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What I see is a lot of very sincere dedicated engineers coming up with helpful & rich ideas. Web Engineers seem to have enormous power to suggest & follow & dri

What I see is a lot of very sincere dedicated engineers coming up with helpful & rich ideas. Web Engineers seem to have enormous power to suggest & follow & drive forward ideas they seem to think are interesting. I see very few hallmarks signs of top down control. I see far more individual folks promoting & driving ideas, with blink-dev as a great testament to that bottom-up engineering spirit/mentality. Which of these Standards do you think Google will use to "control the web"? https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/ There's been an unmitigated use of Fear Uncertainty & Doubt, played with great effectiveness, against the top player. People keep ascribing to Google the role of platform-controller, like literally everyone else in history has done: IBM, Apple, Microsoft, all of which have used OSes to maintain control & dominance. Google is a search engine; they benefit from a rich healthy powerful competitive web. If Google did have "control" over the web, what would they do? What's the evil mastermind plan here? Everything Google does goes through the Technical Architecture Group (TAG) and Security review. It's all open process. The checks are very real; even if no one can prevent them from implementing it would look very bad to disregard feedback, and thusfar they have not. Thusfar there seem to be extremely few examples of actual real scary things done. Web MIDI shipping without permissions was the most "egg on face" thing Google's done, and I have a hard time interpreting that as malicious. It has the hallmark of naively hopeful to me, and was easy enough to address. The desire to see the browser teams as the enemy, as a foe, is a greatly harmful & reductive and alas popular outlook in my view. I don't think it's warranted, I don't think there's real evidence for it, and I stress again, Google has so far set the gold-standard for web standards accountability. They wouldn't have done that, they wouldn't continue that process, if they wanted to take control. The case here for taking-over seems absurd, has no clear outcome & only risk. Taking control is an existential risk, would jeopardize the web's success, could easily kill the Golden Goose that has made Google so wealthy & wise. People's fear here does not make business sense.

SXX 4y ago
> If Google did have "control" over the web, what would they do? What's the evil mastermind plan here? Might be they'll replace actual websites with Google own version to keep people in Google controlled ecosystem? Or change APIs in their own nearly-monopolistic browser to make ad-blockers less efficient? Or not implement extensions in their own browser so there are no ad-blockers at all? Or push their user tracking system disguised as solution to increase privacy? Or degrade quality of Google services when using competeting browsers?
- lern_too_spel 4y ago
  > Might be they'll replace actual websites with Google own version to keep people in Google controlled ecosystem? This just shows that you don't understand AMP. Apple News replaces websites with only Apple News. AMP allows anybody to host the article. > Or change APIs in their own nearly-monopolistic browser to make ad-blockers less efficient. Only one browser has done this so far. It's Safari. Google might not be a good actor, but trading it for a worse actor who won't let you use any other web clients is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.
pnpnp 4y ago
It’s just too bad that “sincere and dedicated” Google engineers are seemingly more and more beholden to their corporate overlords. Google has been putting profit over users’ best interests for a very long time now.
palata 4y ago
> What's the evil mastermind plan here? Make money? That's what companies do. When they get too big and too powerful (at the point where governments don't really have serious leverage over them), a third-party should probably split them. > Taking control is an existential risk Why do you think big companies open source code? To help humanity? If Android (AOSP) was not open source, OEMs would probably not take the risk of depending on it. But the Play Services are there for the lock-in. Protobuf being open source is better for Google than having to integrate with other systems out there. Why is Chromium open source? Well most "alternative" browsers are based on it, and Google controls it. And so on. Open sourcing code is a strategic decision. And the strategic decisions in a company are there to make more money, not to help the world. It's all about control. > What I see is a lot of very sincere dedicated engineers coming up with helpful & rich ideas. Sure. Because you work for Evil Corp does not mean you are not sincere and dedicated. Many good people work for Philip Morris, for many reason (maybe they have an interesting job, maybe good conditions, whatever the reason). The difference with Google is that most Philip Morris employees probably realize that their company is not a non-profit aiming at making the world a better place.

SXX 4y ago

> If Google did have "control" over the web, what would they do? What's the evil mastermind plan here? Might be they'll replace actual websites with Google own version to keep people in Google controlled ecosystem? Or change APIs in their own nearly-monopolistic browser to make ad-blockers less efficient? Or not implement extensions in their own browser so there are no ad-blockers at all? Or push their user tracking system disguised as solution to increase privacy? Or degrade quality of Google services when using competeting browsers?

lern_too_spel 4y ago
> Might be they'll replace actual websites with Google own version to keep people in Google controlled ecosystem? This just shows that you don't understand AMP. Apple News replaces websites with only Apple News. AMP allows anybody to host the article. > Or change APIs in their own nearly-monopolistic browser to make ad-blockers less efficient. Only one browser has done this so far. It's Safari. Google might not be a good actor, but trading it for a worse actor who won't let you use any other web clients is just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

pnpnp 4y ago

It’s just too bad that “sincere and dedicated” Google engineers are seemingly more and more beholden to their corporate overlords. Google has been putting profit over users’ best interests for a very long time now.

palata 4y ago

> What's the evil mastermind plan here? Make money? That's what companies do. When they get too big and too powerful (at the point where governments don't really have serious leverage over them), a third-party should probably split them. > Taking control is an existential risk Why do you think big companies open source code? To help humanity? If Android (AOSP) was not open source, OEMs would probably not take the risk of depending on it. But the Play Services are there for the lock-in. Protobuf being open source is better for Google than having to integrate with other systems out there. Why is Chromium open source? Well most "alternative" browsers are based on it, and Google controls it. And so on. Open sourcing code is a strategic decision. And the strategic decisions in a company are there to make more money, not to help the world. It's all about control. > What I see is a lot of very sincere dedicated engineers coming up with helpful & rich ideas. Sure. Because you work for Evil Corp does not mean you are not sincere and dedicated. Many good people work for Philip Morris, for many reason (maybe they have an interesting job, maybe good conditions, whatever the reason). The difference with Google is that most Philip Morris employees probably realize that their company is not a non-profit aiming at making the world a better place.