Can we just stop and appreciate for a moment what a fucking outrage it is that Google is allowed to negotiate its own punishment at all?
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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You are allowed to suggest sentencing. This isn’t preferential treatment to Google. Of course, the judge doesn’t have to listen to anybody’s suggestions, but you are definitely allowed to make them.
"Look I'm guilty as fuck. However, hear me out. I totally learned my lesson and believe that an appropriate punishment of you allowing me to continue my, let's say 'less than legal', business practices is a great punishment! And before you say it, I know! I know! I can also alter the way we operate with one of our millions of partners in a way that will yet again benefit me somehow and skirt legal ramifications for another 25 years. But look on the bright side, I don't want to do any of this...you're forcing me to do it!"
I wish I could get found guilty and still be able to negotiate on equal footing with the prosecution about what my punishment was going to be.
Chrome is the exact thing they shouldn't keep. Their main weapon together with the search engine.
Anything but Chrome.
It'd be cool if at some point in the future Android and their Advertisement business were forced to split. Be a dream if they had to make Android open source again like it used to be.
IMHO that kind of advertisement business should be plain illegal. There are parts of it which are cheating, ultimately aimed at plausible deniability for "pay to be recommended" stuff. And what's not cheating there, is something worse - commercial surveillance.
Advertisement relates to competition for customer's attention the same way as lying relates to competition for listener's approval. It's just harmful.
They can keep chrome if they open source everything and remove all tracking, telemetry, and calling home of any sort, artificial crippling of addons via manifestV3, stop blocking blockers, stop injecting ads, stop breaking APIs, stop asynchronous and default DNS, stop forcing safebrowsing (URL monitoring).
What else have I missed?
They would still have disproportionate control over web standards. They should not be allowed to keep Chrome/Chromium under any circumstances.
I still don’t see how a standalone web browser survives financially. It seems like Firefox is always near death and has to make compromising decisions. Do you have any thoughts on how this ought to work?
I think we might have to get used to the idea of paying for software again, if we want to sustain the development of good quality, privacy respecting products
I absolutely agree with you, but it just doesn't seem viable at this point.
I think it would thrive under a non-profit like the Linux foundation. It doesn't need to make money. It's a critical piece of our tech infrastructure, just like Linux, openssl and other open source projects. Having it in the hands of an ad company whose interests are against the open internet and open standards is not okay.
Such an overengineered browser and set of web standards should not survive, you are very perceptive!
Time has come to revise those to make maintaining a web browser accessible for more than two enormous companies.
If you look at Gemini attentively, you'll see that it's functional enough for a lot of what we do with the Web.
And for people who like wasm, ws and such, and think modern web should be saved - there are still ways to create a narrowed down standard only for that set, not for everything at once.
I personally think this is all bullshit and some kind of PostScript-based new hypertext system is needed.
There's loads of ways you can monetise being the window through which billions of hours of attention are spent every day.
It's not working for Firefox because they just don't have many users any more. I haven't checked recently but it's less than 5% market share or something.
I too want to know more about this. Also, what happens to all the Chromium based browsers once Google doesn't maintain it? Edit: I use Firefox and will continue to do so.
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pushing web standards in their user-hostile favour
I’m guessing they would not be interested in keeping Chrome under those conditions. Those are all things that give them leverage, which is the reason they need to split
..... And most importantly, stop making it default browser in the most popular OS in the planet.
We don’t need to pay bribes to stay the default search engine so long as we get to keep making the monopolist browser that bans adblockers.
no.
It's a miracle that Google botched messengers, Google+, cloud ('member app engine?). They could have been even more dominant. I still like them more than MS and FB.
Yeah, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. It's just another asshole.
Google, over the past few years has notably getting worse. Apps that always worked flawlessly lately started getting buggy. YouTube app on Android now crashes near daily, Gmail is suddenly riddled with bugs... It wasn't like this.
Google was a software / tech company that started dabbling in ads to make money. This change toe company to what it is now, an ad company that does a bit of tech on the side.
Google Chrome is now the new ie6 and though it sucks in different ways from ie6, at the core the problem is the same
Google and Microsoft are really the same company, it's just that (for now, still) Google's software sucks less
Revanced will fix your youtube on Android problems
Edit:
Link to revanced: https://github.com/ReVanced/revanced-manager/releases
Used to use Vanced (not Revanced because it was a while ago), but after switching to Newpipe, I cannot imagine going back. It is just so much lighter and smoother.
Chrome itself is rated 4.1 in Play Store, while Firefox is rated 4.6. Google Chrome dominance, at this point, is a consequence of monopolistic practices and not user preference. They are now using their predominant position in the browser market to apply ad technologies that their users rightly didn't ask for, and they don't like it.
Have you tried NewPipe? YouTube changed the API a few times, and it broke for a day. Otherwise, it's excellent. I had trouble with Google Pay lately, which is really frustrating, I reverted to cash. No trouble with Chrome or Gmail on Android.
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Three years isn't nearly long enough. Chrome needs to go, as does their dominance in search, android, YouTube and email. That cannot all be one company, under a giant advertising umbrella. Split them up into three companies. Chrome and advertising cannot stay together.
we cannot have android under another big tech company
Normally I would laugh at them offering to resolve a second case to avoid judgement in the first one, but sadly they probably have enough influence to make it happen.
I really want apple to switch to duckduckgo or ecosia as default now.
Startpage is also an option.
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