human nature. Government regulation is the last resort, sure, but for this kind of business (and especially for the big players) it should be pretty damn clear by now that there is no other viable option.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#236

Post by Endy »

fbender wrote: post #231
Endy wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No company is "supposed" to do anything in my eyes; and I'd rather if they all did a lot less that wasn't defined as "produce this one very specific product that does one thing well". If anything, the agencies that are supposed to do anything for the infrastructure of the Internet are the various governments and the UN, to support an open Web. The problem is that at present the US, UK, Russia, China, North Korea, and…

So you're saying Google and the likes should ignore the very principles of the web that made them successful and even possible unless they're sued or regulated? That they can do whatever the freak they want without respect towards the environment (meaning both the web and economical/legal/political environment) they operate in? That's how you destroy ecosystems, economies, even political unions. That's probably my bi…

I genuinely believe that the government should have long since stepped in and closed them for anti-competitive behavior, back when this all started. The way things are currently though, there's no onus on the company to be a good actor, when bad acting gets them higher market share and thus higher revenue. Hence, they're not "supposed" to do anything. But I also believe that Google, as a company, should be allowed to develop a search engine, and that's it, everything, end of story, finito, no additions substitutions or refunds. That search engine might be a damn good search engine and have an absolutely mind-boggling database, but that's all. Maybe also the focused searches like Images, Shopping, and Video. When you get to Maps, Mail, and Voice, those should be separate entities owned by people not involved in Google, not invested in Google, and who do not have a managing stake in Google whatsoever.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#237

Post by 482794793792894 »

roblabla wrote: post #50
klondike_ wrote: post #39

I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source. I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the br…

I don't know what browser you're using, but assuming chrome : it's not open source either. Chromium is open source, but Google Chrome is proprietary, much in the same way vivaldi is. If you want a truly open source modern browser, the only options are chromium or firefox these days, AFAIK ? (If you know an alternative I'm interested !)

And Chromium as an open-source project is known to contain trackers. Well, known by some people at least. Here's a fork trying to fix that: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

As for other modern open-source browsers, http://otter-browser.org/ is still in relatively early development AFAIK, but sort of like Vivaldi, it's trying to recreate Opera 12.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#239

Post by Sylos »

Ndymium wrote: post #152
klondike_ wrote: post #39

I wish I could use Vivaldi, it seems like a nice browser for power users. Unfortunately it's closed source (besides the Webkit parts). Considering how much sensitive information goes through a browser nowadays, I would never consider something closed source. I'm sure Vivaldi has no intentions of becoming "evil" like Google, but because of its closed source nature it wouldn't be hard to slip a tracker or two in the br…

Vivaldi is readable source, though, as the non-chromium parts are made with HTML and JS that are not obfuscated AFAIK. So it's the same trust factor as open source, albeit with probably somewhat less people looking at the source (plenty do tinker with the code, though, to modify their browser).

It's mostly the same trust factor as Chromium or in general Apache-, MIT- and similarly licensed open-source software has. It is not the same trust factor as Firefox or in general GPL-, MPL- and similarly licensed open-source software has.

The latter, so-called copyleft-licenses, actively prevent someone from adding closed-source code to the open-source code-base or to relicense the entire code under a less strict license.

Vivaldi's license does not. They could start shipping non-readable code at any point.

Re: “Google: it is time to return to not being evil”

#240

Post by gwenzek »

fbender wrote: post #179
askafriend wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to look at opportunity cost. There is significant dev time that is spent supporting those configuration mixes that relatively few people will use. If that dev time could be spent on other features that will be appreciated by more people, then that is a decision you can make while still adhering to the principle of "users-first".

> There is significant dev time that is spent supporting those configuration mixes that relatively few people will use. The issue I have with this is that too many are looking at percentage/share/ratio only. Yes, percentage matters. But absolute values matter just as much. Or would you call a couple of million people "just a few"? And nobody answer with "for Google, yes", that's completely besides the point.

I'm a Firefox user working at Google. A lot of internal tools are Chrome only and when they get released to public they have a lot of technical debt to make it compatible with FF. The thing is engineer seems to always go for the latest internal library like Polymer which are only supported by Chrome. FF is working on supporting it which would probably improve the situation for a lot of Google product but it's taking time.

Also I've heard that Google is not so good at hiring front end engineer, as they are less likely to have the "inverse a binary tree" background.

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