This video as a text article: https://blog.nicco.love/google-drms-the-web/
Long ago, we praised Chrome for helping destroy Internet Explorer. Now it has become the same. No for-profit corporation is your friend.
Mozilla really did that with Firefox and Thunderbird to help kill IE and Outlook Express. Chrome came quite a bit later, but was instrumental in bringing about a performance reckoning, and a push for universal standards, sort of creating that movement. Really shocking now when you think of Google doing that.
That’s a bit revisionist.
Mozilla and Thunderbird existed as decent alternatives, but they had a tiny market share of generally tech minded people, which was a much smaller subset of the population than it is now.
Chrome and Gmail came in and completely demolished the market. They came in with a strong brand name, and a huge suite of features that worked well, and really ignited the Cloud app paradigm.
I have mained Firefox on desktop throughout the decades. But give credit where credit is due.
Not rewriting history or anything. The Mozilla Foundation made those apps to directly compete with Microsoft to offer free and open-source alternatives to the built-in apps of IE and Outlook Express, and they succeeded at that.
You’re pointing out a different thing from the original comment I responded to, and Firefox+Thunderbird were in the mix years before Gmail and Chrome, and if you want to get “revisionist” about it, Mozilla had the browser and mail client as one single app prior to that in an attempt to do the same thing, which was an entire decade before Chrome was released.
can this “fix” NFTs?
How would this affect our use of FediVerse websites? Like Lemmy or Mastodon.
Here it is on PeerTube, since we’re on the Fediverse and probably wanting to avoid Google.
Write to your country’s anti-trust body if you feel Google is unilaterally going after the open web with WEI (content below taken from HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880390).
US:
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation antitrust@ftc.govEU:
https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust/contact_en comp-greffe-antitrust@ec.europa.euUK:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tell-the-cma-about-a-competition… general.enquiries@cma.gov.ukIndia:
https://www.cci.gov.in/antitrust/ https://www.cci.gov.in/filing/atdExample email:
Google has proposed a new Web Environment Integrity standard, outlined here: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md This standard would allow Google applications to block users who are not using Google products like Chrome or Android, and encourages other web developers to do the same, with the goal of eliminating ad blockers and competing web browsers. Google has already begun implementing this in their browser here: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd Basic facts: Google is a developer of popular websites such as google.com and youtube.com (currently the two most popular websites in the world according to SimilarWeb) Google is the developer of the most popular browser in the world, Chrome, with around 65% of market share. Most other popular browsers are based on Chromium, also developed primarily by Google. Google is the developer of the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Android, with around 70% of market share. Currently, Google’s websites can be viewed on any web-standards-compliant browser on a device made by any manufacturer. This WEI proposal would allow Google websites to reject users that are not running a Google-approved browser on a Google-approved device. For example, Google could require that Youtube or Google Search can only be viewed using an official Android app or the Chrome browser, thereby noncompetitively locking consumers into using Google products while providing no benefit to those consumers. Google is also primarily an ad company, with the majority of its revenue coming from ads. Google’s business model is challenged by browsers that do not show ads the way Google intends. This proposal would encourage any web developer using Google’s ad services to reject users that are not running a verified Google-approved version of Chrome, to ensure ads are viewed the way the advertiser wishes. This is not a hypothetical hidden agenda, it is explicitly stated in the proposal: “Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they’re human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.” The proposed solution here is to allow web developers to reject any user that cannot prove they have viewed Google-served ads with their own human eyes. It is essential to combat this proposal now, while it is still in an early stage. Once this is rolled out into Chrome and deployed around the world, it will be extremely difficult to rollback. It may be impossible to prevent this proposal if Google is allowed to continue owning the entire stack of website, browser, operating system, and hardware. Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.
Thanks! Here’s the message without all the BBC quotes to make it easier to copy for app users:
Dear FTC,
Google has proposed a new Web Environment Integrity standard, outlined here: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/…
This standard would allow Google applications to block users who are not using Google products like Chrome or Android, and encourages other web developers to do the same, with the goal of eliminating ad blockers and competing web browsers.
Google has already begun implementing this in their browser here: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b28994…
Basic facts:
Google is a developer of popular websites such as google.com and youtube.com (currently the two most popular websites in the world according to SimilarWeb) Google is the developer of the most popular browser in the world, Chrome, with around 65% of market share. Most other popular browsers are based on Chromium, also developed primarily by Google. Google is the developer of the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Android, with around 70% of market share.
Currently, Google’s websites can be viewed on any web-standards-compliant browser on a device made by any manufacturer. This WEI proposal would allow Google websites to reject users that are not running a Google-approved browser on a Google-approved device. For example, Google could require that Youtube or Google Search can only be viewed using an official Android app or the Chrome browser, thereby noncompetitively locking consumers into using Google products while providing no benefit to those consumers.
Google is also primarily an ad company, with the majority of its revenue coming from ads. Google’s business model is challenged by browsers that do not show ads the way Google intends. This proposal would encourage any web developer using Google’s ad services to reject users that are not running a verified Google-approved version of Chrome, to ensure ads are viewed the way the advertiser wishes. This is not a hypothetical hidden agenda, it is explicitly stated in the proposal:
“Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they’re human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins.”
The proposed solution here is to allow web developers to reject any user that cannot prove they have viewed Google-served ads with their own human eyes.
It is essential to combat this proposal now, while it is still in an early stage. Once this is rolled out into Chrome and deployed around the world, it will be extremely difficult to rollback. It may be impossible to prevent this proposal if Google is allowed to continue owning the entire stack of website, browser, operating system, and hardware.
Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.
Someone needs to make a button on the Internet that sends the email from you.
FYI, the two web links in the example email seem to be cut off, as they end in ellipses. ?
