Google has abandoned the “Web Environment Integrity” API that was supposed to allow websites to only allow approved and verified browser environments. The plan would allow websites to reject browser or even OS modifications that were “unattested” for the purpose of supposedly stopping bots, piracy, ad-blocking, and other activity Google deemed to be malicious. However, critics of the plan called it corrupt tyranny in which Google flexes it’s muscles to control the entire internet.
The plan was rejected from Firefox and Brave browsers, and could potentially shut Linux users out of many websites as there would be no telemetry company to “verify” the operating system was not modified. Further, some said it was an outright attempt by Google to force people to submit to the API even if they didn’t want to use Chrome browser.
Now this horrible tyrannical plan from Google was abandoned after severe “community backlash”, however it could see a limited version for Android Chrome only when embedded into apps themselves. Some privacy advocates criticize this move as merely a trial testing ground, where they can prove to websites and services that the concept works and then try to push it to a larger audience. These critics call for a boycott of the apps that use this functionality.
We can only hope these rotten Google executives can abandon their plans for world domination and the submission of all knowledge to pass through their ad tracking software.
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/google-abandons-web-environment-integrity/
Taking the win. Celebrating the fact there was a big enough backlash to get Google to pull their head in.
I switched back to Firefox and un-installed any chromium browsers at the news.
I will now be talking all credit for affecting this change and sharing it with nobody else. You’re welcome, internet! 🙏
Abandoned for now. Maybe.
Of course. You didn’t think that they would take back a user-hostile greed-motivated feature without an alternative, did you?
Sadly with all this evil crap now days, they’ll bring it back in a few weeks or months, rename it to the "won’t somebody think of the children API"with a massive ad campaign saying anyone or any website not using the API are r*ping kids…
Great news, but horribly written article. Feels like AI or someone with a high school writing level.
The original source is much better
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/
I don’t believe them. They will try to do it again, slightly modified, under a different name, but they WILL try to introduce it again.
No. That’s round 3. Round 2 is already announced - they are ‘restricting’ environment integrity to multimedia on Android webview. Of course, what they don’t say is that the feature is going to be developed and tested outside the view of the general public - since this doesn’t need to go through a public standardization like web specifications. Once they get that perfected, they will silently expand its scope outside webview and gradually into browsers with a new name. That’s round 3.
