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Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

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Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#231

Post by userbinator »

c0l0 wrote: post #5

I feel like I have to repeat this, since so much is at stake here, where it is about the preservation of the web as we know it today, at the peril of having it turned into yet another walled garden: The only way around the dystopia this will lead to is to constantly and relentlessly shame and even harass all those involved in helping create it. The scolding in the issue tracker of that wretched "project" shall flow l…

Indeed. Negotiations have already turned out to be completely ineffective. The next step is war.

Cory Doctorow came up with the phrase "The War on General-Purpose Computing", which describes the situation perfectly.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#232

Post by coldpie »

tomschlick wrote: post #208
coldpie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google needs to be broken up. To make it explicit: the only way this happens is by Americans voting for it. The FTC has been more active on anti-trust issues in the past two years than at any time in the past 30. That's a direct result of the 2020 election. Elections matter.

The FTC isn't going to do anything as Google/Alphabet is a big donor to the Democrats. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/alphabet-inc/recipients?id=... Here is them lobbying specifically around antitrust reform legislation: https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/bills/specific_...

So are Amazon:

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/amazon-com/recipients?id=D0...

and Microsoft:

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-inc/recipients?id...

And yet we see high profile activity against them from the current FTC.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#233

Post by washadjeffmad »

I vote that this happens, but happens completely, definitely, and thoroughly to its logical conclusion.

If you want a penny from Google adtech, you're subject to their stringently filtered portal, you're inaccessible from non-WEI enabled browsing, and circumventing WEI policies gets you demonetized. It'll be the Great Firewall of Adtech, gated access via an app to a filtered corporate paradise - a bit like Facebook tried in India, unsuccessfully.

If you want to be part of the free, non-commercial web, WEI doesn't apply, access is open. You are able to be indexed as such. The healing can begin.

This will provide a true choice: commercial xor non-commercial. Confine all the SEO garbage to ghettos that think they're kibbutzim, forcing the big commercial entities to either fight over the noise or exert their influence, and leaving the rest of us out.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#235

Post by amjd »

wsgeorge wrote: post #118
bee_rider wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear Firefox is mismanaged all the time, but it seems to be a perfectly fine browser for the most part. I hear all about sites that won’t render in comments on this website, but they must all be internal tools or something because I never encounter them.

Some Google services I regularly depend on (like YouTube and Google Meet) don't work as well on Firefox as they do on Chrome, in ways that actually matter. Besides that I think most websites work fine.

I haven't noticed any issues on YouTube after subscribing. Before that it used to glitch once in a while possibly to penalize the ad blocking. But that may have been the behaviour in Chrome too for all I know.

Google Meet does have some key features missing on Firefox such as blurring / changing video background.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#236

Post by Cthulhu_ »

alistairSH wrote: post #76
px43 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google broke itself up in 2015. What are you even asking for here? Chrome and Android are open source, and there are several forks of both thriving in the ecosystem. Yeah it would be cool if there was a decent open source alternative to GMail and Drive, but no one else seems to have figured out how to get the incentives right for something like that.

Google broke itself up in 2015. What are you even asking for here? No, it didn't, it restructured itself into Alphabet, with many subsidiaries. But, all the core businesses are still under that umbrella organization, with most web-related businesses remaining inside the current Google entity. A forced divestment of the browser business might help. Same for the productivity products.

But what does breaking up even mean? Separate companies, each publicly traded with their own C level staff, shareholders, etc?

Because to me it just feels like it might be legally separated, but still owned and directed by the same handful of people. And it being separated makes it safer, in that they can't forward e.g. large fines to the parent company.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything about large corporations. or economy. or governments.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#237

Post by [deleted] »

ricree wrote: post #199
unmole wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens when website owners decide supporting Firefox is not worth it?

It would be much less likely if we could get the market share back to 2010 levels. Is that a realistic goal? I don't know, maybe not, but it seems like there's little will even in tech to try. There was a time when tech was the biggest driver of alternate browser adoption, and even managed to make serious inroads into the mainstream. It's a huge shame that this attitude seems long gone.

[deleted]

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#239

Post by arp242 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #184
j1elo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's proven that mass marketing works. Tell me how a minority of informed and caring users can avoid on their own that a single large scale bad actor pours millions over millions of dollars to convince the uninformed masses about whatever they want. It even happens in actual elections when some factions use misinformation campaigns to alter the average voter's perception! So not an easy task to solve without help.

>Tell me how a minority of informed and caring users can avoid on their own that a single large scale bad actor pours millions over millions of dollars to convince the uninformed masses about whatever they want. Firefox. No, not Firefox of today; I'm talking about Firefox 20 years ago that defeated IE6 by sheer force of nerds alone. Of course, the landscape is vastly different now and Firefox today is about the most…

> Firefox 20 years ago that defeated IE6 by sheer force of nerds alone.

Firefox was significantly better than IE though: it was faster, had more features, and things like that. This is what made Firefox popular, not "sheer force of nerds".

Chrome, when released, also had some significant improvements to Firefox. In particular, it was loads faster. This changed with "Firefox Quantum" (59 IIRC), but "too little, too late" I guess.

Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium

#240

Post by coldpie »

yyyk wrote: post #222
coldpie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google needs to be broken up. To make it explicit: the only way this happens is by Americans voting for it. The FTC has been more active on anti-trust issues in the past two years than at any time in the past 30. That's a direct result of the 2020 election. Elections matter.

>The FTC has been more active on anti-trust issues in the past two years than at any time in the past 30.... That's a direct result of the 2020 election. Active against Google though? Remember, Google can help a certain political party in tough times (e.g. rollout of healthcare.gov).

So can Microsoft and Amazon, surely? Yet they're getting a lot of scrutiny from the FTC right now.
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