But I don't see how that equates to a monopoly. They certainly have the ability to direct their development of their product in the way that they want. Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.
If the edge browser was so much better and much better privacy wise or the kiwi browser or any of the others the internet can move fairly quickly from one choice to another when that choice is better. For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case. I'm also guessing that most other users also haven't found anything "better"
If Chrome was not owned by an ad company, the owners of chrome would push for instead of against privacy protections (see: firefox, safari).
The browser monopoly, which Chrome sells at a loss, enables the ad company. This is the problem.
Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google. So anything against ads does not get upstreamed to Chromium.
Chrome also is a major browser vendor, whereas kiwibrowser and opera are not, which means the standards boards listen to them more. If those seats were not owned by an ad company, standards would likely be different.
The monopoly the DoJ is trying to break up isn't Chrome, it's Search. From TFA:
> Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome — the most widely used browser worldwide — because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, said the people.
>Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.
With what funding? Chrome loses money. Edge loses money. Safari loses money. Firefox loses Google's money. Brave loses VC money.
Without some endless source of money, funding you for an ulterior motive, you can't compete with them. Which is why:
>For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case.
The anti-competitive practices ensure there can't be effective competition.
Monopolies aren't bad per se. Monopolies are bad because they allow you to abuse the market and consumers. If you can be similarly abusive without a full monopoly that's equally bad.
Isn't it even worse than that? Didn't they make changes via Manifest v3, which will not allow me to follow the FBI's advisory about using ad blockers, to make sure their ad revenue does not decline?
I do realize you can still use uBlock, but my understanding is that updates will be slow rolled, correct? Doesn't this open the window to malicious people to serve me mal-ads?
No. They're not doing those changes because regulators like the DOJ[0] threatened them with anti-trust action if they did. That's the same DOJ that's now asking for Chrome to be divested.
Uh. That was not my understanding of that situation.
Blocking third party cookies this way still leaves Google’s tools which people voluntarily install with access to data that now nobody else has access to.
The whole reason for "privacy sandbox" is to still do user tracking, but do it in an anonymous way that they hope legislators won't go after. It's Google seeing the writing on the wall that legislation will soon ban third-party cookie tracking and fingerprinting and the like, so they need to be proactive and protect the ad tracking business.
A better name for it would have been something like "anonymous user tracking / data collection", but "privacy sandbox" is probably a good marketing term to fuzz what it's really doing. To a normal user it makes it sounds like Google is doing something good and protecting them, while it's really just "please opt in to our new more anonymized tracking technology while still allowing us to track you".
We all know this is going to push tracking server side but at least that makes it expensive and dangerous for companies that run it. Cloud costs for the hardware, and having to run third party code on your servers, built by known creeps.
But I don't see how that equates to a monopoly. They certainly have the ability to direct their development of their product in the way that they want. Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.
If the edge browser was so much better and much better privacy wise or the kiwi browser or any of the others the internet can move fairly quickly from one choice to another when that choice is better. For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case. I'm also guessing that most other users also haven't found anything "better"
It’s horizontal tying.
If Chrome was not owned by an ad company, the owners of chrome would push for instead of against privacy protections (see: firefox, safari).
The browser monopoly, which Chrome sells at a loss, enables the ad company. This is the problem.
Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google. So anything against ads does not get upstreamed to Chromium.
Chrome also is a major browser vendor, whereas kiwibrowser and opera are not, which means the standards boards listen to them more. If those seats were not owned by an ad company, standards would likely be different.
As much as I find Chrome’s ownership and market share problematic, that doesn’t seem fair.
What exactly do things like WebUSB and Web Bluetooth contribute to Google’s ad business?
(Except if you mean that any new and initially exclusive feature bolsters Chrome’s dominance further, in which case I’d somewhat agree.)
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"Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google"
What does this mean?
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The monopoly the DoJ is trying to break up isn't Chrome, it's Search. From TFA:
> Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome — the most widely used browser worldwide — because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, said the people.
>Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.
With what funding? Chrome loses money. Edge loses money. Safari loses money. Firefox loses Google's money. Brave loses VC money.
Without some endless source of money, funding you for an ulterior motive, you can't compete with them. Which is why:
>For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case.
The anti-competitive practices ensure there can't be effective competition.
Monopolies aren't bad per se. Monopolies are bad because they allow you to abuse the market and consumers. If you can be similarly abusive without a full monopoly that's equally bad.
Such as to track their every move and exploit or sell that data.
> I don't see how that equates to a monopoly
The monopoly is in ads. Google uses its control of Chrome to act uncompetitively in advertising.
Isn't it even worse than that? Didn't they make changes via Manifest v3, which will not allow me to follow the FBI's advisory about using ad blockers, to make sure their ad revenue does not decline?
I do realize you can still use uBlock, but my understanding is that updates will be slow rolled, correct? Doesn't this open the window to malicious people to serve me mal-ads?
>I do realize you can still use uBlock
No, you can't. You can use "uBlock origin lite" which is the manifest v3 version that doesn't work correctly.
M3 seems to be failing, but I agree that it matters that the tried.
No. They're not doing those changes because regulators like the DOJ[0] threatened them with anti-trust action if they did. That's the same DOJ that's now asking for Chrome to be divested.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-doj-cookies-privac...
Uh. That was not my understanding of that situation.
Blocking third party cookies this way still leaves Google’s tools which people voluntarily install with access to data that now nobody else has access to.
Everyone else's ad revenue. The UK computing regulator is the main player here.
Quite the opposite, Google is the key sponsor of Privacy Sandbox: https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/
Working out why they're doing this is left as an exercise to the reader.
The whole reason for "privacy sandbox" is to still do user tracking, but do it in an anonymous way that they hope legislators won't go after. It's Google seeing the writing on the wall that legislation will soon ban third-party cookie tracking and fingerprinting and the like, so they need to be proactive and protect the ad tracking business.
A better name for it would have been something like "anonymous user tracking / data collection", but "privacy sandbox" is probably a good marketing term to fuzz what it's really doing. To a normal user it makes it sounds like Google is doing something good and protecting them, while it's really just "please opt in to our new more anonymized tracking technology while still allowing us to track you".
The entire point of Privacy Sandbox is to get away from tracking individuals and allow ad targeting of anonymous cohorts (interest groups) instead.
https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/private-advert...
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We all know this is going to push tracking server side but at least that makes it expensive and dangerous for companies that run it. Cloud costs for the hardware, and having to run third party code on your servers, built by known creeps.
But we should still make it harder on them.