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This is why a web and ad giant shouldn’t be in charge of the world’s most popular browser as well as the world’s most popular web engine. Huge conflict of inter

This is why a web and ad giant shouldn’t be in charge of the world’s most popular browser as well as the world’s most popular web engine. Huge conflict of interest. Chrome should be spun off into a non-profit that is barred from Google/Alphabet influence.

stingraycharles 4y ago
Mozilla did some pretty nefarious things with Firefox as well though, for some marketing campaigns. Not saying it’s worse, but it may not necessarily be due to Google also being an ad giant, but just corporations being corporations and having the wrong priorities.
- dcdc123 4y ago
  I’ve been thinking about switching back to Firefox. Care to share an example?
  - christophilus 4y ago
    Probably the Mr Robot thing. I mostly use Firefox (and recommend it), but they do appear to be run by MBAs or marketers— not sure which.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      Love the Mr Robot addon.
    - greenhatman 4y ago
      It wasn't always like that. I think it changed 2 or 3 years ago.
    - xref 4y ago
      That was such a strange choice by Mozilla, I mean the plug-in was specifically for people who play the Mr Robot game. Even after Mozilla force-pushed it to their entire user base players still had to manually enable it to play. If the whole damn thing required manual intervention anyway why didn’t they just put it in the addon store to start with?!
  - snapplebobapple 4y ago
    consider going librewolf instead, if your concern is security. I personally use librewolf for most things and brave for the few things that don't work well on firefox in linux (i.e. playing video from my nvr, my realtor website's 3d floor plan walkout, etc). Floccus and bitwarden keep bookmarks and passwords synced between the two so I barely notice which one I am using.
swyx 4y ago
Google has sunk about $100m into developing Chrome. People need to expect to own things after making big investments. That's how any of this works. dictate random policies like that and you will watch American capitalism die.
- hardware2win 4y ago
  Da fuck? Only 100m?
  - pleb_nz 4y ago
    I would have thought 10x 100m minimum
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dmitriid 4y ago
  [flagged]
- cma 4y ago
  Most of the development work they gave away free under a public domain like license.
- catach 4y ago
  If "capitalism" can't survive reasonable consumer protection then perhaps it deserves to die, sure.
  - cft 4y ago
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      As if those countries had anything reasonable. Why don't you look to Europe instead?
    - 4y ago
BbzzbB 4y ago
World's most popular mobile OS too. Used to push said browser, ripped of extensibility (I guess they couldn't blacklist ad blockers specifically).
lolinder 4y ago
It's worth pointing out that the commit that did this was made by a Microsoft employee who has been working on the clipboard API, not a Google employee. At a glance and without very much context, it looks to me like this engineer was working on implementing Web Custom formats for the clipboard API [0], but broke the Google doodle sharing while doing so. It appears they were trying to restore old behavior as a temporary measure, but ended up breaking the checks altogether. Their commit's comment[1] claims that the added variable should only be true if reading/writing a web custom format, but that obviously isn't the case (anymore?). EDIT: Here is their original commit, which broke the doodle sharing: [2]. It extends the interaction requirement to custom formats, which wasn't true before. Their followup was meant to just undo that part of this commit, but appears to have done much more. [0] https://chromestatus.com/feature/5649558757441536 https://chromestatus.com/feature/5649558757441536 [1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/4d7b74b051abfe5945f418601fdc2ffc8ce3072c%5E%21/#F0 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/4d7b74b051a... [2] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/a3b96a459cf17ddc683b510718bfcbe40ed08195 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/a3b96a459cf...
- de6u99er 4y ago
  This should be the top comment!
- Jenk 4y ago
  that feels like a rather fragile process for something that is underpinning the internet to permit such mistakes occur so easily.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lolinder 4y ago
    Yes. For one thing, it looks like there was an automated test that warned the doodle was broken, but no such test for clipboard security features.
  - bdougherty 4y ago
n0n0n4t0r 4y ago
It was a reality named Firefox. But then a concurrent solution happened and almost everyone moved to chrome. The history is sad but true: it's the general indifference to those conflict of interest that led us here...
- EbNar 4y ago

stingraycharles 4y ago

Mozilla did some pretty nefarious things with Firefox as well though, for some marketing campaigns. Not saying it’s worse, but it may not necessarily be due to Google also being an ad giant, but just corporations being corporations and having the wrong priorities.

dcdc123 4y ago
I’ve been thinking about switching back to Firefox. Care to share an example?
- christophilus 4y ago
  Probably the Mr Robot thing. I mostly use Firefox (and recommend it), but they do appear to be run by MBAs or marketers— not sure which.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Love the Mr Robot addon.
  - greenhatman 4y ago
    It wasn't always like that. I think it changed 2 or 3 years ago.
  - xref 4y ago
    That was such a strange choice by Mozilla, I mean the plug-in was specifically for people who play the Mr Robot game. Even after Mozilla force-pushed it to their entire user base players still had to manually enable it to play. If the whole damn thing required manual intervention anyway why didn’t they just put it in the addon store to start with?!
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  consider going librewolf instead, if your concern is security. I personally use librewolf for most things and brave for the few things that don't work well on firefox in linux (i.e. playing video from my nvr, my realtor website's 3d floor plan walkout, etc). Floccus and bitwarden keep bookmarks and passwords synced between the two so I barely notice which one I am using.

swyx 4y ago

Google has sunk about $100m into developing Chrome. People need to expect to own things after making big investments. That's how any of this works. dictate random policies like that and you will watch American capitalism die.

hardware2win 4y ago
Da fuck? Only 100m?
- pleb_nz 4y ago
  I would have thought 10x 100m minimum
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dmitriid 4y ago
[flagged]
cma 4y ago
Most of the development work they gave away free under a public domain like license.
catach 4y ago
If "capitalism" can't survive reasonable consumer protection then perhaps it deserves to die, sure.
- cft 4y ago
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    As if those countries had anything reasonable. Why don't you look to Europe instead?
  - 4y ago

BbzzbB 4y ago

World's most popular mobile OS too. Used to push said browser, ripped of extensibility (I guess they couldn't blacklist ad blockers specifically).

lolinder 4y ago

It's worth pointing out that the commit that did this was made by a Microsoft employee who has been working on the clipboard API, not a Google employee. At a glance and without very much context, it looks to me like this engineer was working on implementing Web Custom formats for the clipboard API [0], but broke the Google doodle sharing while doing so. It appears they were trying to restore old behavior as a temporary measure, but ended up breaking the checks altogether. Their commit's comment[1] claims that the added variable should only be true if reading/writing a web custom format, but that obviously isn't the case (anymore?). EDIT: Here is their original commit, which broke the doodle sharing: [2]. It extends the interaction requirement to custom formats, which wasn't true before. Their followup was meant to just undo that part of this commit, but appears to have done much more. [0] https://chromestatus.com/feature/5649558757441536 https://chromestatus.com/feature/5649558757441536 [1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/4d7b74b051abfe5945f418601fdc2ffc8ce3072c%5E%21/#F0 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/4d7b74b051a... [2] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/a3b96a459cf17ddc683b510718bfcbe40ed08195 https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/a3b96a459cf...

de6u99er 4y ago
This should be the top comment!
Jenk 4y ago
that feels like a rather fragile process for something that is underpinning the internet to permit such mistakes occur so easily.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lolinder 4y ago
  Yes. For one thing, it looks like there was an automated test that warned the doodle was broken, but no such test for clipboard security features.
- bdougherty 4y ago

n0n0n4t0r 4y ago

It was a reality named Firefox. But then a concurrent solution happened and almost everyone moved to chrome. The history is sad but true: it's the general indifference to those conflict of interest that led us here...

EbNar 4y ago