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Why I’m done with Chrome

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

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Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#391

Post by GW150914 »

partiallypro wrote: post #382
naringas wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that google today is like microsoft back in the late 90s and early 00s but your comment makes me think it might be even worse.

Google already bullies hardware vendors that don't package Google services with Android devices...which is what Microsoft did in the 90s. They also bundle all their services...which is essentially the very thing that Microsoft ended up getting slapped for. Google gets a way with a lot. Apple does too, but Apple's reach is limited to when you leave their hardware, Google's is always with you. You can't escape unless y…

Google bullies hardware vendors, Apple is its own hardware vendor. That is the essential difference. If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made and sold, instead of twisting the arms of third parties they’d have been OK. There is a qualitative difference between dictating the terms of something you alone build and sell, and using your market dominance to dictate terms to everyone else.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#392

Post by partiallypro »

GW150914 wrote: post #391
partiallypro wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google already bullies hardware vendors that don't package Google services with Android devices...which is what Microsoft did in the 90s. They also bundle all their services...which is essentially the very thing that Microsoft ended up getting slapped for. Google gets a way with a lot. Apple does too, but Apple's reach is limited to when you leave their hardware, Google's is always with you. You can't escape unless y…

Google bullies hardware vendors, Apple is its own hardware vendor. That is the essential difference. If MS had done their thing only with hardware they made and sold, instead of twisting the arms of third parties they’d have been OK. There is a qualitative difference between dictating the terms of something you alone build and sell, and using your market dominance to dictate terms to everyone else.

I don't disagree. I really would love for Microsoft to make the "Microsoft Store" accept Android apps and launch a Surface Phone line that only they control...and if it takes off maybe OEMs could join in, if not, fine. I feel like they are the only company that can successfully do it...but even then Google services are so coupled with Android games/apps...and it doesn't solve the "walled garden" problem. Microsoft would still have a walled garden, which I'm generally against. I don't know the solution, but I certainly do not like the current duopoly or the problem of the walled garden. Maybe there could be two stores, one from the Microsoft repo and one that is a "Sideload store" that is just listings but the apps are hosted elsewhere to remove any legal implications for Microsoft or whoever.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#393

Post by JoshMnem »

qrbLPHiKpiux wrote: post #336
partiallypro wrote: post #248

Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up until about 2008. So many things have changed since then. Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting…

AMP was what did it for me.

Same here. AMP and the current move to get rid of URLs were the last straw.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#394

Post by teddyfrozevelt »

JoshMnem wrote: post #302
ChicagoDave wrote: post #173

Firefox here I come. Google’s update, to automatically take an action on my computer that I specifically don’t want, is an egregious misuse of technology. This is what Microsoft might have done in the early 2000’s for which they were rightfully vilified. What happened to “do no evil”?

> What happened to “do no evil”? It was considered "stupid" so they dropped it: https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/13/4326424/eric-schmidt-once... I thought that even if "evil" can't be well-defined, its general meaning probably encouraged a culture that tried to focus on ethics. When your leader says that trying not to be evil is "stupid", it has a different effect on the culture.

https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

Don't be evil is in the last line of Google's Code of Conduct.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#395

Post by EpicEng »

zeth___ wrote: post #380
acdanger wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would he have to wait for a second term? Why couldn't he start on this tomorrow?

If you think the coverage of him is bad now, wait till you see what happens when the digital monopolies are fighting for their lives. One only has to look at what the Murdoch paper monopolies did to any politician who dared stand against him: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/cancer-eating-the-he...

>If you think the coverage of him is bad now

He could solve that problem by simply ceasing to say and do dumb things. I'm not convinced the media is out to get him, he just shoots himself in the foot about 20 times / day. I wish the news were focused more on policy than politics (though not sure that would help him), but people like drama and news orgs like money.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#396

Post by dblohm7 »

StudentStuff wrote: post #317
rst wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to look into the Brave browser ( https://brave.com ), which is a commercial browser based on the Chromium code, funded by a micropayments idea, which tries to generally be more privacy-sensitive than the Google version. As for a fully open-source version: here's a fairly recent summary (2017) of what's in Chrome and not in Chromium (the open-sourced subset): https://www.howtogeek.com/202825/what%E2%80%…

Does one really want to associate themselves with Brendan Eich though? Brave is what he has been building after being ejected from Mozilla. While Brendan has built some interesting and useful things including Javascript, he is apparently poisonous enough to cause three of Mozilla's board members to resign, including a founding executive of Yahoo, the former CEO of AVG, and the former CEO of Mozilla Corp (from 2008 to…

You're repeating a lot of misinformation. Here's a better reference:

https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-under-fire-inside-the-9-da...

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#397

Post by breatheoften »

heartbreak wrote: post #16
zbrozek wrote: post #9

I engaged with the folks pushing this feature internally when my own browser started enforcing omnidirectional login. One of my specific complaints was that it was an end-run around the user-provided sync passphrase, which nominally prevents Google from hoovering up my logged-out history. They didn't grok my privacy issue. Maybe they were deliberately misunderstanding me. Doesn't matter either way. Now I use Firefox.

This feature doesn’t enable sync. That’s something that members of the Chrome team have been patiently trying to explain to Matthew Green on Twitter for several days now. [0] https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1043505744144826369?s=21

I’m wondering where the source of truth for the sync setting is stored. If I enable sync on one chrome browser — then in another chrome browser on another device log into gmail (triggering chrome login) — will browser history sync be enabled on that second device?

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#398

Post by tananaev »

partiallypro wrote: post #248

Google started going down the path I would describe as an "evil" path years ago. I'm glad people are starting to notice. I used to be a huge Google advocate, up until about 2008. So many things have changed since then. Adsense was the first breach in trust for me, when they banned my account for no reason and ruined any chance of every monetizing my content...since they are basically a monopoly in that area. Getting…

I'll add my very recent negative experience with Google. I have a couple of apps on the Google Play that use Firebase analytics and crash reporting. This weekend both apps were removed by Google without any warnings. The issue was that apps were in "Violation of Usage of Android Advertising ID" because by default Firebase collects Advertising ID. I don't really need Advertising ID in my app or my analytics and there is a way to opt out [1], but I think the way Google handled this is just wrong. Collecting information that most people probably don't care about and then removing apps without notice for basically their own default configuration.

[1] https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/disable-analytics

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#399

Post by teddyfrozevelt »

pimlottc wrote: post #156

Another wrinkle with this: if your account is with a private G Suite instance, logging into the browser can have a profound effect since it will apply any management policies. This will probably be sold as a security enhancement - you can’t access your organizations data without active management (at least, if you’re using Chrome), but for users with access to multiple G Suite domains, this will become a real nuisanc…

When I last had to do it, adding a managed G Suite account to Chrome warns the user that it will allow the browser to be controlled by the organization. It would make sense that this same warning would show up in this scenario.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#400

Post by stephenSinniah »

pimlottc wrote: post #156

Another wrinkle with this: if your account is with a private G Suite instance, logging into the browser can have a profound effect since it will apply any management policies. This will probably be sold as a security enhancement - you can’t access your organizations data without active management (at least, if you’re using Chrome), but for users with access to multiple G Suite domains, this will become a real nuisanc…

So if you pay for a G-suite account it's safe to say google does not mine your data?
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