Comment by ulrikrasmussen
2 years ago
While the EU has recently forced Microsoft to allow users to uninstall pre-installed crapware, Google is apparently unhindered in their ongoing (and succeeding) mission to take control of all layers of the consumer-facing internet.
For now.
Google is working on making a premium internet based on their services that permeate the whole web which they plan to serve only to "trusted devices" running Chrome - I do not think this is going to work out well for them.
I hope not, but I suspect they will succeed. My observation is that the vast majority of people around me here in Europe see Google as completely trustworthy.
It's truly profound how split-second loading delays contribute to a negative impression about digital products. I guess we're all worn out from using our devices. Most of us just want "thing" ASAP, and we'll compulsively click 'agree' to anything that happens to stand in the way of it.
'Why don't you switch to Chrome, it works better/faster.' is not the sort of social pressure I can quickly respond to with my privacy concerns. And it's not like I'm not going to get an eye-roll or tin-foil-man comments from the mom-pop-type people in my life.
> And it's not like I'm not going to get an eye-roll or tin-foil-man comments from the mom-pop-type people in my life.
That's why you don't start with the nerd explanation of the privacy issues, you just tell them Firefox is way better. You install FF + uBlock (since presumably they don't even have an adblocker on Chrome if they're anything like my parents), and tell them "Look ma, no ads!". Not even people who don't care about ads that much and just ignore them will go back to seeing them if they see the option of no ads existing. And if you handle all their bookmark imports and account logins for them so they don't have to, they won't even feel the difference from a UI/UX point of view (sans a few microscopic differences that nobody notices).
As for these artificial speedbumps, I think that statistic about every 100ms of page load decreases visitor time is true to an extent, but at least if I look at the way my parents use websites, even 5kb plaintext ones take like 3s to load since they have unfathomably slow internet and ancient devices, so it doesn't really factor in for them if they click on a video on youtube they wanna watch.
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> I hope not, but I suspect they will succeed. My observation is that the vast majority of people around me here in Europe see Google as completely trustworthy.
Just like MS was always seen in Europe as well, outside (parts of) the tech-workers bubble. Governments in every single country at every level never had any problem mandating proprietary softwares and formats to their citizens for many, many years.
I’m aware that it is quite popular, so I guess I must be weird, but YouTube being slow (and consuming lots of CPU due to that ambient mode stunt), when every other video site works fine in Firefox, and embedded YouTube videos on other sites work fine in Firefox, has just made me think YouTube is a pretty crappy site.
I’d never dream of changing browsers because some video site (mostly full of low-effort distracting silliness), didn’t work well in mine.
I would hope that the EU will legislate against this. (No help for the UK of course...)
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I hope not, but they are certainly trying. I fear they have become an uncontrollable behemoth which have failed to identify alternative business models to their unsustainable ad business, and now they are trying to perform a major power grab to basically take over the web and force people to watch ads or pay.
I suspect that the SEO scam-industry will hit a wall on how far they can push their top-10 lists and advertising will no longer be worth it. Google search results are pretty bad now anyway, since you'll only ever find the sites that game the system.
Eventually users will realise this, and advertisers will see negative returns, and Google will lose money. But chances are they'll find another way to keep advertisers paying.
Why is their ad business unsustainable? seems like they just print money, and recent efforts are to simply increase printer speed... Because why wouldn't you...
What pisses me off about this is that people are such drones for The Google via GMail (mostly) that they don't question this since it works for them. Nevermind that Google is a user-hostile megacorp that will screw them as soon as it makes financial sense to do so.
Ever talk to someone random about Google's privacy bullshit and why Chrome is not a great browser? Nobody cares, and they think you're an idiot.
So, Google will carry on until it's too late.
Is there maybe some road map or purpose statement on this? it’s not that i don’t believe that this is absolutely true (i’m sure it’s the wet dream of all SV companies…) but google’s offerings are so inconsistent that if that’s really their goal i just can’t see how they mean to get there. every answer to competition is a half baked answer in my experience and i truly just can’t see how google means to do this. google plus i thought was supposed to be this but that did not pan out well at all.
and i also don’t see how they can really do this at least in EU, at least not for long until the regulators catch wind.
Oh yes, it's called WEI as in Web Environment Integrity -https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/25/google_web_environmen... some of its code landed in production Chrome, leading to an outcry. V3 Manifest and WEI are all part of Google's push to make Chrome mandatory to be able to use their services.
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Whatever their competition will be, sign me up now. I really like their products, the company itself and their philosophy not so much
Chrome have been the IE6 situation all over again for a while now, except this time it's possibly too late to walk back. They are pretty much done taking over the standard.
To be fair, the IE6 problem wasn’t just massive usage, it was massive usage plus complete stagnation.
Chrome has high but not massive usage, and it hasn’t stagnated. It has a separate problem though: the lack of stagnation is actually a drive towards Google’s somewhat unhealthy vision for the web.
People keep forgetting that Google is an ad company first, everything else just supports that.
And what's better for distributing ads on the internet then controlling the software people use to view said ads - the browser.
Google, Samsung, Apple, and others have to abide by the same law, Microsoft isn't special.
I also don't understand what this law has to do with the topic.
I support the enforcement of anti-trust laws against Microsoft, but I am at the same time puzzled at how much Google is allowed to get away with. They are simultaneously maintaining the biggest browser platform while also being the biggest content and advertisement provider, AND they have a major influence on the development of web standards, AND they control the development of a major OS (Android) for accessing the web, where their browser comes pre-installed. And now they are actively exploiting their position and trying to sabotage the competition.
My point in highlighting it is that I think there is a lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws and/or a lack of laws that would prevent Google behaving in this way, since I think it is so much worse than what Microsoft has been doing with Windows not allowing users to uninstall crapware.
The law you're mentioning is the “Digital Markets Act”, and it's a new law that will apply to Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung and others, not having to do with any enforcement of “antitrust” laws upon Microsoft.
https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...
Furthermore, are we talking about the same Microsoft that:
1. forced usage of Microsoft Edge, while also actively blocking circumvention mechanisms;
2. that keeps hijacking searches for Chrome, or Firefox;
3. that has telemetry in Edge that can't be disabled;
4. and that, upon first opening Edge, it asks you to agree to data sharing with the entire advertising industry?
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You basically assert that Google is receiving preferential treatment from the EU, yet provided absolutely no evidence for it.
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