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> how do we protest this? You do not and you cannot. It was written in stone once Chrome dominated the browser market. What Chrome (Google) wants, Chrome (Goog

> how do we protest this? You do not and you cannot. It was written in stone once Chrome dominated the browser market. What Chrome (Google) wants, Chrome (Google) gets. Despite all the good engineering Google wants to sell ads, that's all there is to it. And the result is this proposal. > The saving grace here might be that Firefox won't implement the proposal. It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Unless people switch to FF in droves the web is Chrome. And they won't because at the end of the day people just want to get home from their shitty jobs and stream a show. As long as that works everything else is a non-issue.

rodgerd 3y ago
> the web is Chrome And lot of people here squeal like stuck pigs if you suggest anything other than the Chrome monopoly. HM is a constant barrage of demanding that legislators force the Chrome monopoly to be extended to iOS devices!
freediverx 3y ago
Doesn't Apple have some leverage here? They may not control the overall browser market but they mostly control the smartphone market (or at least the profitable segment of that market) and lots of those users prefer to use Safari. I'm aware Apple implemented similar tech a while ago, but I have infinitely less confidence that Google would use it responsibly.
pmlnr 3y ago
> It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Heh. I was there when it was IE6, and people said the same.
- mavrc 3y ago
  I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude. Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser. Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.
  - pmlnr 3y ago
    No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either. But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.
  - ploum 3y ago
    Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion. – Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla… — Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web. Simple: install Firefox. Now. (oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)
    - pmlnr 3y ago
      > There are plenty of alternatives Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.
      - Buttons840 3y ago
        Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
        saurik 3y ago
        The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
- spystath 3y ago
  I was there too, in the 1.0 days, and still am. But these days are gone, Firefox is not coming back. Back then Firefox was immensely better than IE. As long as the other alternatives are just as good, there is no reason for the mythical "average user" to change over. Why bother if you can do everything in Chrome? We may understand the differences, ideological or technical, but good luck explaining that out there. There's a massive disconnect between user and technology and as a result people will live in the perfectly curated technological bubble that's been served to them.
  - ixfo 3y ago
    "You can use adblock" is a pretty chunky benefit over Chrome
    - lygaret 3y ago
      but "Netflix and my bank actually work in Chrome" is Google's endgame.
      - chii 3y ago
        the adblock "endgame" will be a self-hosted DNS system that blocks requests to ad-server urls (or return benign responses). Then the game will switch to encrypted proxied traffic that you cannot block. Then the adblocking software will switch to the GPU layer, and use machine learning and AI to wipe the region of memory in the GPU containing the ads (and replace it with something benign). Then the next logical step from likes of google is a fully trusted computing environment - aka, you as an end user no longer control your own machine. This is entirely predicted by Richard Stallman.
        BananaaRepublik 3y ago
        Which follows that the final frontier of ad blocking are AR glasses that use machine learning and AI to block light from ads from reaching your eyes?
        sigio 3y ago
- JimDabell 3y ago
  Internet Explorer 6 brought front-end web development to a standstill for more than five years. Let’s not do that again.
h4x0rr 3y ago
What about Safari? It has significant market share. Seems like our best bet now
- saurik 3y ago
  Yeah: the company that is all about locking down user devices and relishes in providing a DRM-ridden platform for developers to maintain complete control over their users is totally going to be against implementing this specification :/. I mean... it's possible? but any hope there is fully predicated on their hatred of Google and their distaste for the web.
- drbawb 3y ago
  I doubt Apple will be our savior here. Apple is in a great position to implement this spec: their secure enclave and the systems they've developed around it are practically the state of the art. Also Apple is in bed w/ traditional media. (Apple News, Apple TV, iTunes, etc.) Microsoft has been doing the same[1] for years w/ Pluton on the Xbox to protect their IP. Google has been doing this on Android using, dm-verity, SafetyNet, et al. Nintendo employs similar protections on the Switch with moderate success. (After the bootrom of the initial HAC-001 was patched on the production floor the only real option to attack a modern Switch is physically glitching the console.) I suppose Apple may object on the grounds of being a "privacy focused" company, but I'll believe that when I see it. I'm not gonna sit here holding my breath for these megacorps to do the right thing. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
  - aledalgrande 3y ago
    > Also Apple is in bed w/ traditional media. True. Try to screenshot anything from Apple TV+ content. You'll get a black image.
    - serialbus 3y ago
      Screenshotting Apple TV+ works fine for me on desktop Chrome, even with hardware acceleration enabled. I don't recall doing anything to circumvent normal behavior (not really in the habit of screenshotting things I'm watching).
emilsedgh 3y ago
This is not the right attitude. Google wanted AMP. Google didn't get AMP. AMP is dead.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  This is not even just Google. Apple, Microsoft, Cloudflare, everyone's in. https://gabrielsieben.tech/2022/07/29/remote-assertion-is-coming-back-how-much-freedom-will-it-take/ https://gabrielsieben.tech/2022/07/29/remote-assertion-is-co...
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  AMP is dead, but long live King AMP, now known to subjects as King WEI
- troupo 3y ago
  Before it died it crippled the web, the search, publishers' ad revenues etc.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  It was fun while it lasted though, finally news sites that could be read on an average German mobile data connection. For the uninitiated: Germany's mobile phone network has been ridiculously expensive and unreliable for decades. Everyone else in Europe has done it better, because no one else thought they could extort 60 billion euros from the providers for RF spectrum licenses - we're still paying for that blatant debt-shifting today.
motbus3 3y ago
You can by not using Google products. Change the search for ddg or kagi. Change your email for proton. Use Dropbox instead. Remove Chrome, live with iceweasel or Firefox. It is not like you'll be loosing much. This is the time to change, while we still have other players in the market.
- xg15 3y ago
  No, you can't - not until you get a significant part of the world's population to join your protest. The point is that if chrome implements this, netflix, amazon, facebook etc might decide they'll use this feature and only permit browsers who implement this to use this site. Even if the only browser that does so is chrome, that's fine because chrome's market share is big enough that they can ignore the rest. Have fun using Firefox if half of the web locks you out or treats you like a second class citizen.
  - 20after4 3y ago
    It might be time to abandon that half of the web. Radical software freedom ideology is looking less radical and more rational by the day.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      It'll be radical and minority. Most users are more comfortable with computers that are toasters, not (hackable) general purpose machines. The flexibility to hack implies the flexibility to be owned. Users don't want to get owned. They hate that so much they'd voluntary choose an owner
      - dustyharddrive 3y ago
        > Users don't want to get owned. I can assure you most people don't think about their tech choices long enough to conclude anything like this.
    - marcthe12 3y ago
      It may not be that easy as now that stuff like banks and government services have embrance it. If they or your work/school apps need it, you are screwed
isaacremuant 3y ago
Defeatism is not necessarily realism. There's a degree of saying no and opting out and controlling your own shit that you can do. Some, like owning a phone and getting tracked to many degrees is inevitable but others, like software on a computer, is quite easy to think about. You don't need to be a majority to go a different path. Linux users everywhere know this. We never needed the "year of the Linux desktop". There's usually ways around the designated box. Obviously, get ready to be called names for not bowing down to authority... But you can ignore them and move on.
EMIRELADERO 3y ago
Whatever happened to legislation? I bet most people here would have said the same about Apple's App Store monopoly on iOS, and yet the EU passed the DMA and the matter was closed. There's no reason why the same can't happen here. The defeatism attitude helps with nothing and is part of the reason why this happens in the first place.
- paulmd 3y ago
  EU passing the DMA is literally the specific reason why google is unstoppable. They finally cracked the last significant holdout against chrome/chromium market dominance, now there is nobody left to oppose them in the browser market.
  - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
    Except that if that happens the government will come at them just like they did to Apple. They considered it enough that Apple had a monopoly on distribution for apps for a device with ~50% marketshare in the US, and even less in Europe. Imagine what they would do for something that has ~97%
    - paulmd 3y ago
      Chrome/Chromium is already above 75% marketshare and the EU doesn’t care, and is taking moves that will actively increase consolidation and monopoly control. We’re literally in the thread where we’re talking about the anti-consumer moves that are resulting from that consolidation. This is what it looks like when Google flexes that monopoly control and tells you how it’s going to be. EU doesn’t seem to care.
      - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
        > Chrome/Chromium is already above 75% marketshare and the EU doesn’t care, and is taking moves that will actively increase consolidation and monopoly control. It took roughly 15 years for the EU to react to Apple's practices, and they have been anticompetitive from day one. Chrome has caused no competitive damage to consumers or competitors (yet), give it time.
Fatnino 3y ago
We could at least get everyone here to use Firefox. There's really no excuse for a technically minded person to still be using Chrome for their day to day browsing. If you do eventually run into a poorly crafted webpage that doesn't work on Firefox you have the wherewithal to decide if you are simply not going to use that site or hop over to chrome just this once. But the important thing is checking in automatically as a Firefox user in the logs of every other site online. Push Firefox marketshare up and at least some places will be hesitant to write off Firefox as irrelevant.
- sneak 3y ago
  > There's really no excuse for a technically minded person to still be using Chrome for their day to day browsing. Sadly, Chrome is substantially more secure than Firefox.
  - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
    It is extremely disingenuous to claim the only browser to still refuse to block third party cookies by default, because it helps their ad partners, is "more secure". The only way in which Chrome is more secure at anything appears to be securely forcing you to view ads via this API. And a shocking amount of malware fails to work when you use a running environment that 95% of society are not using. You are far safer on Firefox than Chrome.
    - somsak2 3y ago
      Why do most FAANG-type businesses require use of Chrome then?
      - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
        So as someone who deals with enterprise software: Network effects. Where I work, we treat Chrome as the malware it is: It's banned both by technical measures and security policy. We deploy Firefox, and begrudgingly deal with Edge when people insist on a Chromium-based browser. (At least Microsoft added some modicum of privacy settings here.) Here's what I've learned over the past several years: Web developers are lazy. We're commonly told such and such app or service "only works on Chrome" or they'll "only support on Chrome". When we call for support, half the time we'll get told it's because we're not on Chrome, and I have to actually prove to them on an isolated machine that the issue occurs on Chrome so they'll shut the heck up and do their job. "Oh, I found an issue on our server" after I spent two hours trying to convince them their app works fine on Firefox. In most cases, things "not working on Firefox" entails exempting a site from the popup blocker. In 2023, troubleshooting alternative browsers is usually... roughly that easy. But blaming your web browser is easy and lets them shift blame, so that's what they do. But enterprise software companies have completely turned Chrome into the modern Internet Explorer: The only browser they'll even deal with. And since a lot of people buy Google's marketing that they know security and aren't completely clueless how security works (they are), people have by and large given in and installed Chrome.

rodgerd 3y ago

> the web is Chrome And lot of people here squeal like stuck pigs if you suggest anything other than the Chrome monopoly. HM is a constant barrage of demanding that legislators force the Chrome monopoly to be extended to iOS devices!

freediverx 3y ago

Doesn't Apple have some leverage here? They may not control the overall browser market but they mostly control the smartphone market (or at least the profitable segment of that market) and lots of those users prefer to use Safari. I'm aware Apple implemented similar tech a while ago, but I have infinitely less confidence that Google would use it responsibly.

pmlnr 3y ago

> It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Heh. I was there when it was IE6, and people said the same.

mavrc 3y ago
I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude. Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser. Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.
- pmlnr 3y ago
  No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either. But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.
- ploum 3y ago
  Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion. – Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla… — Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web. Simple: install Firefox. Now. (oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)
  - pmlnr 3y ago
    > There are plenty of alternatives Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.
    - Buttons840 3y ago
      Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
      - saurik 3y ago
        The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
spystath 3y ago
I was there too, in the 1.0 days, and still am. But these days are gone, Firefox is not coming back. Back then Firefox was immensely better than IE. As long as the other alternatives are just as good, there is no reason for the mythical "average user" to change over. Why bother if you can do everything in Chrome? We may understand the differences, ideological or technical, but good luck explaining that out there. There's a massive disconnect between user and technology and as a result people will live in the perfectly curated technological bubble that's been served to them.
- ixfo 3y ago
  "You can use adblock" is a pretty chunky benefit over Chrome
  - lygaret 3y ago
    but "Netflix and my bank actually work in Chrome" is Google's endgame.
    - chii 3y ago
      the adblock "endgame" will be a self-hosted DNS system that blocks requests to ad-server urls (or return benign responses). Then the game will switch to encrypted proxied traffic that you cannot block. Then the adblocking software will switch to the GPU layer, and use machine learning and AI to wipe the region of memory in the GPU containing the ads (and replace it with something benign). Then the next logical step from likes of google is a fully trusted computing environment - aka, you as an end user no longer control your own machine. This is entirely predicted by Richard Stallman.
      - BananaaRepublik 3y ago
        Which follows that the final frontier of ad blocking are AR glasses that use machine learning and AI to block light from ads from reaching your eyes?
      - sigio 3y ago
JimDabell 3y ago
Internet Explorer 6 brought front-end web development to a standstill for more than five years. Let’s not do that again.

h4x0rr 3y ago

What about Safari? It has significant market share. Seems like our best bet now

saurik 3y ago
Yeah: the company that is all about locking down user devices and relishes in providing a DRM-ridden platform for developers to maintain complete control over their users is totally going to be against implementing this specification :/. I mean... it's possible? but any hope there is fully predicated on their hatred of Google and their distaste for the web.
drbawb 3y ago
I doubt Apple will be our savior here. Apple is in a great position to implement this spec: their secure enclave and the systems they've developed around it are practically the state of the art. Also Apple is in bed w/ traditional media. (Apple News, Apple TV, iTunes, etc.) Microsoft has been doing the same[1] for years w/ Pluton on the Xbox to protect their IP. Google has been doing this on Android using, dm-verity, SafetyNet, et al. Nintendo employs similar protections on the Switch with moderate success. (After the bootrom of the initial HAC-001 was patched on the production floor the only real option to attack a modern Switch is physically glitching the console.) I suppose Apple may object on the grounds of being a "privacy focused" company, but I'll believe that when I see it. I'm not gonna sit here holding my breath for these megacorps to do the right thing. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VwtOrwceo
- aledalgrande 3y ago
  > Also Apple is in bed w/ traditional media. True. Try to screenshot anything from Apple TV+ content. You'll get a black image.
  - serialbus 3y ago
    Screenshotting Apple TV+ works fine for me on desktop Chrome, even with hardware acceleration enabled. I don't recall doing anything to circumvent normal behavior (not really in the habit of screenshotting things I'm watching).

emilsedgh 3y ago

This is not the right attitude. Google wanted AMP. Google didn't get AMP. AMP is dead.

Aerbil313 3y ago
This is not even just Google. Apple, Microsoft, Cloudflare, everyone's in. https://gabrielsieben.tech/2022/07/29/remote-assertion-is-coming-back-how-much-freedom-will-it-take/ https://gabrielsieben.tech/2022/07/29/remote-assertion-is-co...
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
AMP is dead, but long live King AMP, now known to subjects as King WEI
troupo 3y ago
Before it died it crippled the web, the search, publishers' ad revenues etc.
mschuster91 3y ago
It was fun while it lasted though, finally news sites that could be read on an average German mobile data connection. For the uninitiated: Germany's mobile phone network has been ridiculously expensive and unreliable for decades. Everyone else in Europe has done it better, because no one else thought they could extort 60 billion euros from the providers for RF spectrum licenses - we're still paying for that blatant debt-shifting today.

motbus3 3y ago

You can by not using Google products. Change the search for ddg or kagi. Change your email for proton. Use Dropbox instead. Remove Chrome, live with iceweasel or Firefox. It is not like you'll be loosing much. This is the time to change, while we still have other players in the market.

xg15 3y ago
No, you can't - not until you get a significant part of the world's population to join your protest. The point is that if chrome implements this, netflix, amazon, facebook etc might decide they'll use this feature and only permit browsers who implement this to use this site. Even if the only browser that does so is chrome, that's fine because chrome's market share is big enough that they can ignore the rest. Have fun using Firefox if half of the web locks you out or treats you like a second class citizen.
- 20after4 3y ago
  It might be time to abandon that half of the web. Radical software freedom ideology is looking less radical and more rational by the day.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    It'll be radical and minority. Most users are more comfortable with computers that are toasters, not (hackable) general purpose machines. The flexibility to hack implies the flexibility to be owned. Users don't want to get owned. They hate that so much they'd voluntary choose an owner
    - dustyharddrive 3y ago
      > Users don't want to get owned. I can assure you most people don't think about their tech choices long enough to conclude anything like this.
  - marcthe12 3y ago
    It may not be that easy as now that stuff like banks and government services have embrance it. If they or your work/school apps need it, you are screwed

isaacremuant 3y ago

Defeatism is not necessarily realism. There's a degree of saying no and opting out and controlling your own shit that you can do. Some, like owning a phone and getting tracked to many degrees is inevitable but others, like software on a computer, is quite easy to think about. You don't need to be a majority to go a different path. Linux users everywhere know this. We never needed the "year of the Linux desktop". There's usually ways around the designated box. Obviously, get ready to be called names for not bowing down to authority... But you can ignore them and move on.

EMIRELADERO 3y ago

Whatever happened to legislation? I bet most people here would have said the same about Apple's App Store monopoly on iOS, and yet the EU passed the DMA and the matter was closed. There's no reason why the same can't happen here. The defeatism attitude helps with nothing and is part of the reason why this happens in the first place.

paulmd 3y ago
EU passing the DMA is literally the specific reason why google is unstoppable. They finally cracked the last significant holdout against chrome/chromium market dominance, now there is nobody left to oppose them in the browser market.
- EMIRELADERO 3y ago
  Except that if that happens the government will come at them just like they did to Apple. They considered it enough that Apple had a monopoly on distribution for apps for a device with ~50% marketshare in the US, and even less in Europe. Imagine what they would do for something that has ~97%
  - paulmd 3y ago
    Chrome/Chromium is already above 75% marketshare and the EU doesn’t care, and is taking moves that will actively increase consolidation and monopoly control. We’re literally in the thread where we’re talking about the anti-consumer moves that are resulting from that consolidation. This is what it looks like when Google flexes that monopoly control and tells you how it’s going to be. EU doesn’t seem to care.
    - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
      > Chrome/Chromium is already above 75% marketshare and the EU doesn’t care, and is taking moves that will actively increase consolidation and monopoly control. It took roughly 15 years for the EU to react to Apple's practices, and they have been anticompetitive from day one. Chrome has caused no competitive damage to consumers or competitors (yet), give it time.

Fatnino 3y ago

We could at least get everyone here to use Firefox. There's really no excuse for a technically minded person to still be using Chrome for their day to day browsing. If you do eventually run into a poorly crafted webpage that doesn't work on Firefox you have the wherewithal to decide if you are simply not going to use that site or hop over to chrome just this once. But the important thing is checking in automatically as a Firefox user in the logs of every other site online. Push Firefox marketshare up and at least some places will be hesitant to write off Firefox as irrelevant.

sneak 3y ago
> There's really no excuse for a technically minded person to still be using Chrome for their day to day browsing. Sadly, Chrome is substantially more secure than Firefox.
- ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  It is extremely disingenuous to claim the only browser to still refuse to block third party cookies by default, because it helps their ad partners, is "more secure". The only way in which Chrome is more secure at anything appears to be securely forcing you to view ads via this API. And a shocking amount of malware fails to work when you use a running environment that 95% of society are not using. You are far safer on Firefox than Chrome.
  - somsak2 3y ago
    Why do most FAANG-type businesses require use of Chrome then?
    - ocdtrekkie 3y ago
      So as someone who deals with enterprise software: Network effects. Where I work, we treat Chrome as the malware it is: It's banned both by technical measures and security policy. We deploy Firefox, and begrudgingly deal with Edge when people insist on a Chromium-based browser. (At least Microsoft added some modicum of privacy settings here.) Here's what I've learned over the past several years: Web developers are lazy. We're commonly told such and such app or service "only works on Chrome" or they'll "only support on Chrome". When we call for support, half the time we'll get told it's because we're not on Chrome, and I have to actually prove to them on an isolated machine that the issue occurs on Chrome so they'll shut the heck up and do their job. "Oh, I found an issue on our server" after I spent two hours trying to convince them their app works fine on Firefox. In most cases, things "not working on Firefox" entails exempting a site from the popup blocker. In 2023, troubleshooting alternative browsers is usually... roughly that easy. But blaming your web browser is easy and lets them shift blame, so that's what they do. But enterprise software companies have completely turned Chrome into the modern Internet Explorer: The only browser they'll even deal with. And since a lot of people buy Google's marketing that they know security and aren't completely clueless how security works (they are), people have by and large given in and installed Chrome.