Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by throwaway808080 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:36 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #216

bad_user wrote: post #5

In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Both Opera and Microsoft's Edge are now powered by Chromium. Chromium is a project controlled by Google. Its redeeming quality, in terms of its open source nature, is…

Microsoft has the resources to fork Chromium if necessary, much like Google forked WebKit (after sending patches upstream for a while) and Apple forked KHTML. This is just how open source works and isn't a problem in itself. By doing this, Microsoft gets compatibility with the world's websites on day one, and they can take it from there. It's a smart move that many people seem to be misinterpreting.

It’s a money move. Ms sunk billions in Edge. With chredge bing ads makes profits. It will come installed in windows by default.

If google’s killing ad block extensions, Microsoft will most definitely follow suite.

Your only best bet is Firefox right now.

Chrome is a Trojan horse and Google most definitely doesn’t give a shit about your privacy.

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

#232

Post by lprd » Thu, May 30, 2019, 7:30 AM UTC

huy-nguyen wrote: post #163

lprd wrote: post #75

I installed Firefox as my daily driver last year and have been completely happy with it. Great dev tools, good performance, and I agree with Mozilla's stance on privacy. All wins for me. I'll still occasionally open up Chrome for dev purposes -- but for the sake of browser diversity and maintaining an open internet, I encourage all my friends to give Firefox a try.

The main problem with Firefox is high memory usage.

Energy usage would be my only complaint with Firefox. When I'm on my MBP, it does drain a bit faster (not horribly) when I have a few FF browser tabs open.

I suppose I should just use Safari when I'm not plugged in.

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

#233

Post by emn13 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 7:54 AM UTC

writepub wrote: post #11

bad_user wrote: post #5

In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Both Opera and Microsoft's Edge are now powered by Chromium. Chromium is a project controlled by Google. Its redeeming quality, in terms of its open source nature, is…

I do not trust Google, but I do not trust Mozilla either. An overwhelming majority of Mozilla funding comes from Google, Microsoft, and other giants it directly competes with. Added to that, many of it's battles (at the W3C and like) prioritize philosophy over customer satisfaction and ease of use. 99.9% of browser users don't care or don't even know if their browser is open source - what they want is convenience and…

As an individual, I want "convenience and ease of use". But I'm not blind to the fact that you're going to get shafted because my negotiating position - as an individual - is poor. So I 100% want an organization like mozilla, that does have at least some influence (but let's not get too hopeful here), to prioritize also the longer term benefits you describe as "philosophy".

Otherwise you're basically giving in to eternal serfdom; letting large corporations dictate the terms, knowing that individuals will never be able to extract the long-term compromises needed for a good deal. It's basic negotiating 101 that the party holding all the cards is going to get most of the value.

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

#234

Post by emn13 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 8:04 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #97

r3bl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't sell the space to Booking.com. They've promoted one another in their user bases: Firefox showed a message about Booking, Booking showed a message about Firefox. There was no money involved. I'm not gonna defend their action to do so because I disagree with it too, but if you wanna feel outraged about it, at least get the facts right. John Gruber should do the same.

A sale is a sale even if it doesn't involve hard currency. When Disney bought most of 21st Century Fox assets, there was no money involved either.

What privacy-related information was sold to booking.com again, regardless of how the transaction played out?

I get the feeling that people are asking Mozilla to simply not deal with corporations at all, regardless of privacy, which is simply impossible if it wants to survive - almost all major actors are corporations, so the alternative is Mozilla turning into a shut-in.

If you want influence, you're going to need to deal. And sure, there are deals conceivable that represent giving up on principles for short term gain. But just because it's possible to conceive of a deal that's "selling out", doesn't mean every deal represents selling out.

I mean in this very same comment thread another poster is complaining how principled Mozilla is @ the w3c.

Suffocating Mozilla (regardless of whether you use/admire/detest/ignore Firefox) under impossible expectations is likely a permanent loss for users. There are precious few organizations like it with any influence that are advocating for the individual in web tech, so once Mozilla dies (which seems likely, at this point), whatever tech firm special-interests can get away with is going to happen. And as modern politics should make clear: there's not a lot of reasonableness left with which to restrain actors like that once things turn political.

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

#235

Post by repolfx » Thu, May 30, 2019, 8:18 AM UTC

smaddock wrote: post #230

repolfx wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Look carefully at the response they sent you. Their perception is you're asking for a license for an open source product, i.e. a license that would remain valid even as random people contribute code or fork the product. That clearly cannot work, conceptually.

If you had a private, proprietary fork of your browser that was being distributed and nobody else could modify it or contribute code that would undo the DRM, and you were willing to sign giant contracts spelling out in exacting detail what features you could and could not add around video (e.g. no download feature), and the Widevine people thought you'd actually have the financial resources to defend your private fork against hooking, memory overwrite and other attacks (you don't think proprietary Chrome is just Chromium+library, right?) in a long term manner, then they might have been willing to work with you. But then you'd be a company, not an individual open source developer.

Rights enforcement and open source are not compatible.

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

#236

Post by icebraining » Thu, May 30, 2019, 8:32 AM UTC

emn13 wrote: post #234

icebraining wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sale is a sale even if it doesn't involve hard currency. When Disney bought most of 21st Century Fox assets, there was no money involved either.

What privacy-related information was sold to booking.com again, regardless of how the transaction played out? I get the feeling that people are asking Mozilla to simply not deal with corporations at all, regardless of privacy, which is simply impossible if it wants to survive - almost all major actors are corporations, so the alternative is Mozilla turning into a shut-in. If you want influence, you're going to need t…

Sorry, I didn't make it clear: I was arguing that point alone, not claiming they sold private data or anything else.

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

#237

Post by kmlx » Thu, May 30, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #133

kmlx wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE was by far the worst browser. i was working as a front end dev durinh those days and got excited when google finally launched chrome, more-so than firefox. the hours and the energy spent on debugging IE is something we will never get back. on your second point, monopolies create the setting for massive disruption.

You're not remembering correctly. IExplorer 5 was the best browser available, the Chrome of its time. >> monopolies create the setting for massive disruption I know that HN has a fetish with disruption, but no, it's not monopolies that create the opportunity for disruption, but the exact opposite of a monopoly, which is competition, often made possible by advances in technology. There's no inherent property of a mono…

> IExplorer 5 was the best browser available

That's web 1.0

> but no, it's not monopolies that create the opportunity for disruption, but the exact opposite of a monopoly, which is competition, often made possible by advances in technology.

monopolies innovate less, thus making them prone for disruption. "We develop a new theory of why a monopolistic industry innovates less than a competitive industry" http://www.dklevine.com/papers/monopoly_innovation.pdf

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

#238

Post by iggldiggl » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

javagram wrote: post #168

mft_ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just a bit of code to fix? if (s matches possibly valid URL pattern) then try to open it else send s to search provider

Searches are sent as you type, so it's not really that simple. Firefox already does what you suggested when hitting enter in the default URL bar - if it's not a valid URL, it gets used as a search. FWIW, I now see search bar has been off by default in firefox for the last 2 years (still grandfathered in for legacy users like me), so I think mozilla gave up on this. https://www.ghacks.net/2017/09/09/firefox-57-search-…

> Searches are sent as you type, so it's not really that simple.

You might also very well end up with something that is not a valid URL when searching in your local history or bookmarks.

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

#239

Post by monetus » Fri, May 31, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #199

WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im surprised facebook was an afterthought for you. I immediately think of facebook whenever i think of bad things involving the internet. Google doesn't even really cross my mind, it's just the most prominent internet thing so of course it's bad in some ways, that's just entropy.

Probably because it's trivial to cut facebook out of your Internet experience. Google,... not so much.

For a long time, I would have agreed... Until my family began to confuse fb messenger with text messaging itself.

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

#240

Post by eslachance » Fri, May 31, 2019, 4:14 AM UTC

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…

I'm not sure if anything changed in a day, but I'm not getting that result at all (in fact, I'm not getting a "did you mean Chrome" either). The latter isn't explainable by me, but for the former... well, remember the search results are tailored to you (that's another pandora's box about echo chambers in itself) so perhaps you've been searching for more security-oriented things and that affects your results. In my case, the first page was mostly official Firefox links, wikipedia, and the very last result of the first page was "Google Just Gave 2 Billion Chrome Users A Reason To Switch To Firefox" so it doesn't seem like there's anything awry going on here.