4 ms·

I have a couple of popular extensions on the line, and I no longer see a way to stop Google without immediate government intervention. I am confident that they

I have a couple of popular extensions on the line, and I no longer see a way to stop Google without immediate government intervention. I am confident that they are not acting entirely in good faith, regardless of the much needed and useful parts of Manifest V3. They will get away with anything, be fined again in a couple of years for the growing list of illegalities they commit, and now they'll also harm the browser extension ecosystem. Some of the extensions I maintain will no longer work, or have reduced functionality for no acceptable reason, and some of the projects that I have been preparing to release have now been abandoned, because they rely on having proper control over requests in the browser.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Make them first class Firefox extensions.
- preinheimer 5y ago
  I mean you can, but firefox doesn't treat you any better. We waited 2+ months to get a minor update through review, and getting it through that quickly took emailing several folks (including one from HN). During that whole process they also removed the display of your queue position, making it even more opaque. At some point they disliked something in our extension that had been live for months, and disabled every release in the past year. At another point they found something wanting in a 2 year old release (not a recent one) and threatened to remove it from the store, our attempts to continue that conversation or just allow it to be pulled to save everyone some time met with crickets.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    At this point I am seriously wondering if Mozilla is paid to drive Firefox into the ground.
    - vorticalbox 5y ago
      This does feel like it is the case doesn't it? I really want to like firefox but I hate it more with every release.
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        It is still the best browser for me even when I don't consider my dislike for Google. It is just - for me at least - not lovable anymore.
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      That may explain the inverse correlation between salary and market share. You'd have to pay a lot to convince a leader to do this deliberately.
xxpor 5y ago
Where do people get this sense of entitlement from? Please cite one law you believe Google has broken.
- dessant 5y ago
  > Where do people get this sense of entitlement from? Please cite one law you believe Google has broken. Just like Amazon (your employer), Google has also been fined several times in the past decade for illegal business practices. Their illegal activities are extensively documented, and in some cases they were forced to change course due to regulatory intervention. Feel free to look it up, I don't think there is a need to relitigate objective reality.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    No you have to understand, as long as a company doesn't commit enough crimes to be literally run out of business, we have to pretend it is good for some reason.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      And if a company does go out of business after committing too many crimes, then the problem is too much regulation holding back innovation.
  - ahahahahah 5y ago
    That's true, and so any thing that that company does that some rando doesn't like and claims is illegal we must assume is actually illegal, even when that rando explicitly avoids questions about what they actually think is illegal about it.
    - dessant 5y ago
      They've asked to name one law that I think Google has broken, which is already part of the public record. If you're asking what illegal business practice Google will be engaging in when the Manifest V3 limitations will begin to be enforced: using their dominance in one industry to gain advantage and maintain dominance in another industry, to the detriment of consumers and competitors.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> I have a couple of popular extensions on the line, and I no longer see a way to stop Google without immediate government intervention As the developer of extensions that are impacted by Google's anti-competitive actions, you can report how this impacts both you, and the market as a whole, to the competition and antitrust divisions of the government. I've posted links to forms and sites that you can use to report to the relevant state-level and federal-level regulators on HN here[1]. If you aren't in the US, the US also has antitrust legislation that applies to US companies operating in foreign countries, as well as a myriad of antitrust treaties and agreements with other nations. It might be worth it to also report it to the government of the country you reside in, as well. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

Make them first class Firefox extensions.

preinheimer 5y ago
I mean you can, but firefox doesn't treat you any better. We waited 2+ months to get a minor update through review, and getting it through that quickly took emailing several folks (including one from HN). During that whole process they also removed the display of your queue position, making it even more opaque. At some point they disliked something in our extension that had been live for months, and disabled every release in the past year. At another point they found something wanting in a 2 year old release (not a recent one) and threatened to remove it from the store, our attempts to continue that conversation or just allow it to be pulled to save everyone some time met with crickets.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  At this point I am seriously wondering if Mozilla is paid to drive Firefox into the ground.
  - vorticalbox 5y ago
    This does feel like it is the case doesn't it? I really want to like firefox but I hate it more with every release.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      It is still the best browser for me even when I don't consider my dislike for Google. It is just - for me at least - not lovable anymore.
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    That may explain the inverse correlation between salary and market share. You'd have to pay a lot to convince a leader to do this deliberately.

xxpor 5y ago

Where do people get this sense of entitlement from? Please cite one law you believe Google has broken.

dessant 5y ago
> Where do people get this sense of entitlement from? Please cite one law you believe Google has broken. Just like Amazon (your employer), Google has also been fined several times in the past decade for illegal business practices. Their illegal activities are extensively documented, and in some cases they were forced to change course due to regulatory intervention. Feel free to look it up, I don't think there is a need to relitigate objective reality.
- bee_rider 5y ago
  No you have to understand, as long as a company doesn't commit enough crimes to be literally run out of business, we have to pretend it is good for some reason.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    And if a company does go out of business after committing too many crimes, then the problem is too much regulation holding back innovation.
- ahahahahah 5y ago
  That's true, and so any thing that that company does that some rando doesn't like and claims is illegal we must assume is actually illegal, even when that rando explicitly avoids questions about what they actually think is illegal about it.
  - dessant 5y ago
    They've asked to name one law that I think Google has broken, which is already part of the public record. If you're asking what illegal business practice Google will be engaging in when the Manifest V3 limitations will begin to be enforced: using their dominance in one industry to gain advantage and maintain dominance in another industry, to the detriment of consumers and competitors.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> I have a couple of popular extensions on the line, and I no longer see a way to stop Google without immediate government intervention As the developer of extensions that are impacted by Google's anti-competitive actions, you can report how this impacts both you, and the market as a whole, to the competition and antitrust divisions of the government. I've posted links to forms and sites that you can use to report to the relevant state-level and federal-level regulators on HN here[1]. If you aren't in the US, the US also has antitrust legislation that applies to US companies operating in foreign countries, as well as a myriad of antitrust treaties and agreements with other nations. It might be worth it to also report it to the government of the country you reside in, as well. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193