A good way to measure how annoying this would get is to look at the handful of applications demanding SafetyNet on Android. It is not quite as much as one would assume, since adding friction of any kind is a retention killer. On the open web this would likely be worse, since you are locking out more than jailbreakers and emulator users.
Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
711–720 of 876 posts
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#712Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple don't have enough web properties to force this sort of change. Google can turn around tomorrow and say that no browser without WEI can access GMail, GMaps, GSheets, Photos etc; people will have to comply, effectively killing any browser that does not support the feature. This is the problem with the Chromium monoculture. "We", as generic IT people and developers on HN, definitely have a responsibility for not d…
How are Safari users part of the Chromium monoculture problem?
They support another monopolistic player that would do exactly the same thing.
... oh wait, they already did. They force a monoculture on all the platforms they can get away with, and even shipped this WEI crap already.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
Multiple profiles is fully supported. It's just hidden behind a clunky UX. Also check out firefox containers which is to profiles what docker is to virtual machines.
Yeah, AFAIK to setup profiles you have to run: firefox --ProfileManager And then to use them you have to start firefox e.g. : firefox -P Very few casual users (nor even most technical users) start Firefox from a command line, and setting up shortcuts for these is also a step that most users won't do. The support for profiles is there, it's just hard to use in the context of a GUI desktop.
can't you just go to about:profiles?
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#714Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mozilla is dead as a doornail. Google succeeded where Microsoft did not, they essentially control the entire web now.
> Google succeeded where Microsoft did not Microsoft wasn't trying to control the web; they were trying to hobble it so that everyone kept on developing for win32. In retrospect, not a great strategy, but many companies try to kick the can down the road, and it often works, so I can't fault them too much.
Of course large companies are always a bit schizophrenic with different departments moving in different directions, but I think fundamentally 1995-2000's Microsoft was trying to improve the web, and get people to use it. Just as Google does now they tried to blur the line between desktop and web, just that where Google is trying to move all desktop functionality to the web interface, Microsoft was trying to make all web functionality accessible in a desktop interface.
Explorer and Internet Explorer were deeply married, with the ability to set web pages as desktop background, the Explorer of Windows 98 having a "sidebar" that was an HTML page, the ubiquitous help format being compressed HTML pages with index and search, ActiveX giving webpages desktop-application-like powers, JScript being a powerful javascript-compatible automation language for Windows. Windows was full of web technologies in the dot-com era, many bringing web and desktop closer together. This stopped an reversed course in the early 2000s. You could now say that's classic embrace-extend-extinguish, but the collapse of the dot-com bubble explains explains the sudden lack of investment and increasing distance between desktop and web just as well.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. Firefox android works great for me, but Firefox windows gets very slow on my machine. I don't use their password manager on either, though, so I can't attest to that.
Is it still slow for you? Have you tested it recently? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35458746 >
Yes, it's still my default browser -- work and home. I put up with it because I browse far more on my phone than on my computer.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#716This proposal is just so throughly user-hostile that it's impossible to criticise it based on technical grounds. It's not a bad proposal, it's a dangerous, evil and malicious one, so criticising it in details is futile. The whole thing in itself is evil, and it needs to be thrown out. Quietly protesting won't work this time, the goal is to kick up a huge fuss which gets the attention of governments, regulatory bodies…
As someone that isn't up-to-date on WEI, can someone provide a TLDR of what it does and why it's bad?
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#717Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#718Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's far, far too late for this. The W3C is already irrelevant, not that it ever mattered much. The internet is made by big companies. Not standards bodies. The WHATWG has the actual living standards, and Google, Apple, Cloudflare and Amazon make the actual software. Nobody cares about the W3C. And Mozilla is long past dead.
> The W3C is already irrelevant, not that it ever mattered much. This sounds myopic, or what do you mean? W3C is not only about HTML and CSS innovation, but is responsible for and/or involved in a diverse set of relevant standards — many of which "big companies" don't show as much interest in contributing to. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium#St...
WHATWG (meaning, the browser vendors) are the de facto actual decision-makers of web standards. They tolerate the W3C existing because it's less hassle than causing a big fuss by getting rid of it, but make no mistake: the W3C is a powerless figurehead organization.
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#719If you STILL use chrome after this, you were never willing to give an alternative even a little bit of a chance anyway. Surely not supporting this and the power it gives Google over the web is worth a "slower" (I've never experienced that) browser or one with a stupid pocket logo in the corner that you NEVER HAVE TO INTERACT WITH EVER
Re: Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium
#720Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are Safari users part of the Chromium monoculture problem?
It's part of the KHTML monoculture that has been harming our industry and holding us back from real progress.
If you want a browser engine it's either one of the KHTML descendants or Firefox. The problem is, both are ridiculously complex, only one family has the backing of three multi-billion dollar giants, and the other infamously suffers from "progressive disease" aka complete unwillingness to move fast and instead preferring to engineer the "perfect" solution.
That even Microsoft couldn't manage to keep up with progress only shows how utterly impossible it would be to kickstart a browser engine.
(The fact that Mozilla as an organization is embedded in constant infighting and utter incompetence doesn't help either)