cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2546109
Read why “Web Environment Integrity” is terrible, and why we must vocally oppose it now. Google’s latest maneuver, if we don’t act to stop it, threatens our freedom to explore the Internet with browsers of our choice.
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Google about to do to www what they did to xmpp
Everyone who uses Chrome (or Brave, Vivaldi, Arc, or anything else that uses Chromium as a base) - you’re helping google extend their power over the open web, and those helping them do this.
It’s a small thing, but Google’s power over the web derives from each of the the millions of people who continue to make Chrome the standard that webdevs cater to.
I don’t think it’s fair to place the blame on the user. It’s not their fault for using a browser they like. Blame those whodient prevent or try to breakup google owning the browser. The damage is done an most of chromium’s base won’t know shit about this or why.
Not true. Brave is a fork of Chromium and will not be implementing WEI.
You’re looking too narrowly. By getting devs to cater to whatever gets rolled out in Blink and v8, google extends the power they have over the whole ecosystem by making any browser that doesn’t follow them look “broken” (as opposed to, not slavishly following everything google does).
It also increases the difficulty of making a competing browser engine by adding tons of complexity (for questionable value), only further entrenching google’s dominance. But at least you get some stupid new CSS3 behaviors (that people will bitch about not working in Firefox or Safari) so I guess it’s worth it.
People who didn’t live through the first browser migration (away from ie6) don’t understand just how insidious browser lock in is.
Mosaic and Netscape would like a word.
In those days the internet was a curiosity, mostly untapped potential. It became a bit different in 2000 +/- 5 years, and started being a livelihood for most of the planet.
