When people here linked to the “pwease implement rcs so we can get adoption on our proprietary encryption extensions and become iMessage 2.0 but with google” page don’t you think maybe google might have had a PR campaign going on too?

Kinda odd this uniquely gets pointed out when it’s someone pushing back slightly on google, everyone is first in line to declare the player with 40% global market share anticompetitive and doesn’t even make a peep about google, even shouts down the attempts to bring the issue forward…

…tell me again why this isn’t just lawfare from android fanboys trying to get their choice of OS legislated?

People dumped on me when I said that knocking out safari would rapidly lead to a browser monoculture and anticompetitive usage of that from google. The excuse was “if that happens we’ll regulate that too”. Unsurprisingly, kinda seems like people don’t want that to actually happen now that it’s becoming an issue - you’re pushing back on it. See also: the "maybe a chrome monopoly is really better for consumers" downthread, gross.

Now, why is that, I wonder??? Maybe because it was just all an attempt to legislate a solution to google v apple after all?

Again: google and Tim Sweeney and netflix and facebook and Sony don’t care about you at all, and their goals don’t align with yours. The end state here isn’t user freedom, it’s iMessage with google banners instead. The hope was that you could hitch a ride on google’s PR effort until it was convenient and then discard them/override their wishes, instead it's the other way around.

This has always been a choice/anti-choice issue: for some people it's not enough that they personally can choose android, the option for walled-gardens needs to be removed entirely for everyone else too. And now you're seeing things move into the next phase, as they are discarded and google starts to flex the monopoly power that you lobbied to give them.

Like parent said, the motivations might not be 100% pure, but I doubt it invalidates the whole paper.

> when competitors point out the superiority of their own product, are they also often correct?

I would say they are in fact usually correct about the specific point they're making. However, it's also common for them to be drawing attention to the dimensions on which their product is better, which may not be the same as the dimensions that matter most to customers. They may be reporting selective truths and making correct-but-mostly-irrelevant points. This also goes for criticizing competitors, of course.

Here’s how I see it.

The web should rely on open standards to cultivate innovation and improvement. Having a separate entity would save the project from constant internal battles with other Google products and outside accusations of favoritism. My hope that being an independent entity, browser projects can push for further enhancements. For example, I’m very confused and frustrated about the fact that there is no standard to say “do not track me” that prevents those ugly popups. I already made my decision about ads, why should I repeat it for every website while the browser can enforce it. Just like the location preferences etc.

I do acknowledge however that like any other open source project, the funding would be a great issue.

There’s an argument to be made that it is abusive by simply existing. It’s a business that is built on network effects since it is a multi-sided auction (people offering ad space and people bidding to show ads in those spaces). There are massive barriers to entering the ad network space as a result, which lets incumbents get away with whatever they want. In my opinion, markets that are inherently not competitive, like ones reliant on network effects, need regulation and forced competition.

But more specifically, it is things like Google forcing site owners to enter anti-competitive agreements (see https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...). As part of the agreements Google required, site owners had to preserve the best ad space on pages for Google’s ads instead of ads from rival networks, they were not allowed to insert ads from rival ad networks on the pages that Google search results link to, and they had to get permission from Google before changing how rival ads were displayed on pages where both existed (allegedly).

Note that even if site owners found these clauses problematic, in a practical sense they have no choice but to just say “yes”. They need ad revenues to survive in today’s economic environment. And for them, the risk of not having ad revenue is existential while Google doesn’t have anything to lose by being aggressive. It’s an uneven situation where there isn’t really choice for anyone except Google.

Too many ways to count, really. It's an enormous system and I'm not qualified to explain it in detail, nor am I a customer of their products.

The long-and-short of it is that Google wields undue monopoly power by mediating their competitors in online advertising, and abuses that control to manipulate ad rankings and kneecap paying advertisers. They do this in several ways, like changing the font/frame/location of the advertisement and fixing it's ranking relative to Google's own products. This is the main argument against them, though there are tons of little inconsistencies that many highlight as salient.

"Implementations publicly deployed" is widely understood as "released behind a flag to gather feedback and work out issues", not "release without a workable spec"

Just tried Apple.com in chrome on macOS. Only nag I see is… for chrome, because it’s not my default browser but Google wants it to be.

I’m not logged into iCloud on there, but the site itself and the login form neither complain about my not visiting it in Safari.

I believe that if you own a Mac, normally use Chrome, and open Safari, it will ask if you want to make it the default. Maybe some other time? Not a big deal, really.

> And it flopped.

Their opt out header was adopted faster than "do not track". Nobody wanted anything to do with it.

> are at least designed to work for the entire advertising industry, not just Google.

It is an API where the entire data flow is controlled by Google and was meant as replacement for one that Google had no control over. Meanwhile Chrome has always shared additional data with a hardcoded list of Google services (officially for debbuging and A/B testing ) and provides direct integration with Google accounts and related tracking. FLoC and Topics exist for the advertising industry the same way an eviction notice exists for its recipient.

Why reframe the topic to something irrelevant? What the standard started out as is not what it ended as.

The final result is the only thing that matters.

The website talks only about affiliation.

"Potential" is one of those funny words which can be stretched to mean anything. As such, its not worth arguing about. So your personal view of what is a potential conflict isn't something we can get into here. But what would be interesting is if you actually had evidence of bias in the article. That is definitely something we can discuss - regardless of who said it.

I’m assuming you never read Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Music”

https://macdailynews.com/2007/02/06/apple_ceo_steve_jobs_pos...

Short version:

The music industry wanted Apple to license FairPlay. SJ said no. But Apple will start selling interoperable DRM free music if the industry allows it.

One of the major labels and independents took them up on the offer and Apple did it. The other three labels wanted among other things - a royalty from each iPod sold and for Apple to basically post a bond against piracy.

Apple refused and it took until early 2009 for the rest of the labels to come on board.

I understand that it isn't in Apples interest to make a good browser.

So, in other words, complaints about "Google's broeser is too good, it is unfair how fast they are moving!" Therefore ring hollow.

Yes, Apple could compete if they wanted to. There is no anti competitive pressure stopping them.

But Apple simply chooses not to make a good browser, even though they could.

I think the real market failure is that you can't not do what Chrome does. Having Chromium doesn't mean much if when you diverge from Chrome sites will break. Having a standard rings hollow when a standard generally means having two browsers implement a feature and Firefox gets their money from Google. And to developers a standard means "works on Chrome $current - 1."

It's hard to say that any of this can be pinned on Google like they're somehow to blame but at the same time we've nonetheless found ourselves in a market where users and developers have very little choice and this currently benefits Google quite a bit.

Good engineering discipline I think would ask major browsers to break themselves purposefully by randomly disabling any features that are browser specific or outside of some "core" standard saying you must only use these opportunistically but that's not a law you can write.

I consider the Privacy Sandbox a dark pattern

A feature that records details of the types sites someone visitors and then shares them with any other site that asks isn’t really a privacy feature

Google creates and implements its own privacy solution in its browser. Once released, other advertisers are behind and no longer have access to their tracking -> Google dominates the market because it delivers better ROI for advertisers because it knows how to track on Chrome because it built the privacy solution.

> shows

> paints

Exactly. You can show and paint all you want. And then there's reality.

> Unclear what specific specs you are trying to throw under the bus here.

Almost all the hardware specs (most of which are "not on any standards track", shipped in Chrome), things like Backround Fetch and Background Sync (same).

There are also others that Google shipped even before there was consensus and there were glaring issues in the spec (like Constructible Stylesheets)

> A lot of people are really offended the web has MIDI & Gyrometer & other support, to the degree that they wouldn't let others enjoy this.

To call this a misrepresentation of reality is a gross understatement

The law literally makes it illegal. No matter what you think. It’s in the tiny text of the law.

MS got hit. Apple is going to. Google should be too, but I doubt it will happen.

(I’d argue giving away Android is dumping and requiring Play is bundling, but that’s another rant)

I’m not saying that’s the only reason. Yes it was way better than IE. And FF of the time.

The definition of anti-competitive behavior doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter if 100% of people switched because it’s better and their friends told them and not a single one did it because of the ads. The ads were still illegal.

It is literally described in the standards process.

> you can't make a feature until everyone agrees

Except that’s exactly how the web is supposed to work and the reason Google was able to build a giant search business in the first place. This is absolutely them shitting in the punch bowl. We made plenty of progress without fragmentation.

My comment history probably makes it clear where I work (maybe years back) and it is not Google. I see my recent comments are reactively supporting specific Google products. I don’t have a strong stance for them at entity level and if anything I ding them for killing some of my favorite web tools. I earnestly believe that ad tech is fighting to maintain user level tracking with limited transparency, look at the efforts by LiveRamp and The Trade Desk. Those are overt efforts to use emails as currency where consumers would have limited control for relevant ads. I am surprised Google truly would eliminate 3p cookies in chrome and mobile IDs on android when both platforms benefited in ads revenue post Apple ATT and ITP. I support the privacy sandbox principles as an ad tech person and a regular consumer. I caveat that if new information comes to light regarding their intentions then I would change my mind.

I was fairly pro Apple until they half attempted to provide ads solutions in the wake of App tracking transparency and I realized their gain was on App Store ads revenue. Amazon wishes they had a browser but their stores and hardware provide sufficient ads signals. Meta has plenty of ads scandals over the years. It’s a messy landscape but only a few organizations are developing ad tech and consumer privacy solutions in the open.

> This is absolutely completely wrong. No music service supports FairPlay aside from Apple Music. Why would they?

Because they want to support Safari and Homepods generally.

> Music you buy from all services is DRM free and music you stream is only in the apps and have no need to support FairPlay

Every significant music subscription service has web based playback, which will use a DRM system to protect those streams, and will use a multi-DRM system to support multiple browsers. Safari doesn't support Widevine, so if the service works in Safari that means the service also serves FairPlay Streaming licenses.

> Even the ability to play movies bought in one store and being available in another store as a purchased item is supported via MoviesAnywhere integration and not FairPlay.

Very difficult to see what this has to do with the topic at hand, but Fairplay is used to stream those titles to devices that support it. MoviesAnywhere is back end, not distribution. Fairplay has been ported to non-Apple devices too, at least the lower levels.

My point was that Google is taking cash from their ad business to support their Chrome product to protect their ad business.

I was thinking out loud if a case could be made against Google, similar to the EEE logic.

Sorry, which hardware APIs? Webusb? Others?

Excellent as usual chery picking. Way to be perpetually offended & antagonistic & address nothing. We should all be done with whining nothing's like this crap roll.

You have sold fear fear fear & your counter of trying to disregard & ignore is a strong strategy indeed. Strongly cast down then say nothing when the time comes! Well done. Expert moves. Have you at any point obeyed the HN guidelines that discussions should get more specific? No, you just moan and belly ache. Insult belittle & degrade. More broadly & pitiful than the last time.

Society would be better without these shit show tantrums. Sound & thunder, full of nothings.

> They are going to feature paint themselves into a corner and have to make the choice of "cut off some chunk of the web"

This of course is actually much more likely (and functionally happened) with pre-WHATWG standards because they'd standardize things that were infeasible and no browser ever implemented, ever.

And at the same time everyone had their own weird nonstandard extensions (does no one remember the whacky stuff like https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Vendor_Pre... and how absolutely garbage-awful it was for maintainability?)

> They are going to feature paint themselves into a corner

Has the web not done that, several times over at this point? We've lost too many online standards to count, from all of the FAANG vendors.

> The all gas no brakes add features like were a start up forget about thoughtful or engineering is a bad way to sustain something.

If native smartphone runtimes were not complete dogshit, I'd probably agree with you. Without the industry's cooperation though, expanding the lowest-common-denominator platform was an inevitability. People want emulators, game streaming, proper download management, the real features that the OEMs are too afraid to publish. If they won't provide that, then their users will find another way.

And so, these "all gas no brakes" features are a product of legitimate demand. It's sad, yeah; but what's even sadder is the miserly behavior from companies like Apple that market user freedom as a security apocalypse. The openness of the web has finally caught-up with it's most-restricted users.

I'm saying the omission of the disclosure of an obvious conflict is a bad lapse. It's bad whether it results in bias or not and independent of what I think. The OG commenter was right to point it out and you're not right to suggest it only counts if there is evidence of bias.

I don't agree with your opinion. Its no big deal, we can all happily co-exist! As a reader, you seem to care more about compliance than discussing the contents/quality of the paper. That tells me everything I need to know.