this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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I don't understand.
There's loads of people for whom 3 or 4 sites make up 99% of "the web", and those sites will just stop working for people using browsers without WEI support.
I just don't really see how a browser could be viable in the future without WEI support.
And that's exactly the point. WEI makes it a world where big tech decides if they are going to support a competing browser, a competing operating system like Linux, or plugins against ads. They can also force you to have any number of plugins installed, from their choosing.
It destroys the free web completely.
Yes but why is eich saying this? It would be the end of brave surely.
No it won't. It'll just fork the internet.
Genuinely not sure if you're joking. Brave people are... difficult to understand.
Wether it is the end for brave or not we don't know (judging by the core users of Brave and FF I highly doubt that it will just be the end of Brave or Firefox)
I'm fairly certain that it will split the web apart even more. Then we have the "totally safe and totally not monitored" adinfested buzzweb. We have the chinese walled garden web. And ofc the darkweb (e.g. tor and onion-sites). And the new addition will be the gray-web or something because "ya JusT cAn'T be SuRe" (completely disregarding that the current APIs are really just about all that's needed. Imo someone running a website has in their own interest and in their own responsibility to secure their site and servers. WEI is a cheap stupid cop out at best for security concerns and "you WILL be looking at our fucking ads, you fucking data slave" at worst.
I just don't see how a browser could be viable if it wasn't compatible with say Google/ twitter.
I use brave search. If Twitter implements this thing, I guess I'll stop using it completely
My goodness me.
Of course it will be possible to avoid use of any WEI sites, but I think it will be much more difficult than you think. What about internet banking, or government websites, or stack overflow.
We both know that you'll end up using Brave where you can, and some other browser with WEI support.
Haha, you think government and banks update their websites
Yours don't?
Took the government like ten years to stop requiring people to use IE6
This is my take too - Google Search and YouTube especially which are owned by Google.
Even if Chrome had like 5% market share, surely they could just push this anyway? While the Chromium monopoly is partially to blame for this, I'd argue the centralisation of the web is as well.
Sure, "Google Search is useless now, you can't find what you want!", but the vast, vast majority of people still and continue to use it, and nothing will change that most likely.
Google search isn't useless. It's getting worse but still Google is the best search. For a lot of general searches, Duckduckgo and Kagi have been sufficient for me. "What year did WW2 end" "what is the population of Crimea" "north Korean famine 1990s"
But for example I had a picture of a specific motor an employee sent me that I had to find a replacement for online. It's a niche motor we use for a large air compressor. All I had was some model / serial numbers. I tried plugging in different variations of the numbers and "motor" into both Duckduckgo and Kagi with no luck.
On Google, the first result was a PDF of a Honda motor guide that had every single niche Honda motor and I was able to find the model name of the exact motor I needed, which allowed me to find a viable replacement on Ebay.
It hurts me to say it, but the other web searches still haven't reached total parity with Google. I use Duckduckgo as my primary and then when it doesn't find me what I need, I go to Google.
I would use Kagi but after it couldn't find me the engine, I stopped paying my monthly subscription. Until then I was happy with it, but if I'm paying for a service and it isn't any better than the free options..
That's why you can add !g to your search query when you didn't find anything on Brave or DDG
Thanks for the tip, that sounds more convenient than opening Google in a new tab
You could use a SearX instance. It includes google's results.
For what it's worth I'm not saying that - it's just a common argument I've seen online lately in these spaces. I don't actually know if it's true because I don't use Google Search.
You can use Startpage to do a Google search by proxy. Startpage passes your search query to Google and returns the results to you without having to use Google directly.
Google needs to be broken up. Honestly most tech companies do as they have consolidated way too much
Yeah reall I have seen people complain about google search followed by them using google. Neeva was a paid search engine that recently shut down. In theor fairwell message they explained getting people to pay for it was easy but the hardest part was explaing how to change search engines or what the difference between search engine and a broswer
Holy shit can i get a link to this?
https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/20/23731397/neeva-search-engine-google-shutdown
That not the original page I read it one since I was a neeva user I read when they post on the now gone neeva search engine
If Google wanted to push it with only 5% of their userbase wouldn't they be saying goodbye to 95% of their users. I don't think even Google is that insane.
No, because what is the chance people will give up YouTube?
Not very high, I'd say!
How about having the WEI configurable just for particular sites, bit like FoxyProxy.