“Google engineers want…”
No. Google executives want this to happen. Google’s CEO wants this to happen.
They want to change the internet and remove any little bit of freedom for their own corporate profits.
Fuck “do no evil” Google.
Use Firefox.
Support Firefox.
Using alternative Chromium based browsers is not it.
Alright, today is oficially the day I switch to Firefox
Life finds a way
Yarr
I hope **chrome **fails terribly. Just like Internet Explorer(IE). Firefox all the way
I just wish Firefox would improve their UI and add a few features without needing to rely on extensions (tab groups, vertical tabs, sharing tabs from mobile to desktop, etc.).
Are we seriously sitting here, in the shadow of the open internet’s apocalypse, complaining yet again about Firefox’s UI?
It’s like Superman trying to rescue you from a fire and you complaining about his breath.
There’s no UI in the world that will make the internet bareable without functional ad blockers.
Hey, I switched to Firefox because I liked its UI better (after Quantum though)
I switched back from years with Chrome then new Chromium Edge, haven’t noticed an issue. But everything I do is Ctrl+W, middle-click, and typing into search fields. If I’m using a browser’s UI, it’s for the menu or a bookmark folder.
I can’t really fathom what a browser UI is used for beside this and the less there is of one on-screen, the better.
I left it because their “new” UI, but that was just thelast straw (after 20 years) Won’t go back.
Well, super bad breath is not your ordinary bad breath. It would possibly melt your lungs faster than the fire. Bacteria that can thrive in superman’s body is not to be messed with.
I’m glad to see that even when we’re about to get robbed, there’ll still be humor about it. Grim, but I like it.
I literally swore off Firefox for half a decade because they removed and broke Panorama with their engine rewrite, so yes.
Yes. Because the UI and UX of a tool that you use everyday matters. The average user will hold ease of use over privacy 9 times out of 10. In my case though I wasn’t able to use FF for a while due to the lack of debugger support for a project I was working on. Now it comes down to me having to work on multiple projects at once so tab groups and organization are key. Now don’t get me wrong, once Chrome totally kills adblockers I’ll drop Chromium browsers like a bad habit, but the point still stands though, FF could use some UI improvements.
Id argue on mobile for instance, firefox is easier to use. One of the LARGEST differences between chrome and firefox from a UI standpoint is bottom search/site box over top one, especially for larger phones.
This of course doesnt consider anything related to addons yet.
Or Mr. Incredible being sued for saving a guy commuting suicide…
Hey you have genuine wants and needs from a web browser and I respect that.
I’ll say though that this sort of attitude (well Chrome has this little thing I like so I allow them to take control of what was once the independent internet) is what is going to screw us.
I use FF. But I also use Chromium based browsers out of necessity. I understand where you’re coming from but what’s also going to screw us is Mozilla not keeping up with the latest features which is something they’ve struggled with. At the end of the day they have to give people a reason to switch and use FF as their main browser. Simply saying “better privacy features” isn’t enough for the average user.
I can send a tab from my mobile Firefox to my desktop Firefox by default, so that’s at least one of those that doesn’t need an extension.
Yeah I thought it had that feature already but I wasn’t seeing it. I’ll have to look again.
On mobile: Hit the three line menu button -> “Send link to device”
On desktop: Right click on a tab -> “Send tab to device”Kind of odd that they’re not the same language, actually. For what it’s worth I’m on iOS so it might be different for FF on Android.
Is it possible to use it without syncing all browser tabs? I tried to read about it on their website since I want to know exactly what they collect and how they store it but couldn’t find anuthing other than instructions on how to set it up.
I don’t know anything about tab syncing, so I don’t know. Sorry!
You can also send either direction via the share menu, so long as you have your Firefox account signed in to them.
They do have the send tab to device feature. I send tabs to my son, who lives with his mom all the time.
As long as the devices are connected to the overall Mozilla account. Same between my phone Firefox and PC.
I don’t have too many tabs that I would group together, but I can see how nice of a feature that would be.
I’ve used Firefox from the beginning and never trusted Google and Chrome. It has gotten better, but at a slower route.
Firefox already natively supports most of the features you listed.
Which ones? Besides sending a tab from mobile to desktop it doesn’t have tab groups or vertical tabs. Those features rely on extensions and/or custom css.
Mozilla I think gets millions from google. At least they did at one point in a deal to set google as a default engine.
They do. The majority of Mozilla’s funding is from Google. That said, they’re still our best hope. I’m sure Firefox has constant internal conversations about how to handle their relationship with Google, and they probably have standing offers from many others to switch to a different search engine.
Anyone still using Google products is a fuckin idiot, IMO
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I wholeheartedly agree. I’m a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don’t have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
Why does it have to be Mozilla everything? I want Mozilla to continue doing what it does best: build browsers and (maybe) mail clients.
Not everything has to be unified. I’d be quite content with Teehee Photos, Hoho Notes and Huehuehue Assistant as long as they’re decent tools.
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Fully automated or fully integrated? And how do you know? Not trying to be confrontational, but whenever I think a tool doesn’t exist, it totally does. It just isn’t popular enough.
There isn’t. Closest there is is NextCloud, but you need to self host it, since it isn’t E2EE so using a provider would just put you back in square one. Proton is a close second but its still miles away, they have a lot of products but their devs seem to be spread thin between then.
I kinda agree with you. Before my exams I had lot of time. I used to self host nextcloud, email and invidious etc. But during exam had no time to manage instances or update my packages, one after than another they kept showing error and they went offline.
I stopped my VPS and started using Google Drive(it was already available on my android) to share my notes temporarily with friends, soon I kept using it. I hope protonmail becomes better so I can start using them instead of other products
What I don’t like about Proton is that I can’t combine Mail Plus and Pass Plus. I don’t need a 500 GB Proton Drive or Proton VPN, but I like their Mail and Password Manager. Now I use Mail for free and Password Manager for €12/year. I would like to pay €3.99/month for the Mail offer, but for that I would have to upgrade to the much more extensive Proton Unlimited.
I’m in the exact same position. The pass manager for €12/year is awesome and I want the Mail Plus but the 500GB drive is overkill for me.
I would pay 7.99 for Proton Unlimited. But I can’t pay alnost 200 Euros for it all at once. I’m not a big fan of the huge cost difference between monthly, 12m and 24m subscriptions.
This is how they do it. They wedge themselves in via convenience with the hopes that we’ll stay on their ecosystem eventually.
I hope you’ll soon find the time to regain your independence from them. Best of luck.
Microsoft is arguably worse than Google. They make you pay for the software they use to harvest your data for free.
These businesses should be paying for the data, the raw materials, they collect and use to build their products. You can’t assemble a car without paying for the nuts and bolts, but that’s what they do.
I’m sorry but this sentiment is so utterly detached from the technical capabilities and general engagement of the average layman that it bears a response.
Tech savvy people have this awful habit of calling anyone not in our specific field an idiot when they don’t do things our preferred way, and it’s not a good look. Those people aren’t the weird ones, we are. And if you’re the sort of person who thinks you’ve elevated yourself above the commoners because you don’t use Google’s stuff … yeah, that and 5 bucks will get you a latte. There are oceans of professional expertise you’re not privvy to, and unless you really think you’re doing better than everyone at everything, a little humility, temperance, and grace for others is warranted.
I have to agree with this.
I’m basically “the idiot”. Decently tech savvy, but non-IT. Very capable of learning what I need to know, but I haven’t really had the time or mental capacity to learn how to do a lot of the things I need to to get away from corporate overlords.
I’m working on it, and have been for a while, but in the meantime I do use several google services, because that’s what I’ve been using for many many years and change is really hard. Especially when you have to initiate the change yourself, and especially when you know if you switch to a stop-gap solution you’ll loose all impetus to actually keep making the change (which I will).
The biggest challenge is learning what is worth it to self-host, what hard/software to use for the configuration I want, what’s compatible with devices I own (windows, Linux, iOS and android), etc. I’ve been running Plex for like 10 years now (windows then Linux), but it’s a very basic setup on a host pc I don’t use for much else. Beyond that, I need to learn almost everything from the bottom up, and that’s a lot to learn -just- to avoid an existing company and their existing products that I’ve been using for years. Unlike my Plex content, I would actually care if I lost my other self-host data, so not something to fuck around half-ass with.
I can’t blame people for not wanting to/knowing how to do it. I like learning this shit (because of the end result, not because I have interest in it, sorry not sorry) and I still don’t actually want to do it.
OK, then let’s check my idiocy.
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Web-browser? I’m using Firefox since the beginning of this year.
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Email? I’ve an account on ProtonMail for serious stuff, and Gmail for garbage, less serious stuff and spam collector.
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Cloud storage? Well, unless anyone can gift me a Raspberry Pi, a hub and an ELI5 Nextcloud manual for dummies, I have to keep using Google Drive.
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Videos? That depends. I’m watching videos on Youtube, but I’m uploading my own content on Peertube.
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Phone? I need another ELI5 custom rom manual for dummies, and it has to be specific for my device. Otherwise, I’ll keep using Android, but with most minimum usage of Google apps.
I think that’s all.
Can’t fix everything, but Google drive is easily replaced by proton drive. Google notes/keep or any kind of note taking is easily replaced (and improved) by Obsidian, and on android you can install f-droid as an alternative store.
Downside is that these thinks cost money. But everything has a cost, and at least here the cost is clear, and upfront.
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So you don’t have an android phone I suppose?
So basically every software/front-end web dev? Lol ok.
Pixel phones.
Except when it doesn’t. That saying never made sense (far more species have gone extinct than exist today) and it doesn’t apply here.
Piracy will continue, obviously, but what we’re seeing here is the creation of an internet we can’t even fathom yet. This is just where it starts.
Also consider how much more difficult it will be for the average person to participate in piracy. Remember a few months back when Microsoft floated they were basically looking to lock down windows? No unsigned apps, no win32, etc. People will get around that, of course, but fewer people will. Especially if they continue with this trend towards stripping options and de-admin-ing all users unless they pay for an enterprise license.
Then there’s the dangerous trend toward encryption being broken by regulation and possibly even VPNs being rendered useless for anyone but businesses. There goes secure torrenting.
The trends don’t look good, across the board. We can’t just sit here and hope it all works out and the loopholes are found, like it always has before.
I am by no means saying we should passively hope that things will work out. What I am saying is that we have no reason to be defeatist. In the same time that we’ve seen aggressive pushes for a more locked down internet, we’ve seen dozens of open source projects to fight back.
It’s my right to have my personal computer display what I want it to display. It’s my right set my device to reject internet traffic I don’t want to receive. It’s my right to instruct my machine to download the data I want, and refuse to download the data I don’t want. If you make something publicly available online, then the public can consume that or refuse that, in part or in whole, as and when they wish. If a company or a browser wants to try and interfere with that, then they’ve chosen their fate.
Monzo? Hmm
The year is 2023, every single major tech companies are racing each other to become Public Enemy No. 1. And the only Hero we have is the EU, will it be able to save the day?
Forcing this might very well be something EU opposes. While there is a lot of corporate lobbying, Google would be forcing everyone to either use chromium or make compatibility changes into other browser. While not a total monopoly, it still limits the options radically. Therefore there might be hope that EU forbids this type of action. Let’s see…
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It’s bizarre that you think the EU market it small enough to be dispensable. When GDPR came into force, many US sites had to reject EU traffic. But that was only temporary for the most part. They knew it wasn’t smart for business to exclude the EU so they got their compliance issues sorted.
Hope you guys enjoy not being able to search for things.
I would love that actually. But it’s not reality. In reality what happens is the search engines deliver a shit-ton of unusable garbage results that I would rather not see. E.g. sites that block Tor users, CAPTCHAs, giant cookie popups, etc.
If a search engine were to filter out the garbage, it would be a great start to solving the shitty web problem.
The EU has a larger population than the US, that’s not a market you just leave. Also, Europe is not the same as the European Union.
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The EU has a PPP GDP of $24.05 trillion compared to the US’ $25.4 trillion. That is a market of significant size and leaving it will affect Google’s bottom line.
You can compare Alabama and France all you want, that is irrelevant. Or should I perhaps start comparing Mississippi and Luxembourg?
Lastly, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but Google isn’t the only search engine in existence. Bing, Qwant et al. will gladly fill the void that Google leaves behind.
Don’t worry there are others than Google on the market also. If they want to make space for competition it’s actually a good thing.
We already can’t due to Google’s pushing of irrelevant promoted sites and failing to take meaningful action against SEO in recent years.
Hope you enjoy being laid off when your company eats itself to keep the growth going for just a little longer to please the capitalist parasites known as “shareholders”. You can’t much money from ads when the economy is utterly, utterly in the shitter like it is right now, not nearly as much as you used to. You really think that the average person has the financial leeway to buy luxury goods or pricier options shown in ads when the budget barely covers food, bills, rent and transport costs, and everything they do buy must be the cheapest thing they can get their hands on? Your company, and all other internet companies supported by ads, made a pact with the devil, and now he has come to collect his due. I will enjoy seeing you all go hard into the red.
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I get by fine with Duckduckgo and Ecosia, thank you very much.
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Google’s recruiting standards must’ve dipped because I can’t fathom a Googler would be this ignorant. You know there are competing search engines, right?
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You’re right, Google and Bing are the only two search engines in the world. Trolls gotta troll, I guess. Blocked.
You can’t much money from ads when the economy is utterly, utterly in the shitter like it is right now
What economy are you living in? In the US at least inflation is down, real wages are up, GDP and the stock markets are up, employment numbers are stellar…even income inequality is trending the right way. The only thing that’s “bad” is interest rates, and there’s an argument to be made they were too low to begin with before.
One where the average rent has now eclipsed the average mortgage repayment, and where all we export to the rest of the world is raw resources that are less in demand than ever
Don’t have too much faith in the EU. Corporations are still heavily influencing politics. They will probably come with half assed laws that have loopholes or workarounds.
Like GDPR?
/s
I don’t get the “/s”.
The #GDPR is absolutely a perfect example of ½-assed laws & loopholes. I have filed reports on dozens of GDPR violations; not a single one of them lead to enforcement. The GDPR is just a prop to make people feel comfortable as the EU destroys the offline infrastructure.
I did as well for the Catholic Church. I don’t want to have my name associated with a gang of child molesters so I invoked the right to be forgotten. The church told me that baptism is sacred and cannot be undone. The Dutch institution for GDPR claims never did anything about it because they’re overloaded with requests.
Oh well, I’m not willing to give it more energy either. It’s mildly annoying but doesn’t affect my day to day life.
Maybe you misunderstand the enforcement part of the GDPR. It’s not made for you to get personal enforcement out of it. It works on the basis of multiple infractions being recorded and then escalating the agencies response level.
I work with many companies as IT consultant and I can assure you, that they all FEAR the GDPR and treat natural person data very well because of that. Enforcement of GDPR does happen and you can review every enforcement on a public website called enforcement tracker. There are almost 1980 enforcement actions in their database.
I have also personally requested information about me and my family through the rights bestowed by the GDPR regulations and have EVERY TIME gotten the information within 30 days.
Maybe you misunderstand the enforcement part of the GDPR. It’s not made for you to get personal enforcement out of it.
You obviously have not read article 77. This article entitles individuals to report GDPR violations to a DPA for enforcement. Article 77 does not distinguish violations against an individual (which I suppose is what you mean by “personal enforcement”) and violations against many. Some of the violations I have reported can only be construed as violations against the general public. E.g. an org fails to designate a DPO.
The problem is there is nothing to enforce article 77 itself. When a DPA neglects to act on an article 77 report, there is no recourse. There is only a provision that allows lawsuits against the GDPR violators. But then when someone did that, and then claimed legal costs, an Italian court decided for everyone in a precedence-setting case that legal costs are not recoverable. Which essentially neuters the court action remedy. So we have an unenforced article 77 and a costly & impractical direct action option.
It works on the basis of multiple infractions being recorded and then escalating the agencies response level.
It’s not even doing that much, in some cases. The report has to get past the front desk secretary and be submitted into the litigation chamber before it’s even considered as something that would indicate a trend. If it doesn’t get past the secretary it does nothing whatsoever. Some of my reports were flippantly rejected by a pre-screening secretary for bogus reasons (e.g. “your complaint is ‘contractual in nature’” when in fact there is no contractual agreement, apart from the fact that the existence of a contract does not nullify the GDPR anyway).
I work with many companies as IT consultant and I can assure you, that they all FEAR the GDPR
So you’re only seeing the commercial response. Gov agencies & NGOs are also subject to the GDPR, which is where you see the most recklessness (likely due to the lack of penalty). On the commercial side banks also don’t give much of a shit about the GDPR because when they violate it there’s a shit ton of banking regs they point to and the DPAs are afraid to act against banks because of the messy entanglement of AML/KYC laws that essentially push #banks to violate the GDPR.
Enforcement of GDPR does happen and you can review every enforcement on a public website called enforcement tracker.
Indeed I’ve browsed through the enforcement tracker. It’s a good prop for making the public believe that the #GDPR is being well enforced. They are cherry-picking cases to enforce to convince the public that something is being done, but people who actually submit reports know better. We see the reports that are clearly going unenforced.
I have also personally requested information about me and my family through the rights bestowed by the GDPR
I have had article 15 access requests denied which I then reported to the DPA, who opened a case but just sat on it. For years, so far.
(edit) By the way, I suggest you leave Lemmy·world for a different instance. If you care about privacy at all, you don’t use Cloudflare nodes. I cannot even see the msg I wrote (which you replied to) because #lemmyWorld blocks me (which I give some detail here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/1435972). I had to reply to you based purely on your msg without context.
Thinking about it, a lot of these companies created astounding products on a relatively unusual business model of delivering for free (not totally unheard of, tv for example but still not the most traditional way of doing business) and absorbed, cannibalized or destroyed a lot of other services and functions with their ubiquity and unbeatable price.
The way they say it was funded was through advertising, but nonetheless much of the big banner services remained unprofitable for years or even decades. Sometimes the master plan is to get everyone hooked (users and advertisers) and then when they have little choice anymore, start making things cost, a lot more. The trouble with this though is that none of them are the only one’s doing it and even with only a handful of big titans controlling it all, there’s still the risk of one of your tech bros stealing your lunch when your start trying to cash-in and piss of your users and your customers alike so really I guess all of them doing it at once kind of makes sense. Kind of a “I’ll jump when you jump” mentality and at least one has jumped. I somewhat wonder if they all planned to go this route at around the same time together or if they all just concluded that the short term gain in market share by taking advantage of one of them jumping wasn’t worth the risks from the intense competition and just decided to instead cash in at the same time.
Or I’m just rambling and have no business sense or idea what I’m talking about. It just seems that might explain why this all seems to be coming to some kind of a crescendo at about the same time.
Ad pushing is only part of the problem… These tokens will kill the #InternetArchive Wayback machine. It’s anti-library tech.
Anti-bot tech is inherently anti-human.
Use Firefox.
Even the Android version lets you install uBlock Origin.
Google controls way too much. People need to stop using their products. Many people complaining right now are still using Google stuff. If everyone concerned stop using Google stuff, that would cause them to reconsider very quickly.
And then the plan to force everyone to abandon Firefox whether they like it or not.
- Implement the misfeatures.
- Movie and music websites will be the first to announce requiring DRM to be able to watch movies or listen to tunes.
- The banks will be next. “For your safety, you must use an Official Approved Browser™ to be allowed access to your money!”
- Then ecommerce sites. “You must have DRM enabled to be allowed to buy anything.”
- Then comes the social media sites. For your safety, of course…
At that point, the userbase of anything that’s not Chrome or not DRM’d to death will be so eroded that virtually everyone else will abandon Firefox support, DRM will get enabled by default. Also, comes the lobbyists to Congress demanding changes to the DMCA to throw users in prison who dare to try to crack the DRM to block ads. “Ad-blocking is stealing!”
Just means I’ll have the shittiest Chromebook I can buy used, for access to the sites you just listed, and my Linux laptop for everything else. If their non-financial, non-commerce site won’t let me in with my adblocking Linux machine, I just won’t go there. There will be lots of site still, run by us, that don’t do this shit, and they’ll get my traffic.
This right here is what has always scared me. The internet is getting more and more controlled and locked down as the years go on. The general population will not take up for, Linux, Firefox, etc. Neither will the services we now rely upon like banking etc. So we will be forced.
I don’t think any of this would stop me from using FF for day to day browsing.
2 - At this point I’d just pirate it. I don’t care. If you’re going to be hostile to paying customers, I’m going to be a non-paying customer again.
3 - Separate banking app. Not bothered about desktop banking
4 - Fine I’ll support local businesses where possible, and use dedicated apps or if necessary Chrome (preferably sandboxed) specifically for shopping where not.
5 - Social media was a mistake anyway, already deleted Twitter, I need very little excuse to get rid of Facebook as well.
Honestly I think this is just the end phase of “Web 2.0” as I remember all this shit being labelled at the time. We managed fine with independent forums etc before and will manage again.
Edit: I love the irony that people are killing off Reddit due to API access but the only way I’ve been able to post on lemmy.world is via the website. Connect app? Nope!
Hi. I finally have the balls to ask, what is DRM? I am kind of a neophyte in all tech matters. But I managed to get out of Reddit because it was full of baits and ridden with apple ads. And so I like this new platform, reminds me of the good old gamefaqs forums days. Hope all this slicker simpler UI from and for users never die…
I don’t know if it’s the Google engineers that “want” to do this
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Not sure if troll or just an asshole.
Judging by his comment history it feels like he is an asshole
lmao imagine geniuenly thinking that if your company makes more money you’ll also get more money 😭😭.
If it ever makes 10% more, be lucky that they bump your salary by 2%
Also, you do realize you are just as affected by this? I’m pretty sure, as a tech savvy person, you have ads removed, because you know how bad of an experience you have when they’re on, enjoy that too if this ever comes into place, as of now, I’ll keep using Firefox.
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We’ll just won’t look at your website then.
Would you get more money doing this? How?
It isn’t Google Engineers wanting to do it. It’s Google engineers being told to do it.
Google engineers want me to stop using anything from google
Even if they do that, some people will just create illegal website mirrors that remove ads.
On reddit, people already copy paste articles when there’s a paywall. I can totally envision that thing to be more common.
I am not fucking kidding, I will stop using websites if I cannot block ads. This is non negotiable. I don’t care about your business model, I have zero money to give you. I tried the official reddit app, and uninstalled within a week.
Will use firefox until it gets broken into pieces. I would rather stop using the internet other than for necessary situations.
News headline, October 2078
Google finds users are covering their ears and closing their eyes; releases nanobots to force eyes open and lock hands behind back.
Reminds of the 15 million merits episdoe in black mirror
