- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I do not trust Google at this stage. I pine for the day when Google seemed like a good company. Gmail was awesome when it came out, for example, and Google search worked well. Now I feel they are harvesting all my data to jam ads down my throat. Google search now sucks ass and just returns websites that have a bunch of AI nonsense or aggregated content that is effectively worthless.
I am migrating away from Google.
Now I feel they are harvesting all my data to jam ads down my throat.
I’m curious: how did you expect them to pay for the overhead of providing this service? I’m sure you didn’t think that they would just eat the cost of providing it forever, right?
Not that I disagree, but this is a shit take IMHO. It’s always been the case that ads paid for “free” services, but the scale and invasiveness of the ads and data collection has clearly accelerated beyond a reasonable level. They waited until they captured a large enough user base and crowded out enough of their competition before gouging their users for ad revenue. They have the size and reach of a small(or medium-sized, even) nation, the data they are able to collect is a wet dream for any three letter agency.
Just because ads are what make the business model feasible doesn’t mean they get a free pass to abuse their market position carte blanche. They should be cut down to size, and not just by user migration.
It’s already being pushed to the Chromium repo, or so it seems:
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd
Yeah it’s truly awful.
The worst part is how disingenuous it is. It clearly exists because Google:
- Wants to circumvent ad-blockers since ads are its primary business model, and
- Link butts in chairs more closely to web browsers so they can sell better advertisement targeting.
If they just said they were doing it because they’re an advertising company and they need better ads targeted to people, at least they would have the benefit of honesty. And in that case you might actually get some big sites on-board; like if a site can explicitly say “I need to recoup hosting fees and the only way for me to do that is targeted advertising and that makes this easier/better” there’s actually a value proposition there.
But don’t pretend this is for the benefit of consumers or the Internet overall, and definitely don’t cloak your meaning behind vague platitudes about identity authenticity.
Wouldn’t it be sick if once your company got up to a net worth of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS you’d just stop trying to shoehorn in new ways to make profit?
It’s comically perverted and epicly sad that leaders with power in society don’t stop this kind of thing.
I’ve been questioning whether the current implementation of democracy can work in a modern world, where corporate entities can grow beyond the size of government.
As long as the people is represented by a smaller subset of the people, corporations wont need to please the people. Only the representatives. The same way that in the US, the electoral college means your vote technically doesn’t have direct power, there’s a disconnect between people voting for not getting screwed, and that sentiment actually becoming law.
Sounds like taxation without representation to me.
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I really think the world needs a few more Elon Musks around. I mean, wouldn’t it be great to have a Musk at Google to destroy it from the inside just like he’s doing to Twitter?
You had me at the first half, ngl.
I’m really hoping this doesn’t make it into Brave their teams has removed a lot of Google crap in the past. Mullvad’s fork of Firefox can always replace them.
You don’t seem to understand. This is not a feature that a browser can simply choose not to implement. The WEBSITES that you are accessing will be checking that you are using a verified browser and that you are a confirmed user.
Guys, if you don’t like these proposals from Google, you need to switch to Firefox now! It’s the only way to defend freedom on the web!
Why are you pushing Firefox when Vivaldi did the work of writing this article and Vivaldi has consistently been pro-user, pro privacy, and anti-google even while using Chromium as their backbone. Viva Vivaldi.
Using any chromium fork is supporting chromium as the default browser, and choosing gecko-based browsers means you throw your hat in the ring to show websites that not just chromium browsers visit them. Using a chromium fork also means you accept that google will dictate standards less harmful than web integrity. While it’s not the end of the world, the last time this happened IE9 happened. Using Firefox means google can’t simply decide to implement any spec they want and that spec becomes true because all user agents have it (exactly what is at risk of happening here. Vivaldi may make nice blog posts but if this ends up happening they’ll be happy to implement it else risk losing their entire user base)
The would have been an argument to be made about performance but nowadays blink and gecko are pretty much at the same performance level.
Using a chromium fork also means you accept that google will dictate standards less harmful than web integrity.
Are these condescending statements how you intend to get people to switch to Firefox?
Death to chromium forked browsers. Vivaldi is chromium.
Because they use chromium
Over 85% of Mozilla’s income comes from their Google search deal. Google is keeping Mozilla alive to prevent antitrust issues. If Mozilla rocks the boat too much, Google will fund a more obedient alternative.
So your answer to “Google is evil use another browser” is… if we all swap to Firefox google will kill it?
Google is keeping Firefox alive because 5% of all web users using Google search by default is pretty useful for them.
If you want to avoid that, simply use firefox and set your search to DuckDuckGo/Bing. If Google drops them, Microsoft have already shown a want to step up into that position.
All good advice, but nevoic makes a good point. Google is too big to be meaningfully threatened by Mozilla, if firefox pulls a critical mass away from google, they will absolutely move to kill it.
Google needs to be broken up, and the US govt isn’t going to just volunteer to do that on their own given how valuable google’s data is to the intelligence agencies.
I have no idea what this means