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The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For ex

The concern is not 'now' it's 'later'. Google is a business like any other - and when they have the power to lever a monopolized situation - they will. For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? Or what if they integrate technology that de-facto collects usage and behaviour - even from other domains - and then lever that competitively? The power that Google already has, relatively unregulated is crazy. Remember that Google is the company that could change the outcome of elections ... possibly without us even knowing. They could drive markets up or down at will. This would probably happen as a 'slow drip' - not one step being close enough to consumer awareness to create problems, and what with 'business friendly' politicians, nary a worry of legislation getting in the way. They could introduce these technologies under the guise of 'improving user experience' (and maybe legitimately so to start), but other PM's, new CEO's etc. just take the opportunity before them. Why wouldn't they? We worry a lot about 'Net Neutrality' at the network level, like it's a religion ... but that we don't worry about 'information neutrality' as well I find quite bizarre. I suggest that having '1 major provider' may be a problem, doubly so if it's an entity like Google, and that frankly we don't really gain much from this fact at all. If Mozilla were the provider, great. Even Apple might be a better choice simply because they are not in the business of managing our information - at least right now, for them, it's a headache, not a revenue source. So the concern is real.

quanticle 8y ago
For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? They've already started. Google Meet (their version of Hangouts for enterprise) didn't work on non-Chrome browsers for a very long time. If you tried to do a video call with a non-Chrome browser, you were told to install Chrome and load the page in Chrome. The only reason they were able to get away with this is because Chrome has the high market share that it does. If they'd done this when Chrome had 10% market-share, the response from users would have been to stop using Google Meet. However, because they did this when Chrome has 70% market share (and climbing) there was hardly any outcry; those who didn't already have Chrome installed gave a resigned sigh and installed Chrome in order to participate in their work meetings. Currently, all of Google's services work on non-Chrome browsers. But will that always be the case? I can very well imagine a world where Google starts making its services Chrome-only, citing, for example, that only V8 has the necessary Javascript performance to run Google's increasingly bloated webapps with adequate performance. Like you said, it'll start as a slow drip, with the least popular and most obscure applications (for example: Google Play Music) being moved over first. Then, as users fail to object, they'll move over larger and larger applications. Even if they never make the "big-two" of YouTube and Google Search Chrome-only, they'll still be exerting a fair amount of pressure for users to switch to Chrome.
- mirimir 8y ago
  > Currently, all of Google's services work on non-Chrome browsers. Last time I checked, Google Authenticator only works on Chrome.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Last time I checked, Google Authenticator only works on Chrome. Google Authenticator is available for Android, iPhone, and Blackberry, and not for any browser; there are a number of third-party implementations, however, including a Chrome/ChromeOS one.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      I don't use any of those things. I just know that I had to install Chrome to get Telegram's desktop app working.
      - StudentStuff 8y ago
        FYI Telegram has a history of serious security issues: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/telegram_messaging_app_bug/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/telegram_messaging_... https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/11/14237136/trump-leak-telegram-security-cracked-russia-encryption https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/11/14237136/trump-leak-teleg... https://gizmodo.com/why-you-should-stop-using-telegram-right-now-1782557415 https://gizmodo.com/why-you-should-stop-using-telegram-right...
        mirimir 8y ago
        Thanks. But I did know that. It was just that Everpedia used it for chat, and I was curious.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
thelasthuman 8y ago
The people should own their own data, and be able to take it with them to other services.
JoshuaJB 8y ago
"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower. Now while I'm not sure I'm convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced - and they're the ones who looked into it personally. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further. And this is only one case.
- ttty2 8y ago
  I think it's interesting. Did you investigate why they added that div?
  - ericlaw 8y ago
    Many "irrational" decisions are related to interactions with anti-bot/anti-fraud logic. I worked on IE in the days when there were many crazy conspiracy theories about silverlight and IE collaborating to ruin the open web. This sounds similar.
  - jansan 8y ago
    We often use empty DIVs for catching mouse events.
- gregknicholson 8y ago
  Antitrust?
ErneX 8y ago
The new GMail UI is considerably more snappier and responsive on Chrome than the latest Firefox, so I think it's already happening.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  On more than one occasion, changing the user agent in Firefox leads to a faster Google product. It's most definitely happening, but Google hides behind the excuse that it's using "cutting edge" technology and they have compatibility layers for browsers that don't support the new features. This would be solved if they did feature detection instead of browser sniffing, but given that the user agent hack works, they're very likely doing browser sniffing. Better yet, they should probably wait to adopt new standards until things are actually standardized, instead of doing things as soon as they hit "experimental" status.
darkerside 8y ago
On one level I agree with you. But... if the problem is later, why can't we solve it later? What kind of hurdles are people fearing Google might introduce here such that it makes switching to another browser impossible in the future? Put another way, isn't it OK for users to experience temporary discomfort and inconvenience? If it truly gets bad, someone else will eventually eat their lunch, and everyone (except Google!) is happy again. See: Microsoft.

quanticle 8y ago

For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's? They've already started. Google Meet (their version of Hangouts for enterprise) didn't work on non-Chrome browsers for a very long time. If you tried to do a video call with a non-Chrome browser, you were told to install Chrome and load the page in Chrome. The only reason they were able to get away with this is because Chrome has the high market share that it does. If they'd done this when Chrome had 10% market-share, the response from users would have been to stop using Google Meet. However, because they did this when Chrome has 70% market share (and climbing) there was hardly any outcry; those who didn't already have Chrome installed gave a resigned sigh and installed Chrome in order to participate in their work meetings. Currently, all of Google's services work on non-Chrome browsers. But will that always be the case? I can very well imagine a world where Google starts making its services Chrome-only, citing, for example, that only V8 has the necessary Javascript performance to run Google's increasingly bloated webapps with adequate performance. Like you said, it'll start as a slow drip, with the least popular and most obscure applications (for example: Google Play Music) being moved over first. Then, as users fail to object, they'll move over larger and larger applications. Even if they never make the "big-two" of YouTube and Google Search Chrome-only, they'll still be exerting a fair amount of pressure for users to switch to Chrome.

mirimir 8y ago
> Currently, all of Google's services work on non-Chrome browsers. Last time I checked, Google Authenticator only works on Chrome.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Last time I checked, Google Authenticator only works on Chrome. Google Authenticator is available for Android, iPhone, and Blackberry, and not for any browser; there are a number of third-party implementations, however, including a Chrome/ChromeOS one.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    I don't use any of those things. I just know that I had to install Chrome to get Telegram's desktop app working.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      FYI Telegram has a history of serious security issues: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/telegram_messaging_app_bug/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/13/telegram_messaging_... https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/11/14237136/trump-leak-telegram-security-cracked-russia-encryption https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/11/14237136/trump-leak-teleg... https://gizmodo.com/why-you-should-stop-using-telegram-right-now-1782557415 https://gizmodo.com/why-you-should-stop-using-telegram-right...
      - mirimir 8y ago
        Thanks. But I did know that. It was just that Everpedia used it for chat, and I was curious.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- AsyncAwait 8y ago

thelasthuman 8y ago

The people should own their own data, and be able to take it with them to other services.

JoshuaJB 8y ago

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?" This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower. Now while I'm not sure I'm convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced - and they're the ones who looked into it personally. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further. And this is only one case.

ttty2 8y ago
I think it's interesting. Did you investigate why they added that div?
- ericlaw 8y ago
  Many "irrational" decisions are related to interactions with anti-bot/anti-fraud logic. I worked on IE in the days when there were many crazy conspiracy theories about silverlight and IE collaborating to ruin the open web. This sounds similar.
- jansan 8y ago
  We often use empty DIVs for catching mouse events.
gregknicholson 8y ago
Antitrust?

ErneX 8y ago

The new GMail UI is considerably more snappier and responsive on Chrome than the latest Firefox, so I think it's already happening.

beatgammit 8y ago
On more than one occasion, changing the user agent in Firefox leads to a faster Google product. It's most definitely happening, but Google hides behind the excuse that it's using "cutting edge" technology and they have compatibility layers for browsers that don't support the new features. This would be solved if they did feature detection instead of browser sniffing, but given that the user agent hack works, they're very likely doing browser sniffing. Better yet, they should probably wait to adopt new standards until things are actually standardized, instead of doing things as soon as they hit "experimental" status.

darkerside 8y ago

On one level I agree with you. But... if the problem is later, why can't we solve it later? What kind of hurdles are people fearing Google might introduce here such that it makes switching to another browser impossible in the future? Put another way, isn't it OK for users to experience temporary discomfort and inconvenience? If it truly gets bad, someone else will eventually eat their lunch, and everyone (except Google!) is happy again. See: Microsoft.