Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
developers.googleblog.com
Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
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Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#2Anti-trust action can't come fast enough.
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#3Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25155451
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#4Next step: The browser must not be anything but Chrome.
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#5What does this mean for IMAP?
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#6Next step: The browser must not be anything but Chrome.
This is pretty much the current step already, not the next step, with broad ban on anything that isn't a lot like Chrome and anything that they simply don't want to allow. In the last thread the narrative was hijacked with bullshit "security" justification, while in the blog post they ban much more broadly, any automation, text-based browsers, etc.
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#7Anti-trust action can't come fast enough.
Once upon a time Google would've been applauded for forcing people to improve their security. Like when they made https a ranking factor for sites and overnight forced all the laggards to move off http.
Now, people just scream "monopoly" at everything google does, good or bad and boy is it getting tedious.
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#8I hate the smartphone app trend of having embedded browsers.
Just launch me to my preferred real browser.
Stop trying to trap us in your ecosystem.
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#9Next step: The browser must not be anything but Chrome.
No way. (Theoretically on Android, but let's be real, they won't).
No way they are giving up marketshare on Safari or on corporate boxes with IE. They've paid so much to get onto iPhones, there's not a chance they'd risk any marketshare erosion.
Re: Guidance to developers affected by effort to block less secure browsers, apps
#10This has nothing to do with security and everything to do with banning tools like youtube-dl, wget and others; from the post:
> The browser must identify itself clearly in the User-Agent. The browser must not try to impersonate another browser like Chrome or Firefox.
> The browser must not provide automation features. This includes scripts that automate keystrokes or clicks, especially to perform automatic sign-ins.
Edit:
I feel like mentioning youtube-dl was a mistake. It's not just about youtube-dl.
This policy bars the use of all text-based browsers, headless browsers, browsers without javascript, and browsers with automation when accessing Google's services. It bans browsers that contain Node.js, even.