They are still going to pursue it, just under a different name and rolling-out timeline. What they changed is only the way they are announcing it publicly.
It's going to be "DRM for the Web, but with extra steps".
this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Privacy
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Lets call it what it is, googles attempt to create a situation in which they can ban all competition and establish a global monopoly.
I partially agree. They created a monopoly because they offer the best search engine service. You can't be accused of making a monopoly if your competition is embarrassingly bad and no one wants to use any service but yours.
What they are doing now, regardless of how they gained this monopoly, is ensuring that every cow that feeds on the grass of their field yields profitable milk.
DDG is pretty good and I use it exclusively. Google spams your search results with sponsored links. That's bullshit
Noone would care if they only had a monopoly in the search engine market. But they are also the biggest ad network, email provider and browser maker, and they also own the (effectively only) video platform.
But if you implement something in your browser that allows websites to block anything that isn't an accepted browser (and websites use it because they don't want their precious data to feed random AIs) you effectively prevent any potential competition from crawling websites to build a search index that might threaten your position.
This is what I meant, if everyone is running googles web integrity API it also effectively allows google to ban other browsers from even existing by denying them access to all major sites.
meanwhile apple already did it without even asking.
“The company [Google] claimed that this new API would help combat online fraud and abuse, and that it would do so in a privacy-friendly manner.”
Lied. The word is lied.
Google temporarily delays rollout of their DRM for Web until public attention shifts to something worse they propose that was always a smokescreen.
Yeah that’s the real summary.
The price for privacy and freedom? Eternal Vigilance.
Google will try and try again, so stay watchful everyone.
They will try it again in like two to three years from now. This time they will just do a under the radar and somewhat diluted version of it.
I mean, it was under the radar to begin with. It wasn't on any main google channels, it was mostly only discussed by the developers who handled the project.
The only reason people know about this to begin with is because there were fortunately a lot of people paying attention. I remember the first time I saw anything about it was on HackerNews and it was straight from the dev. Maybe it was even just the github. Either way, it was not advertised in any major way other than not outright being hidden.
When it originally hit, I remember arguments about how its "just a few developers," and "we'll wait until it actually ends up in chrome" and so on. The whole point was that it was still relatively early on in development and was just at proposal stage. This thankfully went from obscure developer news to big worldwide general tech news and Google backed down... for now.
We can be thankful developers with consciences are paying attention, in the meantime.
These, if I am correct, were the original links on HackerNews from around 4 months ago. Not exactly major advertising blitz from Google or anything, mostly wonky/technical documents.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778999 / https://chromestatus.com/feature/5796524191121408
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817305 / https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity
...for now. This isn't a beloved google service that people were relying on. This is the means by which google intents to subjugate and fully enshittify the web. They'll try again under different names until one takes. It only has to work once.
For now.
Tech companies repeatedly float shit people don't want to see if the reaction is mild enough to actually go through with it.
Then they either wait until it is, or mull over ways to sell this as a good idea to consumers.
It was only 5 years ago TotalBiscuit / John Bain was still railing against the initial spread of microtransactions and DLC fragmentation of games.
And now they are utterly and completely ubiquitous.
Wow.. Good riddance.
But yeah I wonder if this is really the end of it.
They will learn from this effort, call it R&D, and start working on something that is effectively worse but break it into smaller pieces. The new project will be less obviously evil at a glance.
‘Google trashes its “DRM for the Web” API for now’ should be the actual headline
It is logical that this is not the end, Google has tried for more than a decade to use some dirty tricks and until now it has always hit its teeth on a rock. It's an eternal game of cat and mouse between Google devs and other devs that override it. Now also helped by the EU and consumer associations that have already obtained million-dollar fines from Google, Fakebook, MS and Amazon for these abusive practices. Users in the US may have problems, because there corporations can roam freely because there are no laws that prevent them from doing so.
Every day I wake up and I'm grateful that I don't live in the land of freedom /s
But seriously, a few million is nothing for these corporations, EU needs to up the game
Yes, but trusting only in the politicians and the bureaucracy, well.... I think that the users themselves should have the initiative too, to do without in the most possible of products and services from the USA, at least those of large corporations and use the most products and services from the EU. It is the consumer himself who determines the market, corporations, to sell create needs where there are none, we must get out of this model and demand what we really need and not blindly use what these corporations say we need.
Until the next time this comes around.
And thousends of devs also working so that Google also runs into a wall next time.