this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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How long until Google starts paying sites to require chrome? The already tried rolling that concept out a few months ago. They only stopped because of the backlash that was publicly associated with it. They already pay major phone manufacturers to have google as their default or only search option.
So who's going to stop them when we start finding that major popular sites suddenly don't work on firefox?
Hopefully the EU
People could start configuring their sites to ban Google Chrome. Give a scary message that says something like "Google Chrome is not allowed on this site for your protection. Google Chrome has severe vulnerabilities that allow for easy infection. An autistic teenager was falsely convicted of selling CP after being infected and now must register for life."
People would switch away from Google Chrome incredibly fast if website owners started posting that.
I like the way you think, but that sounds like a lawsuit with one of the richest companies on the planet behind the prosecution. Could work for sites based outside of US jurisdiction.
They can't sue millions of people.
It could also be made very hard for them to win. All someone has to do is make a site making that claim and their ability to win will be gone. Any defendant can claim they read that site.
They don't sue millions of people. They sue one person and make an example out of them and the chilling effect does the rest. That's how this kind of thing goes.
That's only if everyone else complies.
Plenty of organizations would likely jump in. Someone could make a site alleging the bad thing that happened as the result of Google Chrome and that pretty much tanks the entire case. It would be very hard to prove reckless disregard for the truth when there's a website that alleges the claim. Furthermore, someone could simply write the code and distribute it, and every site displaying it would have grounds for displaying it.
All someone really has to do is find one thing that could potentially be a vulnerability in Google Chrome and they have grounds for making a scary notice about it.
If that does happen, can’t we just spoof our user agent to be chrome?
Their web integrity API they were planning was specifically to prevent that.
I had no idea… didn’t that end up being canceled at some point or am I mistaken?
As it is customary, companies drop bomb shells to gauge their user base reaction. They pull back if the reaction is too strong and slowly reintroduce it piece by piece when the things have cooled down a bit.
The moment they announced their intention to DRM the web meant that they will try to push however they can.
With something like that, it's usually just rebranded and pushed out after backlash calms down.
I think there are more reliable ways to identify your browser. The user-agent is self reported, so not reliable. It's just the simplest option that's usually good enough unless you're doing something malicious.
They won't pay them it will be smarter than that. Possibly with proprietary APIs that only work on chrome etc. some sites already don't work on Firefox.
They'll also further enshitifiy their own services on non chrome browsers.
Then we'll develop add-ons that make the sites pretend Firefox is Chrome. It may not be perfect for a while, but it'll still block ads.
Sounds like they will create a non-corporate version of the internet by accident. Sound good to me, but I feel like it won't fly in EU to well.
When sites see the drop off of users.
Also, Chromite exists.