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Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

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Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#311

Post by ozgrakkurt »

gabruoy wrote: post #251
knowriju wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a 'first-world' comment. A majority of the folks logging on the web in the developing and emerging world will be unable to afford paying any kind of subscription for their web browser over and above what they pay their ISPs for internet access.

Then unfortunately the internet will remain a luxury for people who aren’t able to afford the cost. The internet is a product, not a charity or human right.

Internet access is already expensive and not available in some places. What kind of cost do you think browser will have 10usd/month subscription? Also there can be free versions of it anyway, google doesn’t have to be the company that does it

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#312

Post by guax »

Mindwipe wrote: post #174
int_19h wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Development slows" is not necessarily a bad thing. E.g. quite a lot of people would love development to slow wrt Manifest v3. It would also mean that web standards are less of a moving target for browsers playing catch-up (like Firefox). People can also pay for browsers. The only reason why this isn't feasible today is because it's hard to compete with the top-of-the-line stuff that megacorps offer for free - which…

The development that slows will not be parts that allow monetisation. They have a rationale. They will be things like security that have no immediate bottom line impact.

It's not like the open source engines won't be worked on. Or other companies who are not ad companies (apple, etc)

Browsers will not stop existing because google cannot make one. At worse google would donate to a non profit that keeps the engine and do the influencing under the rug.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#313

Post by pritambaral »

charcircuit wrote: post #295
adaptbrian wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 100% wasn't an 'option' if you wanted traffic as a publisher for a solid period of time

The search algorithm didn't rank AMP sites higher for being AMP. It was optional.

Maybe not. But the search page did hijack links to show a google-managed copy pre-AMP.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#314

Post by fooker »

thfuran wrote: post #302
fooker wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder than when you use seemingly impeccable logic and arrive at the wrong conclusion, it's the logic that is wrong somewhere because of a missed assumption. No, people are not going to pay much for browsers and websites, that's why ad supported products and services exist. Otherwise someone would make better software and charge for it. The only way this works is government intervention, which is what's happening…

No, people mostly won't pay because ad-supported free alternatives exist.

Yes that is my point.

If you want to prevent such alternatives from existing, you'd need fairly authoritarian measures.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#316

Post by youngtaff »

hoppyhoppy2 wrote: post #206
youngtaff wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d pick a different Chromium based browser maybe Vivaldi if I was you

I personally wouldn't trust all my most valuable personal info to a small, closed-source browser like Vivaldi

But you’d trust it to Brave?

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#317

Post by surajrmal »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #167
surajrmal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's conjecture at best that killing adblock was related to manifest v3. Given apple also rolled out the same sorts of restrictions years earlier, there is strong precedent for this being purely a security improvement measure. Especially when you consider how problematic and prevalent malware extensions are.

Is malware in ads not a problem anymore?

Do you still get malware in ads when using ublock origin lite?

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#318

Post by dns_snek »

fooker wrote: post #314
thfuran wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people mostly won't pay because ad-supported free alternatives exist.

Yes that is my point. If you want to prevent such alternatives from existing, you'd need fairly authoritarian measures.

Far from authoritarian, dealing with business models that seem fine on an individual level but that are detrimental to society as a whole is precisely the type of problem that governments are supposed to solve.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#319

Post by mixmastamyk »

mdhb wrote: post #131
mixmastamyk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor WEI, which Ars Technica described as a "nightmare." The final solution to general purpose computing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

Quoting from Wikipedia here: The stated goal was for sites to be able to restrict access to human users instead of automated programs and "allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device". Which on the surface seems like a legitimate use case I have to be honest.

Sure, the reasons given always sound perfectly reasonable. But, one needs to think of the second+ order effects.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#320

Post by bloppe »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #234
bloppe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about having them "pretty soon", but what do you think AI, self driving cars and androids are for if not to alleviate people of work? Better health care is a tough one, I'll give you that.

That's funny. As a disclaimer I work on AI research. Oh yeah. Definitely when we have discussions with companies to get funding we totally talk about how we're going to save the poor worker from all of these horrible jobs. There's one end goal. Get rid of people to increase profits for management and shareholders. People generally do not want to be "alleviated" of work, a great euphemism for being unemployed. There's…

That's called the lump of labor fallacy.

Losing your job sucks. It could suck a lot less with stuff like UBI that distributes the right amount of the profits from increasingly concentrated automation. Maybe you think that's impossible in the US or wherever you're from. You might be right. The point is that whichever society figures out the right mix of policies to harness all the benefits of automation without turning 99% of their people into paupers is going to "win".

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