Comment by dschuetz
2 years ago
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.
> That's why you don't start with the nerd explanation of the privacy issues, you just tell them…
Honestly, um, no. Like I get where you’re coming from and I used to consider it good advice. But my approach these days is to just keep my mouth shut.
> 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...)
There is only so much that can happen with legislation. GDPR has been wonderful, but as far as public opinion goes it has backfired somewhat. I have heard too many people complaining that it’s „pointless because they know everything anyways”. That it’s „Brussels just telling us how to live”.
It’s an extremely delicate task for the EU, easy to sabotage.
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.
It's not just Google's goal, either: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3671132/what-is-manage...
Ensuring you only use the OEM's recommended browser looks like the endgame of the internet.
No, WEI has already been abandoned and removed again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
Whatever their competition will be, sign me up now. I really like their products, the company itself and their philosophy not so much