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I am in complete agreement. When I've brought this up on HN in the past it's always been dismissed with "But accessibility!". A big company like Google can hand

I am in complete agreement. When I've brought this up on HN in the past it's always been dismissed with "But accessibility!". A big company like Google can handle that just fine. Presumably they'll eventually port Chrome to WASM. Then they can completely control the browsing experience. To exert any control over our browsing experience we'll be single-stepping thru machine code. I had fun cracking Apple II and PC software back in the late 80s and early 90s but I'm not necessarily looking forward to doing that again.

spijdar 6y ago
> Presumably they'll eventually port Chrome to WASM. Then they can completely control the browsing experience. ...what? As opposed to shipping binary executables for an OS/arch combo, they'll ship a binary executable for WASM, and then a second binary executable for the OS? If they want to take Chrome closed source and make it fully obfuscated, they can do that already, with or without WASM. Chrome is already closed-source, only Chromium is open -- and we know Chrome has secret sauce in it not from the repos.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  I didn't express that very eloquently. I expect there will be a WASM-based browser embedded within some (most?) websites, eventually. The public-facing webserver will serve-up the WASM-based "inner browser" and nothing else. Content will only be accessible via the "inner browser". Determined attackers will be able to extract the keys used by the "inner browser", for sure, but the average person won't be able to. It'll be packaged as a product, probably targeted at "traditional media" sites: Use this on your website and nobody can block your ads or bypass your paywall. You can use all your existing development tools, servers, etc, and it'll "Just Work".
  - blt 6y ago
    Wow, this is plausible and disgusting.
- jorvi 6y ago
  > and we know Chrome has secret sauce in it not from the repos Does it? I thought they have pretty much identical performance.
  - tbodt 6y ago
    It's minimal, not much beyond widevine and a set of hard coded API keys for things such as sync. The code that uses the API keys is all open source, only the keys themselves aren't.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Secret spyware sauce.
extra88 6y ago
> "But accessibility!". A big company like Google can handle that just fine. Given the problems Material Design has had, I wouldn’t make that assumption. And that’s a front-of-the-front-end part of the org.
trashtester 6y ago
Not Chrome. Chromium. Chromium bundled with an option to run everything through Google/Alphabet infrastructure will make sure that the adds DO get through.

spijdar 6y ago

> Presumably they'll eventually port Chrome to WASM. Then they can completely control the browsing experience. ...what? As opposed to shipping binary executables for an OS/arch combo, they'll ship a binary executable for WASM, and then a second binary executable for the OS? If they want to take Chrome closed source and make it fully obfuscated, they can do that already, with or without WASM. Chrome is already closed-source, only Chromium is open -- and we know Chrome has secret sauce in it not from the repos.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
I didn't express that very eloquently. I expect there will be a WASM-based browser embedded within some (most?) websites, eventually. The public-facing webserver will serve-up the WASM-based "inner browser" and nothing else. Content will only be accessible via the "inner browser". Determined attackers will be able to extract the keys used by the "inner browser", for sure, but the average person won't be able to. It'll be packaged as a product, probably targeted at "traditional media" sites: Use this on your website and nobody can block your ads or bypass your paywall. You can use all your existing development tools, servers, etc, and it'll "Just Work".
- blt 6y ago
  Wow, this is plausible and disgusting.
jorvi 6y ago
> and we know Chrome has secret sauce in it not from the repos Does it? I thought they have pretty much identical performance.
- tbodt 6y ago
  It's minimal, not much beyond widevine and a set of hard coded API keys for things such as sync. The code that uses the API keys is all open source, only the keys themselves aren't.
chrisco255 6y ago
Secret spyware sauce.

extra88 6y ago

> "But accessibility!". A big company like Google can handle that just fine. Given the problems Material Design has had, I wouldn’t make that assumption. And that’s a front-of-the-front-end part of the org.

trashtester 6y ago

Not Chrome. Chromium. Chromium bundled with an option to run everything through Google/Alphabet infrastructure will make sure that the adds DO get through.