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Web by Google (TM)

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Re: Web by Google (TM)

#231

Post by giancarlostoro »

jasode wrote: post #188
giancarlostoro wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dialup user of AOL didn't interact with each other that much back then because the internet wasn't as central to life like today. Speak for yourself as a kid I would go on AOL chatrooms all day every single day. The kids rooms were packed with at least like 30 instances of them and like 10 to 20 kids in between. Learned what a/s/l meant back then something you dont hear as often these days hah. MSN Messenger had MS…

>Speak for yourself as a kid I would go on AOL chatrooms My phrase of "interact that much" was relative to today's Facebook type of social penetration. Yes, I also interacted with others on old USENET, BBSs, Compuserve (CIS userid), AOL, etc. Many of us did. But Facebook's social graph is the phenomenon that bridged the gap of grandparents seeing updates on the grandkids, high school alumni and past coworkers "findin…

Ah that's fine, I misunderstood what you said as if it meant that the internet didn't have people talking to one another back then. I think the internet is just scaled out more so it feels like a lot more, but I guess you got a point, most people I knew were not on the internet as much as I was. A lot of them had access, and I would talk to them when they came online.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#233

Post by UweSchmidt »

onion2k wrote: post #199
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #103

A lot of talk in this article about Google capturing the whole web, all valid points, but I find the Facebook walled garden even more terrifying. I see people now, often in online school parent groups I'm a part of, etc. who cannot even use email anymore, who don't use web pages at all, they get all their information through Facebook groups and Facebook, and only talk through Facebook messenger or sometimes SMS. E-ma…

Something we (people who work in tech) should be acutely aware of is causing unnecessary distractions from important issues. When there's a discussion about the Google very often the first few comments are about how some other tech company also does something unsavory. This is a thread about how Google's engineers are actively working to take over the web as we know it and become the gatekeepers to all the benefit (n…

Worth noting that all sorts of entities employ people to do PR on internet forums, and redirecting and deflecting is a crucial part of their tactics.

Not saying that this is happening here, but forums need to be resilent and really focus hard on the issue at hand or be completely played by the professionals.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#234

Post by cheph »

> Two deficiencies have determined the course the Web has taken: lack of native search and lack of native payments.

What exactly is the expectation here, that there is one integrated protocols stack that covers all of this? I don't see why.

Nothing is stopping someone from building P2P distributed search engines, and nothing is stopping someone from building "safe and easy way of exchanging funds".

Given that we still don't have good solutions to either of these problems it seems the right answer according to this person would be to just skip the internet.

This feels like a gripe without substance, yes we know these are hard problems, saying that Google's dominance is a consequence of the IETF not integrating these into HTTP is absurd and baseless.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#235

Post by biztos »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #103

A lot of talk in this article about Google capturing the whole web, all valid points, but I find the Facebook walled garden even more terrifying. I see people now, often in online school parent groups I'm a part of, etc. who cannot even use email anymore, who don't use web pages at all, they get all their information through Facebook groups and Facebook, and only talk through Facebook messenger or sometimes SMS. E-ma…

I decided to take a break from FB for a few weeks as it was feeling addictive. (Still on Messenger and IG so I'm not a purist.)

I quickly found that many of my local business have an online presence only on Facebook. No web site, no freebie aggregator type thing, nothing, just FB. This in a major European city.

It makes me wonder if it might be useful, as a public service, to have some kind of free business listing that (with your permission) automatically duplicates what you put on Facebook, just to encourage people to at least be discoverable outside that walled garden.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#236

Post by kmonsen »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #187
simias wrote: post #84

The problem is that, IMO, centralization of the internet is simply the natural course. Especially when people seem to care so little. Centralization is cheaper, easier to monetize, easier to control, easier to update and upgrade. That's why people prefer Discord to IRC, that's why people prefer Slack to SMTP or Jabber, that's why for many people these days the distinction between git and GitHub is blurry. I suspect t…

Centralization is clearly bad in the private sector. I'm curious why people here don't see centralization of government as similarly bad. With 3.5T in revenue, the US federal government is the single largest entity in existence, and it's scope is vast, covering things as disparate as mail and health care. There are plenty of examples of them abusing their position (and occasionally their people...), yet this forum ra…

It’s clearly bad (and I’m a left wing liberal), I think we need to give states more rights even if it sometimes will hurt causes we like. I also think we need to do another thing that is similar but not the same which is to drive down the stakes of politics. The president needs less power, and the Supreme Court should be more predictable (for example each president nominates two new Supreme Court justices). Spreading out power is a form of decentralization.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#237

Post by briandear »

x87678r wrote: post #111
mnd999 wrote: post #8

I think we’re in a real low point right now. Gmail, AMP, Chrome, Android. So many peoples internet experience is from one place. With Amazon dominating retail, and Facebook under its various brands dominating social media, there isn’t much scope for other players. I don’t see another option than breaking theses companies up at this point.

TikTok gonna change the world.

How is TikTok any different than Vine or Meerkat or periscope or any other video/SnapFaceTwitter toy? Do people really have that short of a memory?

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#238

Post by tonyedgecombe »

pilinia wrote: post #69

I hate Safari, but Apple here have really good opportunity to step up. With opening Safari for PC and Android and at the same time improving Safari along, they could cut quite a share from Chrome and stop this nonsence. But they seemed to dithched focus on web platform as it is still such mess for both users and developers, so meh. Chrome for me is done, using it only for PWA.

In a way it's a shame Microsoft went for Blink rather than WebKit.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#239

Post by jacquesm »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #103

A lot of talk in this article about Google capturing the whole web, all valid points, but I find the Facebook walled garden even more terrifying. I see people now, often in online school parent groups I'm a part of, etc. who cannot even use email anymore, who don't use web pages at all, they get all their information through Facebook groups and Facebook, and only talk through Facebook messenger or sometimes SMS. E-ma…

Textbook case of 'whataboutism'. Besides, avoiding Facebook is easy. Avoiding Google is impossible. I am much more worried about Google because of that.

Re: Web by Google (TM)

#240

Post by emptyparadise »

flowerlad wrote: post #222
emptyparadise wrote: post #123

Chromium should be taken away from Google and put in the hands of some truly neutral non-profit entity.

Use Edge instead of Chrome. If Edge's market share increases at the expense of Chrome then eventually Microsoft will have equal control over Chromium. Microsoft is not a better company in any way, but two companies controlling the most widely used browsing platform is better than one company controlling it.

Good point. It's not an ideal situation, but it beats Google alone holding the keys and could even lead to the outcome I mentioned in my first comment if non-profit free software advocates play their cards well.
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