Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/02/googles-plan-to-drm-the-web-goes-against-everything-google-once-stood-for/

by g0xA52A2A • 3 years ago

1068 416 3 years ago

techdirt.com

saagarjha2• 3 years ago

Google used to be cool and now it’s not. Wonder which companies of today will end up completing the cycle tomorrow?

TAForObvReasons• 3 years ago

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain

mg2• 3 years ago

Google was made possible by a platform shift: From desktop apps to websites.

First they positioned themselves very early in the web user experience: After the user turned on their Dell computer, booted Windows and started Internet Explorer, the next step was to use Google.

Then they moved one step closer to the user by building their own browser: Chrome

Then they moved even closer to the user by building their own OS: Android

Then they moved even closer to the user by building their own computer: The Pixel Phone

The question is what the next platform shift could be. And if the big players will miss it so that a new player can emerge. And if there will be a new player which is as smart and driven as the Google founders.

gbin• 3 years ago

Ad Chromebooks too.

worrycue4• 3 years ago

Frankly, I think it’s less “moving closer to the user” and more just securing control over the path users use to get to their service.

Chrome was made to prevent whoever controls the browser from blocking users’ access to Google.

Android was created because they were afraid Apple would block them on mobile.

All tech companies do this kind of positioning.

Apple made Apple Maps to make sure Google Maps isn’t the only choice on iOS fearing Google could withdraw Google Maps and hurt the utility of iOS devices - at least in the short term.

It’s why Apple made Safari and enforces it as the only browser on iOS.

Apple learnt relatively early the dangers of being dependent on another company, https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=MacBasic.txt

izacus• 3 years ago

The next platform shift are obviously DRM locked closed app platforms like TikTok, ChatGPT, Meta ecosystem and Apple apps. No APIs, no freedom.

Everyone is very actively working on making the browser dead and serving you content exclusively via corporate controled apps on locked platforms.

You can kill off Chrome, but the result isn't going to be a renessaince of Firefox, but a move into your content being only available on locked iPhone.

tannhaeuser• 3 years ago

Google was made possible by US antitrust turning a blind eye towards Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and YouTube. Considering Alphabet is dominating both search and ads and also offers services via searches, the EU commission already hinted at a breakup as a viable measure to lead the web out of its misery.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...

ender1235• 3 years ago

Remember when they use to say “Don’t be evil”?

colordrops2• 3 years ago

crazy that they just unashamedly removed it.

offices• 3 years ago

Are there any cool companies left? I think consumers and employees have become more cynical.

    - OpenAI is already 'evil'.
    - Apple has staying power but I still wouldn't consider it cool anymore.
    - Likewise Tesla.

NoobPretender2• 3 years ago

What did OpenAI do? I know they refused to share their proprietary model even though they're called "Open", is this what you're referring to?

TekMol• 3 years ago

As I understand it, Google wants to add some signal to http requests which tell the server that the user is using a system made from some specific software. For example an unaltered stock Android phone.

What would be the one-sentence technical explanation of how Google wants to achieve this?

ohgodplsno2• 3 years ago

Every request first goes through "trusted attesters" (read: Google and pretty much Google alone) along with some information about your device (hardware information, browser data, executable hash, etc) for them to sign it and decide whether or not you're legit. See the Play Integrity API on Android for similar implementations.

Buttons840• 3 years ago

So there's some hardware level support for this? Could you man-in-the-middle the connection and alter the message to say whatever needs to be said to convince the other computer that my computer is working the way it expects?

danielheath2• 3 years ago

Most chips have a TPM which holds a key. You can’t access the key without expensive and specialised equipment. The key is signed by the manufacturer’s key (google, in this case).

The TPM has an API that returns a signature of the running OS code. If you tamper with the OS, you get a signature mismatch.

est• 3 years ago

What would be the one-sentence technical explanation of how Google wants to achieve this?

Denuvo for browsers. Rootkit disguised as a browser from your favorite Ads service provider.

verisimi• 3 years ago

Google have long been a trojan horse for corporate and governmental interests. This was clear with the approach they took with rss - make a fantastic product to draw in lots of users, then kill it as rss disintermediated the web, with little scope for google to direct you to where they want you to go.

I suppose they told us what they are when they scrapped their "don't be evil" motto.

dotancohen• 3 years ago

The article applies this terrific Doctrow quote about Secure Computing to WEI:

  > Should your computer be able to be compelled to tell the truth, even when you would prefer that it lie on your behalf? Should there be a facility in your computer that you can’t control that other people can remotely trigger?

It is an apt application of the quote, and a fundamental question that is likely based on culture and each persons or organizations past experience with abusive overlords. I personally opposed it.

komali23• 3 years ago

Doctorow demonstrably knows more about this, and has thought about this, than me, but to me the answer seems somewhat straightforward:

Should your computer be able to be compelled to tell the truth

In the context of the soldered chip that "can't be removed" that can report the "truth" of the kernel etc, the answer to me is a simple, "it's impossible to know if the computer is telling the truth or not." Go to defcon once and you'll know this as true as well. No matter what, there's always a way in. There's always a hack. The harder you make it to hack, the more motivated those crazy people at defcon will be to break it.

Should there be a facility in your computer that you can’t control that other people can remotely trigger?

"Other people" will never be "just the people you want." It will always include criminals, stalkers, and authoritarian governments. So the answer is a simple, "no."

alex7734• 3 years ago

No matter what, there's always a way in. There's always a hack. The harder you make it to hack, the more motivated those crazy people at defcon will be to break it.

Absolutely, but I don't want to have to use 0days like a criminal or to open up a TPM chip in an $1M electron microscope just to have my PC render webpages the way I want it to (without ads that is).

tremon3• 3 years ago

I think the importance of the quote is not in the answer, it's about how to frame the problem.

rvnx2• 3 years ago

A bit similar dilemma with self-driving cars that they don't necessarily serve their owners but rather "what is right" (aka the truth); in case of unavoidable collision, should they save the interests of the current owners, or the interests of the manufacturer, or the interests of everybody on average, etc.

pawelmurias• 3 years ago

Trying to avoid collisions even if theyseem unavoidable seems like it would lead to more robust software then solving trolley problems and driving over lower value people on purpose.

zoom6628• 3 years ago

I lived in china and put effort into de-googling my phone. Now I’m back in the open world and seems need do all over again.

Must be a biz opp to run a proxy that strips everything google from pages and web communications. I would pay a few $/month to not be farmed without consent.

komali23• 3 years ago

No need to proxy, you can just use https://brave.com/. Add a pihole to strip it from other devices and non-browser web traffic.

robin_reala2• 3 years ago

Using a browser powered by Google’s technology stack is hardly deGoogling.

youngtaff• 3 years ago

That would be the same Brave that was replacing ads on sites with their own ones?

stjohnswarts2• 3 years ago

Options are Linux, and half broken "phone"

or Apple, the hardware is their profit center, as well as getting you to buy their software product, but your info isn't sold to 3rd parties (yet?)

or Google (circumvent some of it with firefox+adblock origin)

or just don't participate at all and get a flip burner.

Lev1a• 3 years ago

~~adblock~~ origin

FTFY:

uBlock Origin

barrotes• 3 years ago

Why 'half broken "phone"'? I used GrapheneOS for a while now, it works pretty well imho, the only problem I encountered till now is with maps. Finding a good and no-play-services maps app is a major issue. I use OsmAnd and it's quite mediocre compared to Play Services based options. With that (important) exception, I love the de-googled experience. The funny part is that to be de-googled the best choice is buying... a Google Pixel phone.

ftaghn4• 3 years ago

The problem with degoogling your phone in the west is that you may hit something that requires a non-rooted, pristine manufacturer provided rom to work.

In my case, my bank won't allow me to do online payments unless I validate the payments through a smartphone app as the 2fa. They do not do texting/sms based 2fa anymore.

The app will refuse to launch on a rooted phone or a custom rom. To me, this means a degoogled phone is absolutely unusable. I can't do without being able to use my credit card online.

This is in fact the sort of thing that will happen soon to the web if browser attestation becomes a thing. I can already see it coming, my bank rejecting logins from browsers that are not untempered, Google-provided.

rc_mob3• 3 years ago

Authoritarianism is always creeping in. Its a force or evil that just never stops.

smitty1e• 3 years ago

Stipulate that Google itself has noble intent at the moment.

There is zero control over the future.

That is, we don't have to ascribe malice to Google while running away from this potentially evil mechanism.

c0l0• 3 years ago

In 2012, I interviewed at Google Ireland for an SRE position. I ended up not taking the job due to family issues, but I somewhat regretted having missed the opportunity to tackle Google-sized problems and make FAANG-sized money for a few years after.

This feeling has ceased entirely in the meantime, due to what Google has become, and how its understanding of its role in the world seems to have shifted. Or maybe its true corporate nature has only become more apparent? I am not sure - but I was a firm believer that Google was a force of good in the corporate landscape of the 00s, and I am fully convinced it is not any more. It actually makes me sad, and I am afraid of the damage it will end up doing to the places (the 'net) and communities (most of the FOSS world) I love.

stjohnswarts2• 3 years ago

They used to be innovative and forward looking and send to be having fun at contributing new tech. Under Pichai they seem to only want to lock in their position, kill all competitors, convert the WWW to GWWW

robertlagrant• 3 years ago

It's also been a massive boost to FOSS as well. I don't think Google is a single entity with a true nature. It's just people deciding things. Sometimes we get VP8 open sourced, a world-level value adding move. Sometimes we get them running an experiment whose intentions should've been better articulated.

rvnx2• 3 years ago

Some gifts along the way like AMP aka "Better internet"

JeremyNT• 3 years ago

Certainly, there are many incredibly talented and passionate programmers there. These people want to make interesting things and many of them want to share them with the world. The company has gotten to where it is by being an exciting place to work for these people and supporting their endeavours.

But let's not fool ourselves, Google at the end of the day is still an ad company. So while we can appreciate what they've contributed using this approach, we can never ignore the fact that ultimately business priorities will always trump everything else, which means they can use their creations against us on the turn of a dime.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

Money is a hell of a drug.

Early Google seemed to be genuine and upstanding fellas. The dotcom crash made everyone scramble to pay the bills and monetize which is where the seeds were sown for what we have today.

JohnFen4• 3 years ago

I think Google did used to be a force for good. I even got happy when they bought the notorious DoubleClick, because I was confident that they would be able to change the scumbag online ad industry for the better.

That didn't happen, though. What happened instead is that Google became a scumbag online ad company.

Animats2• 3 years ago

It's time to start lobbying hard for an antitrust breakup of Google. This DRM plan, as abuse of a monopoly position, provides more political coverage for a forced breakup.

It's pretty clear how to break up Alphabet, because it grew mostly by acquisition.

- Google - search, ads on search pages and nothing more.

- DoubleClick - third party ads on other sites.

- Analytics - services to web sites.

- Cloud - the money-losing data center service. Probably gets sold to AWS or Hurricane Electric.

- Android - phones and similar devices

- Chrome - browsers

- YouTube - streaming content. Probably gets sold to Netflix or AT&T or Comcast.

- Waymo - self-driving cars. Probably gets sold to a car company.

- Alphabet - all the other stuff.

Now, some of these have conflicting interests. That's a good thing. With Chrome separated from Google and Doubleclick, and forced to fight for market share, it's not in Chrome's interest to prevent blocking ads from DoubleClick or Google. Google wants people to see ads on search pages, while Doubleclick wants people to leave the search site and see ads elsewhere. Now there's competition.

Antitrust action against Google is already underway. The State of Texas and several state attorneys general have a case pending.[1] There are other cases.[2] All these cases benefit from Google's move to entrench their monopoly by technical means.

So make lots of noise politically about that. It's quite likely to make Google dump this proposal, on the advice of their antitrust lawyers.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-05/google-an...

[2] https://www.lanierlawfirm.com/google-antitrust-lawsuits-expl...

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

I fully agree with a breakup but arguably other than Search, DoubleClick, and Youtube, none of the others are solvent without ad money.

On thing I feel we are still missing is for FSF, Wiki, Archive.org, etc. to effectively gather enough cash to start lobbying in politics and in industry much in the same way Meta and Alphabet do. Politicians/legislators are ridiculously cheap to lobby in the grand scheme of things.

pyrale4• 3 years ago

none of the others are solvent without ad money.

This is a consequence of Google's structuring. If the pricing is unrealistic after a split, it's also currently an example of price dumping preventing competitors from emerging.

mrweasel2• 3 years ago

Chrome is probably the best example. I don't really know how people would expect that to be a company or even a division under Alphabet. It's rather unfortunate, because I don't think Google can be trusted to build a browser anymore.

Android is also a weird case. All funding is coming from Google, but the revenue isn't coming from licensing of the OS. Separating out Android and require manufacturers to pay a license wouldn't kill it at this point, but it could fragment the Android market. Like with Chrome, Google isn't the best steward, because their interests are primarily data mining and advertising, but building the best mobile operating system.

DoubleClick, analytics, Youtube and search are the divisions I'd go for if I where a regulator, but there where would Chrome and Android go?

DeathArrow2• 3 years ago

That's wishful thinking. Politicians will never break up Google since they benefit from it.

caesil• 3 years ago

Fundamentally, Big Tech is an outsized part of what sets America's economy apart. Breaking up any of them would potentially be a footgun.

mrweasel2• 3 years ago

It's like banks, it depends on your logic. We have systemically important banks, banks that will always be bailed out. You have two ways of dealing with that scenario, either prepare to save these companies when they fail or make them non-systemic so we can afford to let them fail.

What I fail to understand is why it's better for society to support these "to big to fail" companies. Why not break them up. Why not plan break them up if they become to "important" for a lack of a better term? How can you not see it as a political failing that taxpayers have to be ready to save a company, just because you failed to bring it under control?

It's mind boggling.

bregma2• 3 years ago

Politicians would never break up Standard Oil or Bell Telephone either.

hutzlibu4• 3 years ago

"Chrome - browsers"

And the money is coming from where? Chrome exists mostly, so the ad buisness gets more data and they can influence the direction of the web.

Seperate that and there will be no more chrome as there is no other source of income. (Except maybe a little bit from ChromeOS).

Otherwise I get it, it is mostly politics to threaten google to reach this.:

"It's quite likely to make Google dump this proposal, on the advice of their antitrust lawyers."

But a breakup of google(alphabet) is something very unrealistic and actually not something I want to see, unless we also break up Microsoft at the same time. Otherwise we end up with Microsoft dominating the web again. No thank you, I still remember those times.

Andrew_nenakhov• 3 years ago

Well maybe from search engines, who'd pay to be the default search option? So far, it mostly worked for Mozilla.

Joeri• 3 years ago

Money for developing chrome is not an issue. Google search could pay chrome to be the primary search engine just like they pay mozilla. Microsoft could fund chromium based on their use in Edge. Etc…

onli2• 3 years ago

Mozilla makes money with Firefox. Brave does with brave. It is not impossible that Chrome could. ChromeOS, default search engine, integrated VPN offering, ... The browser has a monopoly market share, income would be huge fast.

mnd999• 3 years ago

Call me old skool, but how about charging for it?

account423• 3 years ago

But a breakup of google(alphabet) is something very unrealistic and actually not something I want to see, unless we also break up Microsoft at the same time. Otherwise we end up with Microsoft dominating the web again. No thank you, I still remember those times.

This isn't the 90s anymore. Smartphones exist, where Microsoft is irrelevant.

wslh• 3 years ago

And the money is coming from where? Chrome exists mostly, so the ad buisness gets more data and they can influence the direction of the web.

This is their business problem, not ours.

Since Chrome, the browser, is in some way a new OS paradigm we can think that the open source community would take it seriously to build a new one and/or improve/fork Firefox in the same way we have Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc, etc. I think the main issue is UX/UI where the open source community doesn't excel, yet.

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

Sure, but then you have to militate also for half of the fortune 500, most of them having bigger impacts.

bushbaba• 3 years ago

Cloud would be a huge profit maker as YouTube, search, ads would all then pay cloud for hosting. And they’d have no where else to go.

KnobbleMcKnees2• 3 years ago

Further, selling GCP to AWS is not how we "break down monopolies".

samwillis• 3 years ago

This may seem like a good idea but so much of Google's power comes from the Search + Search Ads monopoly. That is where they are anticompetitive to the max, that is where a change needs to happen. Splitting everything else off doesn't solve the core problem.

Within Search + Search Ads you have a platform where Google are/have:

- the sole vendor of a digital asset - ads

- the sole marketplace for that asset

- a closed algorithmic trading system with no public auditing

- no public ledger or auditing showing who bid what

- currently one of the main customers for those ads (advertising their own products)

Along with that you as an advertiser have to install tracking on your site allowing Google to see every transaction, all revenue, every customer, of your business. The level of spying on the advertisers is insane, when seen in combination with the closed source algorithm and market for the ads the potential for manipulation is enormous.

The whole ads platform is built for extracting every last cent of margin from advertisers businesses. It's anticompetitive, monopolistic, and to some extent even a protection racket.

The most important "breakup" needs to be the ads business from everything else, including search. That's going to hurt, and I don't have the answers to how to make it work, but changes are needed.

I suspect a "breakup" isn't on the cards, maybe some strong regulation of online ad marketplaces, ring fencing them from the rest of the business and auditing of the platform?

EMIRELADERO• 3 years ago

The most important "breakup" needs to be the ads business from everything else, including search. That's going to hurt, and I don't have the answers to how to make it work, but changes are needed.

You can be happy then.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...

The press release doesn't mention it, but the actual court document asks the court to:

"Order the divestiture of, at minimum, the Google Ad Manager suite, including both Google’s publisher ad server, DFP, and Google’s ad exchange, AdX, along with any additional structural relief as needed to cure any anticompetitive harm"

bombolo• 3 years ago

Let's not forget maps, where they arbitrarily decide to show you a shop/hotel/restaurant 5km away when there is one 200m away.

pydry3• 3 years ago

The ideal breakup would be between search engine and index.

The index should be treated as a utility like water or electric that search engines purchase access to for a regulated fee.

You can then have a thousand competing search engines started in garages with their own ranking algorithms and ads but realistically there are only ever going to be a few indexes. Thats the part that requires enormous data centers and dedicated power stations to run.

rocho• 3 years ago

Even if you split the search and ads divisions into two companies, what prevents them from entering into a partnership and keep doing whatever they do now?

troyvit• 3 years ago

I feel like if you broke up the browser from search then the elimination of third party cookies will magically fall off the table because you break the browser's integration with the engine and the ad platform which made that elimination profitable for Alphabet (and a knife in the lungs for "open web" advertisers).

I hate web advertising but it's the model we've got so bear with me.

Once third party cookies are back on the table it helps level the playing field. Programmatic advertising becomes profitable again and all those small players can get back to competing. Only this time they're just competing with each other and doubleclick.

Maybe momentum carries forward and third party cookies are eliminated anyway (such faith in humanity). If that's the case then once again the playing field levels a bit more and everybody is working with the same blinders on.

Search will still be awful because of google.com's market share and its enablement of click bait and echo chambers, but search will always be awful and five years from now everybody will have their own LLM instead of search anyway (and five years after that LLMs will suck because there's no new data to train against but that's another rant).

Analytics will change a lot. Google not legally being able to integrate the data it scrapes from GA into its own products means that there's a lot less of a reason to stick just with their ecosystem. They'll still lag behind as far as privacy goes, so third party analytics providers will actually be able to get their toes in the door.

Anyway like you I agree that a breakup probably isn't going to happen. Most of the people who would legislate a break-up don't even understand the internet or what alphabet is, or what google does.

Cthulhu_• 3 years ago

Nit: Google Cloud has been profitable this year: https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/25/google-cloud-turns-profit-...

It's actually perfectly fine to lose money; you have to invest before you can start making a profit, and services like Google Cloud can be money printers once they're established.

But all the cloud providers are competing hard, pumping money into 3rd parties / partners that will then sell it and set it up at companies. I was at one company (a famous flower exchange in the Netherlands) that was in the process of moving all their workloads - hundreds of services, from people's office suites to high volume exchanges - to AWS, and I'm confident that the one guy, the new manager of the IT department, has Connections with Amazon to help sell AWS to companies like this. Because once they're in, it'll cost millions and years to move out again; I don't think many companies will do a sideways step often and move from e.g. AWS to GCP.

adwww• 3 years ago

Also I don't think selling GCP to AWS really helps competition.

eddythompson80• 3 years ago

But all the cloud providers are competing hard

They are not competing hard enough. (Or maybe they competing too well? I don’t know)

I used to work for AWS then Azure, and now just do consulting for both. The amount of companies I come across with the chief complaint of “We pay too much for AWS/Azure” is staggering.

In a healthy market with healthy competition, you’d think that would never be a statement to be made. No one says “I pay too much for Chevron, I’ll only buy gas from Total”

AWS, Azure, (and wth) GCP are in the tech support business, not infrastructure resell business. You’d think a cloud only need to sell VMs but there is literally no money in that. That’s the part that “competes hard” also the losing part. As a cloud provider, you want to be out of that shitty business. You want to be SaaS. SaaS is the magic work in Cloud. Selling Software is magic. It made Microsoft in the 80s/90s. It made Oracle in the 90s/2000s. It made Google in the 2000s. Selling software is an incredibly lucrative business. It is where you want to be.

100% of companies I consult for don’t spend money on VMs in the cloud. They always spend it on “log analytics” or “data warehouse” or “serverless”

Why hire a Postgres admin when you can pay AWS/Azure 200k a month for postgresql “managed” offering where you can email them whenever things are not working and have _them_ hire the Postgres experts who would look at your usage/queries/tables and suggest an index here, or a stored proc there.

gumby3• 3 years ago

It's actually perfectly fine to lose money; you have to invest before you can start making a profit, and services like Google Cloud can be money printers once they're established.

It's not fine if you use a monopoly in one area to buy your way into another. That's one of the core tenets in antitrust (back when it was being enforced, at least).

dragonwriter3• 3 years ago

Browsers aren't a business for Google (or any of the other big browser suppliers), they are an adjunct to other businesses, in Google’s case a way to shape the web—initially through client performance—to support the kind of online app environment that Google’s actual profit making ventures rely on.

riedel• 3 years ago

I totally agree. IMHO regulators should have been looking at safety net attestation already because it effectively destroys the claim of Google that OEM have a choice and it is not Google's monopoly. The problem is that Google is really good at just keeping below the radar (only the few people will notice that are not using Apple, Google or Microsoft products, which probably does not include any politicians, the broad public or other influential individuals)

With this thing it is the same. The problem is: nobody will care. And I think everyone who should care will look away again, because it is just too complicated to explain.

The core problem is that a minority raises this concern and this minority is not loud enough. We really need to nag out banks etc if they do not allow to use de-google Android. There should be public visible lists of the few 'good' guys left. Not even tech magazines seem to pick up this topic.

I think the only thing to do for now is really actually using free browsers and free operating systems and on the other hand raise the issues (literally on GitHub?) as loud as possible. The world is just lacking enough web activism. The only loud thing about freedom of the web is web3 and crypto, but obviously to me this is just backed by some people who like keep the buzz up to make some more money with speculation.

charcircuit13• 3 years ago

IMHO regulators should have been looking at safety net attestation already because it effectively destroys the claim of Google that OEM have a choice and it is not Google's monopoly.

Apps that require play services are just as much exclusive as apps that require attestation. Phones that don't use play services can create their own attestation API and partener with apps to support it.

tremon3• 3 years ago

Cloud - the money-losing data center service. Probably gets sold to AWS

Your solution to breaking up a large monopoly is to boost another (quasi-)monopoly? I'd suggest that both Amazon and Microsoft should be prevented from taking over those assets.

mcny• 3 years ago

Yes, we will need to evaluate and approve each acquisition but I am not sure if it is even possible to break up Google.

I don't have a solution to the problem but I know this — we can't do the stupidity of breaking alphabet into a bunch of small baby alphabets like what we did with at&t.I think that was complete incompetence, if not corruption.

We can't have a bunch of regional companies. However, we can't do what OP said either, even with your safeguards. Amazon and Microsoft don't care if they get Google cloud for themselves to buy. Either they get to buy it or it dies, they still get its customers.

I think someone else said elsewhere if Microsoft abuses MsEdge, break up Microsoft as well but that's the kicker. That will take time. Microsoft can and will abuse it's position during this time. I don't think it is possible to do a "safe landing" here. An alphabet Google will either be a nothing burger like the AT&T break-up or will be very painful to ordinary people, at least for some time.

qwytw5• 3 years ago

But if it's indeed "money-losing" wouldn't it be just worth as much as their equipment is?

Also if we are talking about MS/Amazon/Google's cloud businesses we shouldn't ignore that these companies themselves are generally their own biggest clients which is something they could leverage to a significant degree to outcompete their rivals (initially at least)

greyface-• 3 years ago

Cloud [...] sold to [...] Hurricane Electric

I'm a customer of both GCP and HE and this would be a really, really weird merger. Not saying I don't want to see it. :)

thwooi4u234• 3 years ago

Google's ad business (and the need to track ad conversions) affects every business sector it's involved in. From Maps (where you loc. is tracked for 'in-store' conversions' to your Google ID which tracks which ads you click, to Chrome pushing for mechanisms to track conversions after cookie-blocking has become standardized.

You kind of understand their needs (since ads fund search and everything), but I also don't trust them not to 'over-optimize' (esp. given the unchecked powers, both political and technocratic, they have).

tyingq• 3 years ago

- Cloud - the money-losing data center service. Probably gets sold to AWS or Hurricane Electric.

I don't think any of this would happen, but I'd rather see it go to Cloudflare so there's still 3 "big player" choices. They seem to be trying to head down the cloud provider path anyway.

jimbo_joe• 3 years ago

This will immediately kill some of the parts (Chrome, Analytics, Alphabet) and increase the antitrust issues in others (Cloud, YouTube)

amelius5• 3 years ago

So make lots of noise politically about that.

How? I've seen similar ideas but the best they do is resonate really nicely in this echo chamber.

civilitty3• 3 years ago

Send letters and call your Senators and House representatives. Donate to them the maximum you’re legally allowed to and when you get the staffer call asking for more money, give them an (respectful) earful.

All it takes most of the time is a dozen people pushing the issue for a rep to make up their mind on a bill. On contentious issues, a few hundred persistent constituents will convince even Senators in large states.

Seriously it’s not that hard when it’s not a culture war issue. The vast majority of the time our politicians get bought out for a pittance like $10k in contributions. It doesn’t take much to bend them the other way when coming from voters.

Speaking from experience.

TheSpiceIsLife• 3 years ago

Your solution to Alphabet abusing their position in the market is to consolidate some parts of its business in to its present competition.

I don’t see how that increases competition.

Ialdaboth• 3 years ago

Wholeheartedly agree. And we shouldn't stop at Google : a large part of western capitalism in 2023 looks pretty much like a dystopian landscape out of a cyberpunk novel. It's a democratic nightmare in the making.

WarOnPrivacy3• 3 years ago

a large part of western capitalism in 2023 looks pretty much like a dystopian landscape out of a cyberpunk novel. It's a democratic nightmare in the making.

My take is that this process is inevitable while the following is in play: DoJ rubberstamps monopoly creating mergers, merger desiring companies fund campaigns & otherwise gift politicians, voters keep reelecting those politicians while not overly objecting to their corruption, news orgs fail to cover mergers in a historical context while generally preferring fluff and stenography.

Those wishing to expose flaws in my analysis can use the space below.

charcircuit13• 3 years ago

it's not in Chrome's interest to prevent blocking ads from DoubleClick or Google

But it would still be in their interest in preventing ad fraud on the web.

account423• 3 years ago

Why? Users don't care about ad fraud and neither should the user agent.

Aunche• 3 years ago

I don't see why people think that antitrust is a magical silver bullet that will solve everything. Breaking up Google will be great for Google's paying customers, mostly advertisers. That doesn't mean it would it would help the users. If anything, each broken up piece of Google would have less scrutiny that the whole.

mcv2• 3 years ago

It's ultimately all about ads, though. Ads on the search page, ads in Android aps, ads on web pages, ads in or around YouTube videos, and several big data sets that help them figure out which ads you are most likely to respond to.

Although the Chrome team would prefer not to block ads, I'm pretty sure there's some pressure on them to reduce the number of users using ad blockers.

actuator• 3 years ago

This is such a naive and for lack of a better word stupid take

YouTube - streaming content. Probably gets sold to Netflix or AT&T or Comcast.

Make Netflix more powerful? In what world is that good for competition

WarOnPrivacy3• 3 years ago

> YouTube - streaming content. Probably gets sold to Netflix or AT&T or Comcast.
This is such a naive and for lack of a better word stupid take

What is the not naive, not stupid, clearly-more-beneficial-than-what-we-have action that should be taken with youtube?

atomicfiredoll• 3 years ago

I worry the enshitification of a monopoly like Google, who now has it's hands deep in the workings of things like the web and email, means their supposed mission of "organizing the world's information" has devolved into "putting as many paid middlemen in front of the world's information as possible," or walling parts of that information off completely.

This goes without saying, but we shouldn't let one company be solely responsible for managing the "world's" information. "Organizing" sounds benign, but they've clearly extended past that.

I don't know that you're totally on point about how to break Alphabet up, but you're right that it should be. If information wants to be free, we should also re-examine how to ensure it stays that way in a world where Google isn't it's supposed shepherd.

dcchambers• 3 years ago

How exactly does taking one of the 3 major cloud providers and selling it to the largest of them help with monopoly/antitrust?

Besides IIRC Google cloud is actually profitable these days. No need to find a buyer.

delfinom3• 3 years ago

The problem with Chrome is it would have no funding unless we suddenly end up with subscription browsers.

It also means the fall of Firefox because they are still dependent on the Google moneytit.

The future I see in this direction is Chrome ends up getting a free easy takeover/hijack by Microsoft since they are have no problem throwing money at Edge.

geysersam3• 3 years ago

How would Chrome make money? Right now they get a blank check from Google because dominance on the web is their business model. But if they're not supposed to sell out users interests to the ad-company, how are they supposed to earn any revenue? Sell Chrome licenses?

acd10j• 3 years ago

Just like how Firefox earns money, sell default search engine rights to highest bidder (google, bing) etc , Chrome itself can become billions of dollar business.

sdfghswe2• 3 years ago

- Google - search, ads on search pages and nothing more.
- DoubleClick - third party ads on other sites.

No, hard disagree. One of the things that gives google its position of power is that its both an ad exchange and a publisher (as participant in said exchange).

The correct way of breaking is NOT search+ads vs third party ads. It's search vs ads.

Make google a publisher that DOESN'T own an ad exchange and make it compete for search ad revenue on equal footing with everyone else. Lets see how well it does (I'm guessing not well).

Same goes for facebook.

zaphar• 3 years ago

It is highly unlikely that Android, Chrome, and Analytics can be viable businesses on their own. I can perhaps see a viable path for analytics if a lot of things go their way but those three are almost entirely successful because they are subsidized by the other businesses. Youtube, and the other ads business can probably survive okay on their own but Chrome and Android I suspect can't.

throwaway201606• 3 years ago

All can be fully viable, very profitable, very large independent businesses.

Android Based on information obtained by Oracle in a lawsuit, Android had, as of 2010-ish, generated $31bn for google

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-generated-google-31...

Chrome: Browsers make money by

- sharing revenue from ( product and service ) ad searches

- prioritization in search engine results in the browser ( eg being set up as the default search engine)

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-m...

It is estimated, for instance, that as of 2021, Google was paying Apple $15bn for default browser placement

https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/17/google_apple_chrome_i...

Google Analytics:

This is much harder to research - since looking for 'revenue' with 'Google Analytics' simply shows how to use the tool to track revenue for 'your' site if you are a Google Analytics user and my Google-fu fails at a quick remedy for that.

Best quick result would be a proxy i.e. competitor revenue. MixPanel is a standalone Google Analytics competitor and it makes $96MM from that business

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mixpanel

pc86• 3 years ago

I know it's just a hypothetical but YouTube being sold to Netflix or god forbid a century-old telecom company sounds awful to me, unless they let it continue to run as basically a completely separate entity - possible under something like Netflix or another tech-forward streaming company, nigh impossible under something like Comcast.

I would hope YouTube could just operate as its own company. Certainly there's enough traffic, and it makes Google billions so presumably there's enough for it to survive on its own.

florakel• 3 years ago

Government should force google to give competitors access to its search index so that they have a real opportunity to build a competing service on top of it, AI or search. The same way monopoly telcos were forced to open infrastructure to competing service provides.

Google products are getting increasingly crappy. Would be great to see what others could build with their information monopoly.

local_issues• 3 years ago

Google and it's employees are, combined, one of the largest DNC donors. This will never, ever happen.

vondur• 3 years ago

No one pays for web browsers, I doubt Chrome would be a viable separate company.

hakfoo• 3 years ago

Rather than sharding the company, and getting stuck in endless discussions of where exactly to draw lines and what business units are unsustainable, why not nationalize it?

The "projecty" things like Chrome and Android and Waymo are arguably money sinks that will produce things of significant public value over time-- what if we funded them like other research probjects, with the understanding that the commercial applications will either generate public revenue or directly enhance domestic competitiveness. Imagine if in 5 years, the American carmakers had highly discounted access to Waymo's self-driving technology, but Mercedes and BMW still have to roll their own or license it at an intentionally hostile price?

The revenue-generating stuff could be "commoditized" -- turn it into white-label products they'll resell to all comers. You no longer go to Google, you go to a Google Reseller who provides their own ad or subscription monetization model to pay for the underlying infrastructure cost. Since they all have the same core index, they start from strong competitive parity, and then they can focus on their differentating features-- extended custom indexes, more tools, etc.

nullc• 3 years ago

Your computing device is your agent, more than any doctor, priest, or lawyer-- you share greater intimacies with it, and you have far less ability to go about an ordinary life without access to one. Your computers mediate an increasing share of your interactions with other people, with the world at large. You need one to communicate, to obtain essential services. You take it into your home, into your bedroom. It should be required to act in your best interests and it certainly should not against your best interests.

This shouldn't be an unusual demand or even a demand at all-- it should be table stakes.

Even back when the concept of Free Software had just become an identifiable thing people advocated it in terms of respecting the user. But for a long time the disrespect was largely banal-- rent seeking, over priced, indifference to features or bugs that matter to you, rules that benefit the author but didn't care about the user's needs. The fact that software could actively and intentionally work against its users wasn't a surprise-- the freedom to inspect, modify, and share the results answers those risks too, at least in theory. But back then it wasn't a common problem. Somehow software and systems that actively betray their users became common, even normalized. And in large part it seems most people never noticed.

skybrian• 3 years ago

This is attributing intentions to Google when it's unclear what they're going to do. Probably even unclear to them. Not all anti-fraud measures are DRM. If "holdout sets" get implemented then it can't be used as DRM, because it will randomly fail.

What we know now is that they wanted to run an experiment to gather some data. Since it's in Chromium, they needed to explain it, and they explained it poorly.

ogn3rd• 3 years ago

It's not unclear. They "lost" 22 Billion due to ad blockers.

midoridensha4• 3 years ago

That's nothing. I actually lost a trillion dollars just now. Apple is worth about $1T, and because Apple and its shareholders didn't simply gift me their entire company, I've now lost $1T. And that's just a drop in the bucket for money I've lost in the last few minutes!

devsda• 3 years ago

Holdout sounds like it is explicitly added to ward off any criticisms insinuating DRM.

If a server is not denying access for clients with no valid attestation then what exactly are the servers gaining from implementing WEI?

CAPTCHAs also reasonably prove that the user is a human and legitimate but not all captcha challenges are solveable by humans in one go.

Businesses have denied access for those failures and they just repeat the challenge until the captcha is solved successfully. If the failures are less per client they can easily be treated as tradeoff against security.

What's stopping websites from doing the same with WEI? They can always deny access and repeatedly request attestation until a positive reply comes.

This is acceptable for those "attested" clients where the failures are random and within an upper bound. But a client without attestation can always be denied or they can be shown different limited content altogether.

In both the cases the unapproved clients are at a disadvantage.

hurutparittya• 3 years ago

I 100% agree with this. But even if holdouts could magically prevent the abuse of this API there is still a massive issue. Once this standard gets wider adoption and it's time to boil the frog further literally all it takes to disable holdouts is editing a single value in the attester code. They will justify it by saying holdouts are no longer needed because 98% of clients are already compliant.

matheusmoreira• 3 years ago

Bullshit. Stop assuming the trillion dollar corporation is incompetent and blameless. They know exactly what they are doing. Remote attestation allows them to determine that a web page has been "tampered with". Tampering includes deleting ads and corporate spyware as well as user scripts, extensions and automation. It is obvious how Google and all other corporations stand to gain from such technology.

rplnt• 3 years ago

Google might have pretended to stood for something, but they have been an evil corporation since they have been a corporation. That's what corporations do by design.

One relevant example is that they've been doing the "only for ie5+" with their services for 10+ years now. They killed most of their browser competition not by having a good product, but by having or buying up good services that they used to force chrome onto users - voluntarily (billions worth of advertisements) or not (lies about compatibility, performance or outright blocking other UAs).

worrycue4• 3 years ago

That’s not how I remembered it. Chrome really was a good browser and I would argue is still a good browser (for now).

IE got displaced by Firefox’s predecessors because MS got caught napping - they disbanded the IE team thinking they have won. Firefox simply got outcompeted by Chrome as Google went crazy making it faster and faster. Firefox fell behind often enough that Chrome managed to take almost all of its market share.

I’m not happily with Chrome’s dominance, and Google’s abuse of its market position, but it was a good product for most of its life span.

maccard• 3 years ago

Firefox simply got outcompeted by Chrome as Google went crazy making it faster and faster.

I disagree - if that was the case then people would be switching back to Firefox now. Firefox got outcompeted by chrome by Google adding a "works better in chrome" button to their home pages.

dao-• 3 years ago

This is partly rewriting history. Yes, Chrome literally outperformed Firefox, but there are other parts to this story. First, Google pulled engineers it had paid to work on Firefox, including the project lead, to kick-start Chrome instead. That's fair game (and Mozilla's fault for not seeing it coming), but it obviously set back Firefox as Mozilla had to scramble to fill those gaps without much of a forewarning. Secondly and perhaps most importantly, Google dumped countless millions of marketing money and often engaged in dark patterns to promote Chrome, e.g. bundling it with random shareware and freeware that would automatically make Chrome the default browser. That was even before they paid laptop vendors to preinstall Chrome, something that Mozilla could never afford, and Google could only afford because of its monopoly in search / advertising.

fuzzy22• 3 years ago

That’s the “nerd history”, which I mostly agree with. Normal users however don’t care much about performance and whatnot. Their PC came with Chrome, so they use it. If you give them some other browser, they probably won’t be able to tell the difference.

Chrome didn’t “win” because it was good. It won because of Google’s hyper-aggressive marketing on all channels. They basically did was Microsoft was fined for by the EU back in the day.

tgv2• 3 years ago

I think it was clear when they started with Google docs that they were using their browser to get market domination. They offered a free product that people liked, but almost forced them to switch to Chrome. They got entire nations to switch their education tooling to chrome and google docs. Now they keep adding features that enable bad developers to create websites that don't work properly in Firefox and Safari. There's been no change. Chrome has always been part of Google's strategy.

junon2• 3 years ago

This is also how I remember it. "getfirefox.com" is burned into memory from ages ago, the first real competitor to IE. Everyone wanted to switch to it.

Then chrome came along and people reluctantly switched at first, then enthusiastically. Firefox had the reputation of eating RAM like candy.

majani• 3 years ago

Being the better browser helped gain initial momentum in the 2000s with desktop users, but they took the lead once they made Chrome the default browser in Android. The majority of software users don't change their default settings

troupo• 3 years ago

Firefox simply got outcompeted by Chrome

Yes, a lot of issues are of Firefox's own making. Google sabotaging them helped, too: https://archive.is/tgIH9

Aeolun3• 3 years ago

I kinda feel like them removing ‘Don’t be evil’ from their motto was the canary in the coal mine.

cornercasechase• 3 years ago

You’re correct, they’ve always been super shady:

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-sergey-brin-employees...

innagadadavida• 3 years ago

Good/bad is too simple to explain these things. Corporations try to make money or build leverage. Of course some of them don’t execute or compete very well. In the early days it was doing good and building the leverage, now it is time for them to use that leverage to continue to milk the cash cow for as long as possible.

Figs• 3 years ago

I wonder if Google has considered how this technology can be used against themselves? If WEI is deployed, we ought to use it to lock out Googlebot!

vasachi• 3 years ago

Weeeeeeell, Googlebot can just lie about itself, no?

mike_hearn3• 3 years ago

You can already lock out Googlebot because it respects robots.txt and its IP ranges are documented.

It's very hard to "turn the tables" on companies when it comes to remote attestation because companies rarely directly lie to consumers about the true nature of their operations. When they do they tend to end up like Sam Bankman-Fried or Elizabeth Holmes. That's why all the big cloud vendors support remote attestation of servers to clients:

https://cloud.google.com/confidential-computing

So not only do they want you to demand remote attestations from their servers but they even document how to do it and provide significant infrastructure support to do so.

Not many people are using it though, and when they do it's usually to generate trust in non-tech firms running software on top of those clouds. Which is certainly a decent use case, but it's more like defense in depth than something existential for most companies. Whereas the inverse can be existential (multiplayer shooters without anti-cheat will rapidly become unplayable because so many players will lie to get ahead).

DeathArrow2• 3 years ago

My conjecture is that Google just pretended to stand for freedom, when they were a smaller company and they needed goodwill to be able to build an empire. Now they don't need that goodwill anymore.

nness• 3 years ago

The freedom Google stood for was also a trend of the time — tech start-ups were trying to break out in the burgeoning internet against established giants — and naturally the companies ideologies reflected that rebellion against the norm.

They a few billion dollars later and you realise that morality and stakeholder profits can never be aligned...

rapnie2• 3 years ago

We all let it come this far, because of how we treat the services Google provides: As nice free and helpful tools. Talking about "Chrome this and that" all the time we forget what that really means, namely:

Using the strategic tools of the largest Advertising Agency in the world, that allows them to ever grow their dominance. Chrome, GMail and all that jazz all fit into a global-scale ad-tech framework to push shady ads and slurp in your PII for shady business. Google uses monopolies and oligopolies to force itself into your life. In other words..

Google is SHADY BUSINESS. And that should be the framing to spread about. Always repeating that Google is an advertising giant. Not some trustworthy biz. Zero integrity. So how can Chrome relate to integrity then?

Is your Bank using Google's integrity foo? Give them a support call. Act like a noob and keep them busy for as long as possible with "It isn't working". Until they explain about Integrity + Chrome. Then comes the angry phase: "WHAT? Are you in bed with a SHADY advertising agency?? I thought you were a trustworthy bank."

jkingsman• 3 years ago

Give them a support call. Act like a noob and keep them busy for as long as possible with "It isn't working".

I'm all for grassroots change, but I really don't think that doing this to Tier 1 support staff is going to effect any real change. With all love to my helpdesk folks, what matters is ticket closure metrics and call duration -- an emotional outburst isn't going to change a thing.

abwizz• 3 years ago

seems like an emotional outburst is not the worst way to have a long call with no actionable outcomes.

my sympathies for the call staff thou

drchaos• 3 years ago

"I also have an account with xyz and there I don't have this problem" might be an effective addition.

amelius5• 3 years ago

We all let it come this far, because of how we treat the services Google provides: As nice free and helpful tools.

This is exactly what we need to change. "Free" services are never really free. You pay for them in the end, anyway, and doubly so. First with your data, then with your money.

The free internet may be nice for some people, but we all pay the advertising tax in the products we buy. It would be much better if we banned this entire freemium pricing model and started paying for things like in the old days. It would solve a lot of problems.

delfinom3• 3 years ago

Google is just copying Apple, this is the entire funny part. Apple is over 50% of US market share of phones

https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-att...

You should be more afraid of banks soon requiring Apple devices only

elefanten• 3 years ago

I don’t follow this logic. For one… the other 50% is Google. But Google has equal or better market share of many other key product/service areas… and significantly higher share in the web advertising ecosystem central to the discussion.

gniv• 3 years ago

How did you get from Advertising Agency to Shady Business? Agencies on Madison Avenue are not generally thought of as shady.

rapnie2• 3 years ago

They aren't exploiting global monopolies and oligopolies either, forcing technologies down people's throat that will cement and further expand their already overly dominant position. For the most part they aren't pushing ostensibly benign tools that lure and capture people in their web (i.e. Google Web literally).

nathias• 3 years ago

Google always stood for selling adds, there are no surprises in them wanting to cash in on their monopolies.

timwaagh• 3 years ago

Capitalisation of Almost Every Word Makes Me Sound Very Important.

jjgreen• 3 years ago

It's called title case, rather common for titles, headlines, names of films and so-on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case

ImHereToVote• 3 years ago

The elephant in the room is the increase of interest rates. The free lunch of cheap money is over. Now corps have to make money by squeezing every rock for the last bit of water.

My advice to everyone is to watch out, and be carefull. Look over the license changes over the incoming days to see how you might potentially be squeezed.

moneycantbuy• 3 years ago

one “side effect” of this would be enabling Google to effectively block ad-blocking. And, of course, plenty of people will insist that that’s not a side-effect, that’s the end goal.

meragrin_6• 3 years ago

How would this block ad-blocking?

raxxorraxor2• 3 years ago

Google could stop certifying configurations with an ad-blocker. Of course they are the ones that want to be established as infrastructure to certify your client being "genuine" or not.

thefurdrake2• 3 years ago

Websites could choose to deny access to clients that attest to having adblocking addons installed.

palrtyx• 3 years ago

I suppose we have to start webrings again and ditch Google. Today they would be more feasible, since you can announce entry points on Twitter etc.

smackeyacky• 3 years ago

The irony, I can taste it

pjmlp2• 3 years ago

Anyone that ever belived into the "Do no evil" motto was only fooling themselves, companies only care about their profitability.

rc_mob3• 3 years ago

I bet $10 you once believed that motto yourself. of course you have long since changed and that is good

pjmlp2• 3 years ago

Great, because I am a grey dog, born in the 1970's, first generation after the Portuguese dictorship, still experienced the leftovers of it, and don't belive in giving human attributes to capitalist corporations.

Where can I collect my $10?

nikos3194• 3 years ago

So at the end of the day Google are a full monopoly that can do what they want... Nothing new under the sun.

cowl9• 3 years ago

It seems Everyone is taking for granted the claim that this is about DRM. The claim is that websites (not Google) will use this signal to allow or deny access but this is already possible with various means. Google or any other Browser vendor do not have a say on how websites use or misuse features.

There is a tension between utility for anti-fraud use cases requiring deterministic verdicts and high coverage, and the risk of websites using this functionality to exclude specific attesters or non-attestable browsers.

This risk is already present and actually happening. What makes this not widespread is not that it is not possible (it is) but that it is unpopular. Websites that you are forced to use (many banks for example) do it every day and they get away it with it because you have no choice.

Many articles are just reapeating the "DRM" claim without explaining how is this different, what does Google have to do with how websites choose to treat their users or what solution they would propose. It seems to me just protest for the sake of it because it's trendy to question every Google Initiative. And yes every Google Initiative must be questioned but I don't see any questioning here beside just parroting in article after article what someone identified as a potential misuse without any critical thought going into it. Might as well autogenerate the contents with AI already because the utility of all articles i have seen on this topic is the same, just rearrange words without adding anything to it.

choeger3• 3 years ago

what does Google have to do with how websites choose to treat their users or what solution they would propose

Google owns YouTube. Is it so hard to imagine that some product manager at YouTube counted the losses due to adblockers and asked a team in Chrome to prevent them?

cowl9• 3 years ago

Youtube can and in some measure is already doing it without this new API. If google wanted to be sneaky they can provide whatever data they want to Youtube alone without making it a public standard. you see how all of these fears are contorted reasoning because you want to try to find something wrong with the proposal because all fo your fears do not require this proposals and would be easier and with much less backlash without a public standard API.

drpixie2• 3 years ago

Google or any other Browser vendor do not have a say on how websites use or misuse features.

Seriously? Would you give the kiddies sharp knives and loaded guns, and then be shocked when someone is injured?

If we let this become available, we will all have to live with the consequences. We can see clearly what those consequences will be. Let's not be stupid.

cowl9• 3 years ago

This overboard generalizations is what make me sure that everyone is just gut-reacting. Have you read the actual proposal (not an article about it)?

In your knife-analogy, Google is producing sharp knifes for the cooks, not the children. the DRM crowd here is saying but what if the Cook uses the knife the attack the restaurant clients? Do you know of anyone seriously discussing that we should stop all production of knifes because someone might give one to a child? SO yes I agree, let's not be stupid.

dns_snek4• 3 years ago

It seems Everyone is taking for granted the claim that this is about DRM. The claim is that websites (not Google) will use this signal to allow or deny access but this is already possible with various means.

How about you offer a reasonable opposing viewpoint? It's hard to see this, at best, as anything other than an extremely naive viewpoint. Every feature that can be used to lock down content and/or spy on users, will be used to do just that. That's true for every single feature that exists today. Claiming otherwise borders on bad faith.

Google or any other Browser vendor do not have a say on how websites use or misuse features.

That's settled then. Full filesystem, location, camera, and microphone access should therefore come on by default without a permission dialog. Why not bring back Java and Flash while we're at it! It's not the browser vendor's fault that websites are misusing it.

Many articles are just reapeating the "DRM" claim without explaining how is this different

This is different because any meaningful "attestation about the environment the browser is running in" can only be achieved via a full chain of trust, starting with secure boot, which will allow Google (and websites you visit) to verify that your system is using a Google-approved bootloader to load a Google-approved operating system which only loads Google-approved drivers and Google-approved software (or worse, website-approved software).

cowl9• 3 years ago

How about you offer a reasonable opposing viewpoint

Read the proposal: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...

That's settled then. Full filesystem, location, camera, and microphone access should therefore come on by default without a permission dialog. Why not bring back Java and Flash while we're at it! It's not the browser vendor's fault that websites are misusing it.

Now who is arguing in bad faith? if you have read the proposal, it's clear that they are being careful and are upfront about the some potential misuses and the proposed handing of them.

to verify that your system is using a Google-approved bootloader to load a Google-approved operating system which only loads Google-approved drivers and Google-approved software (or worse, website-approved software).

again there is no such thing proposed. The "attester" is not specifically Google. anyone can become an "attester". The chain of trust is a chain that trusts tokens not specific "things". if you for example would trust let's say Opera as the attester, Opera would need to trust windows or Linux or Android as the OS attester.

The analogy here is the certificate Authorities. You may very well have a "let's encrypt" attester that democratizes the good parts (certification) without the bad parts (too much information) .

Adverblessly2• 3 years ago

You know this is about DRM because that is explicitly the stated goal of this move.

Apologies for just repeating a previous post I made about this but:

The first goal of the proposal is to

Allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and honest representation of the software stack and the traffic from the device.

That is, to give web servers the ability to Digitally restrict (or Manage) a user's Rights to access content on a device and software stack of their choice.

The fact that this is DRM is unquestionable. What you seem to be taking at face value is Google's claim that this DRM will only be used to discriminate against bots and other abusive traffic, whereas everyone else is just pointing out that this technology can very easily be used for evil and that Google has every incentive and ability to do so.

what solution they would propose

A man on the street stops you, points a gun to your head and instructs you to give him all of your money. How do you propose to solve the man's problem of lack of your money in his hands? Also, you cannot ask him to put down the gun before solving that problem.

cowl9• 3 years ago

DRM is not about access or not (that can and is being done with simple authenticated content). DRM is about what you can do with SPECIFIC contents. The MANAGE part in DRM. Netflix requiring you to login to view a movie is not DRM. Netflix offering a way to content owners to specify for example this movie can be seen but not download or this movie can be seen only once or this movie can not be fastforwarded, that is DRM. DRM means Publishers decide how their content gets consumed (on a case by case and publisher by publisher case).

Nothing in this proposal gives publishers those means (beyond what is currently available). Verifying the authenticity of a device in this case is a generic "trusted/not trusted" not "OK for movie 123/KO for skipping on movie 456"

wzdd10• 3 years ago

The difference is that currently you can lie. You can identify the fingerprinting techniques being used, and work around them. yt-dlp already does something like this, for example. In Android, there was a lot of support for making your rooted / custom ROM system look like stock Android so you could still do banking. Now, depending on the level of Safetynet the app is using, you literally can't. I'm not arguing in favour of fingerprinting, just pointing out that prior to TPM-backed attestation you had control over your own device.

With Android Safetynet attestation, you can't work around the problem because the attestation is backed by a root of trust which your custom ROM can't provide. Being able to supply your own thing doesn't matter, because everyone will just support the one that Google supplies. LineageOS is a good example of this; they have their own Safetynet implementation which has very little buy-in.

WEI is effectively an extension of Safetynet to the Web.

In summary, this is fundamentally different because it takes away your control of your own device.

metalcrow3• 3 years ago

I mean, you can still lie, it's just made more difficult. Unless i'm missing something, running your OS under a hypervisor with a virtual TPM (or a forked browser with TPM access stubs and custom kernel drivers) still allows you to do whatever you want. It's certainly more difficult, and unreasonably so, but it's still quite possible. While i'm not familiar with Safteynet, i'm sure it's also possible to bypass it that way.

The issue with this seems to be a sort of a restricting freedom for the greater good idea. If you restrict the ability of web developers to check security values and stuff, then they can't do some good things like improve security, but they also can't do any really bad things like block ad-blockers. But if you allow this access then you get the opposite.

charcircuit13• 3 years ago

In summary, this is fundamentally different because it takes away your control of your own device.

No, it allows a business to deny to you if you can't attest to the security of your device. You are still free to do whatever you want on your own device.

If a business had an office that required you to unlock a door, but it also had a pickable lock that wouldn't be great security. It allows people to lie about having a badge by letting them pick the lock to get in. If a business increased security by making the lock no longer printable that seems like a good thing to me.

LineageOS is a good example of this; they have their own Safetynet implementation which has very little buy-in.

Have they actually approached apps and offered compensation for them to implemented it? Or are they hoping apps just randomly decide to adopt it?

Tozen• 3 years ago

...as companies become less innovative, rather than creating new useful things, they focus on extracting more value however they can, while simultaneously trying to stymie and hold off innovative upstarts.

What makes them "extra" dangerous (or evil), in this this regard, is they have such broad reach and control over the Internet and tools people use in their daily lives that many have no idea to the extent of censorship, manipulation, spying, or damage that is being done. Any perceived rival, threat to their business, or to any of their products can be silenced, censored, or inhibited in ways few will ever know or realize was possible.

And to the extent they can keep getting away with it, is likely the extent they will keep pushing their control and corruption.

skilled2• 3 years ago

I find it staggering that so few media outlets have picked this story up.

TechCrunch spends 80% of its time farming Elon Musk stories but won't lift a hand to promote a good fight.

Are these news companies so entangled in the corporate world they can't risk taking a stand because it risks them losing access to real-time news? I don't really understand it so I am kind of guessing, but it is nonetheless strange.

pferde2• 3 years ago

A lot of tech media outlets are not much more than extension of tech companies' PR departments. This has been very obvious especially in videogame "journalism" for a while (refusal to cover negative stories and more importantly follow up on them, or blatantly using article templates provided in advance by the companies), but if you pay attention, it is quite widespread.

flyinghamster• 3 years ago

I find it staggering that so few media outlets have picked this story up.

The media outlets are pushing for this. Hey, no more adblockers! I'm surprised they aren't running glowing testimonials of the new Google-overlord future.

skilled2• 3 years ago

Now that you put it that way, I guess it does make a lot of sense.

bob10292• 3 years ago

Back when I was working at Samsung, I had a manager who was absolutely convinced that google is an intelligence/CIA operation.

At the time, I found it to be a mockable suggestion, and never really thought much beyond it. Seemed like harmless IT/nerd banter back then.

About a decade later I started to reflect on what he said and began feel like I might have been working with a time traveler or other inside person.

It really does spin in my head quite a bit. If you think about how much human information flows through Google's systems... how many of us have considered some other form of intention and motivation here?

m_rpn2• 3 years ago

It is safe to assume that every big internet/data/telco company from big nation states has some kind of relationship with national intelligence agencies, dating back from the 60s at least, if we just talk about the modern information age.

Nothing strange or mind blowing really, for example Crypto AG, a famous swiss crypto vendor was secretly a joint USA-Germany operation from the 70s onward.

bob10292• 3 years ago

Oh I absolutely agree wrt internet/telecom/utah datacenter panopticon/etc.

For me the nuance is in the origins and ongoing leadership and effects on the consumer experience. The "Killed by google" phenomenon paints a darker picture in my mind. I start to read each google product as a folder in a CIA Sharepoint system - Only to be kept around until it is no longer valuable to the agency. Each with some sort of ulterior mission that seems ever-narrower in scope.

rejectfinite2• 3 years ago

Proton and Bitlocker and that MS SHIT always creeped me out. I work in IT so we have to use it but on an ideological level "Trusted computing" is weird. Feels like they want a console future where it is locked down af

pferde2• 3 years ago

Ding ding ding, that is the correct endgame the governments want. And it would have been achieved a long time ago if the FOSS movement did not appear. Unfortunately, all it did was postpone the inevitable, because most people prefer comfort over freedom.

drpixie2• 3 years ago

This is DRM for browsers. Would you buy a computer from John Deer ... ?

redbell• 3 years ago

Is this the same company that, in its childhood, had the tagline: "Don't be evil"? [1]

The beginning of the article summarizes why Google is no longer committed to its original motto, and It's sad to see such a dramatic change in the culture of the company.

first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves.

______________________

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil

avereveard2• 3 years ago

google never stood for anything, do no evil was mostly marketing.

2010s

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/08/26/real-canadian-ph...

"we don't collet private data" https://europe.googleblog.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-goog...

"ops we do" https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection...

google wage fixing, all the way back from 2001 https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-seek-ap...

before that it's harder to search data, but you get the idea.

veave• 3 years ago

Storing data from open networks is like recording people who are yelling.

avereveard2• 3 years ago

If I were to yell my name at the wind and you happened to be near and were to write it down, you'd still be in violation of privacy regulations.

WesolyKubeczek• 3 years ago

Do no evil may be good and all that, but a $100 is a $100.

bartimus• 3 years ago

"Do the right thing", Google

amelius5• 3 years ago

Do the right thing, Googlers.

getoffmyyawn• 3 years ago

To me it really seems like it is too late.

I have the strong impression that the vast majority of people simply do not care and mostly don't even want to know.

Most of the people I know are in this group. When they ask why I won't install the latest app they are playing with, they often cut me off before I even finish explaining. They seriously don't care about privacy, lock-in, loss of access to resources, right to repair, etc.

Personally, I'm investing as much time as I can in learning the alternatives: Gemini, Fediverse apps, Linux phones, etc. That combined with having a "mainstream" laptop that is used only for banking and similar life critical services that has nothing else installed and otherwise stays turned off.

mandmandam3• 3 years ago

They seriously don't care about privacy, lock-in, loss of access to resources, right to repair, etc.

They care even less about this stuff than they do about plastic pollution, or systemic inequality and racism, or PFAS contaminating the world's water, or pesticides and runoff decimating biospheres. They don't care about corruption at the highest levels of government and justice, black sites and torture, or illegal wars for profit.

It's impossible to care about everything that's going on. It's unreasonable to expect people to care or even know about everything, even if politics wasn't a wrestling show and corporate news wasn't enraging entertainment.

And, most citizens are two paychecks away from destitution.

Lobbyists, on the other hand, have full access to decision makers and a truck or two of cash, determined to make concrete specific changes.

This is by design, and Google just take advantage of it the same way every other company does. Blaming 'people' for this is blaming the victim.

Aeolun3• 3 years ago

If I’m marginally informed there is no reason other people shouldn’t be.

If they already have the phone all the information in the world is literally at their fingertips.

amelius5• 3 years ago

Another piece of evidence that consumers should not put blind trust in any company. Looking at Apple users here.

renegat0x0• 3 years ago

It reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine. They wanted to control your computer. Palladium, and other features also is about control. Remote attestation is about control. Embrace extend extinguish was about control and money.

Since inception nobody said that IME was for the user. Nobody said that Palladium is for the user. Google arguments are all propaganda. Nicey nicey words for the people.

Judging about the amount of recent pressure on open source, and encryption we are already toasted. Cyber resilience act, earn it act, patriot act, restrict act. It is all written using nice words, but I am interested in effect. It is all about crypto wars, and taking possession of your computer. About limiting anonymity and privacy using only arguments against it.

Big companies already have monopoly. They can already shadow ban, ban users, decrease reach of comments, track users using fingerprinting, cookies etc. They can decide what is acceptable, what is not, what is a social norm, what is not, what is a conspiracy theory, and not. Why do they need also breaking the encryption, or force signed software? Why they require more control? Because they can. Corporations lobby for more power, they receive more power. Where is the limit? Government also only benefits from corporations accumulating more powah.

I do not understand how people may think about how 'good' these things will bring, because on the scales there is something really terrifying - a Government that can spy on you without any problems, where you cannot hide. Through surveillance laundering, where government buys user data. Through censorship where government can moderate anything it wants to through hidden portals for the government [1]. Maybe the problem is that the western world never really experience communism.

[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/new-zealand-government-facebook-co...

By the way. I understand the difference between moderation and censorship

ftaghn4• 3 years ago

They wanted to control your computer. Palladium, and other features also is about control

That level of control was already achieved on mobile. Android is the wet dream that Microsoft had with palladium and failed to execute.

I can't use my banking app on a degoogled phone. It requires an untempered, manufacturer provided rom, and it will not run on a rooted phone either. The thing is, the banking app is not a side toy for me to just check up my accounts or do bank transfers instead of using the website, it's the only tool the bank provides to allow for online payment validation. You /need/ the app to make online payments with my bank. No app, no using your credit card online at all. Want the app, need to live under google (or iOS, which is even more closed and disgusting).

Palladium is real today.

Aeolun3• 3 years ago

Pure irony that when you go to look at Tech Dirt, there’s first an intermediate page (maybe by cloudflare, maybe by some other provider) that first verifies your browser is secure.

flagrant_taco7• 3 years ago

Unpopular opinion here for sure as I see enty of calls for regulation and antitrust suits, the easiest answer is for people to simply stop using Google products.

Sure that's easier said than done given how much we depend on them today, but is it really harder than convincing the federal government to step in and break up companies that pay huge lobbying bills, understand how tech companies work in the first place, design new regulations to prevent this happening again, and sit waiting to scrutinize any acquisitions that may come from the break up?

Call me naive, but I think if people really care they have a much better chance to avoid Google than the government has of actually fixing this on our behalf.

lxgr2• 3 years ago

You’re assuming a level of understanding of the market structure and technical details of browsers and web advertising that probably less than 5% of Chrome users possess.

flagrant_taco7• 3 years ago

Yeah for sure, but the solution to an uneducated populous isn't large governments and regulation. That's a bandaid at best, but it's never sustainable.

rndgermandude• 3 years ago

simply stop using Google products

Google squashed most of the competition in a lot of sectors, and the few remaining competitors aren't any better often.

Aside, even if you do not actively use google, google will still be in your life, by tracking and selling you. Already there is realistically no way to entirely "ungooglify" your life as long as you live and partake in some modern western society.

And soon it seems, you will be using a Google browser because you have to, because your bank or employer website or whatever will require their web "attestation" DRM, and will not accept your Firefox, Brave, Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera or whatever attestation.

And if you're hoping for other attestation vendors... Try streaming anything that needs a subscription without using Google's widevine DRM. You will be surprised on how few options there are, not just in implementations but in streaming services that support anything besides Google's widevine.

Google and probably Microsoft and Apple will be big enough browser vendors to be widely supported "attested environments" and attestation providers. Everybody else will bite the dust on that front.

E.g. "x% of websites do not accept Firefox's attestation" will drive more users away from Firefox, and that in turn will lead to even fewer websites supporting Firefox attestation because why spend the dev resources to support it with that measly market share when people can just use one of the big browsers?!

And google knows this very well, from the "works best/only in Chrome" to widevine. They were even able to make MS abandon their browser engine and jump on the google engine train, after all.

This to me is very clearly an antitrust issue that needs antitrust suits and regulation.

flagrant_taco7• 3 years ago

While most people don't care enough to do this, it isn't as hard as people might expect to drastically reduce use of Google products.

The sacrifice is almost entirely on convenience unless you're employment depends on it. Use Firefox, install some basic ad blockers, and don't use Gmail or Google maps. That definitely won't be totally de-googked but it goes pretty far.

If Google does force through this attestation model that's a different story. Though that is effectively Google killing the internet if companies decide to use the feature. Thankfully we survived without the internet for a long time, we can go back to going in person to our bank or calling them on the phone.

meltyness• 3 years ago

Hm don't they already do this with like, Widevine? This seems alarmist.

alberth• 3 years ago

Devils Advocate ...

It's this about eliminating those annoying, and at times confusing, CAPTCHAs?

29% of all internet traffic is malicious bots [1].

Why is it a bad thing for browser makers to signal to websites that the party interacting with their website is a real human being or not?

Why is there so much hate for what Google is doing with WEI, but I don't sense the same hate for Apple Private Access Tokens (PAT)?

Isn't WEI just a response to Apple PAT?

[1] https://radar.cloudflare.com

dogleash• 3 years ago

Devils Advocate ...

"Devil's advocate" statements can be useful as a thought experiment in exploring a topic by generating something new that prompts others to make the counterargument explicit.

There's a lot of articles and comments here flying around in the last few days trying to reify google's idea and explore the boundaries of the implications.

When you raise one of the advertised positives, I don't feel like that's a novel point that prompts exploration of a new angle on the topic.

Why is it a bad thing for [google's pitch]

/me gestures widely in the direction ongoing conversations and articles over the last few days

If you don't care about everything discussed, you can just say you don't care.

throw_m239339• 3 years ago

Google stands for nothing but their bottomline. Thinking that private companies have "morals" is foolish at best. All the things Google claimed stood for was simply PR in a world where Microsoft used to be the bad guy. Same with all the ESG, DEI and whatever "social initiatives". It's PR. You shouldn't fall for that.

Google can achieve horizontal integration since they own youtube, search and lead the Chromium project. They are "the web" and make money with ads so they are going to force you to watch these ads, nothing more.

renegade-otter• 3 years ago

I started skipping the top google matches for my searches since those are gamed to the tilt in some way, and are usually responsible for my computer fan kicking into overdrive because the ad code on the page is crushing the CPU harder than video encoding does.

rc_mob3• 3 years ago

Google should only be your backup search engine at this point.

Use Kagi or DDG or anything else as your primary search engine.

recursive43• 3 years ago

You should be as comfortable running the (proposed) attestator on your machine as you are running anti-virus software. In thinking about it relative to anti-virus, I came across an insight:

The Web Environment Integrity proposal isn't much different than requiring that, in order to receive an email, the sender both secures their machine with anti-virus and provides proof to you, the receiver, that the message in question is virus-free. Otherwise, without this proof, you won't accept the message.

Metal detectors and the requirement to pass through one to enter certain, defined spaces are probably the physical analogy that people are most familiar with.

laniakean• 3 years ago

In that analogy, who provides the antivirus? Can you only use antivirus from certain vendors? Does the company providing antivirus have motives(eg:-selling ads) other than securing your computer?

wzdd10• 3 years ago

I don't think this is a good analogy. The WEI proposal is different to anti-virus in many ways. The fundamental ones are:

1) WEI doesn't attest that your device isn't running malware, it attests that your device is running a particular set of software -- it is a positive filter, rather than a negative one. This means that you can't run your own software (if it's part of the WEI trust chain), even if you know it's not malware, without changing the attestation (and see the next point for why this isn't viable).

2) Because WEI doesn't have a way to prove that software is malicious or not, it instead requires you to trust the attestor (in a cryptographically secure way). In the usual case, this will mean trusting Google. This means that if I write my own attestor, there is no particular reason that people should trust what it says. On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons to trust what Google says, given that they wrote the software and certified the phone. The attestor model, because it relies on trust, is fundamentally biased towards organisations which you already are obliged to trust to some extent.

The same arguments apply to metal detectors. This isn't about detecting metal (negative filter), it's about detecting approved clothing.

recursive43• 3 years ago

1. Running a particular set of software _correctly_ i.e. the positive filter is positive insofar as the negative filter is negative. This logic applies to anti-virus if you predicate it's negative filtering on a positive filter that the problem itself hasn't been backdoored (which we arguably do as part of our intuitive trust model).

I disagree with your characterization of metal detectors defining success on approval. Consider the practical difficulty of defining a whitelist of every possible piece of "approved clothing" compared to a blacklist of known knowns (e.g. guns, knives, poison, etc.).

2. I think we're in agreement that who is permitted as a legitimate attestor is a core issue. I wouldn't ultimately conclude that it must be Google, although many web admins would be satisfied with that.

TheCleric2• 3 years ago

I've been wary of Google for a while now, and this is further proof my wariness is justified. However, one thing I can't seem to kick is using Google search as a fallback.

I use DuckDuckGo or Brave search for most of my searches, but half the time I have to add "!g" to the search to switch to Google to get actually useful results. Does anyone have any tips or tricks (or search engines I'm unfamiliar with) so I can break free? I know Bing is technically an option, but I'm under the impression it's not much better than Google (privacy wise) and their AI integration is off-putting.

buzzy_hacker• 3 years ago

I use DDG and never feel the need to add !g, but if you do, try using !sp instead. Startpage takes Google’s results and proxies them.

TheCleric2• 3 years ago

try using !sp instead. Startpage takes Google’s results and proxies them

Ahh, this is an EXCELLENT tip.

monetus• 3 years ago

Besides DDG, I find myself using phind.com if you haven't seen that yet.

ColinHayhurst• 3 years ago

Does anyone have any tips or tricks (or search engines I'm unfamiliar with) so I can break free?

https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...

unknownsky• 3 years ago

I use Kagi and I only find myself switching to Google if I'm looking for local, up-to-the-minute information. Kagi maps is barely useful at all compared to Google Maps, at least at time of writing.

gmerc2• 3 years ago

It turns out that when the growth stops, companies show their real face. The reason everyone in the world is praying infinite growth is this dynamic, people, companies are alike.

You want to know if someone is truly a nice person - put them into a now growth situation for a while. Before that, it’s all talk.

sebastialonso• 3 years ago

But is this a practical argument in any sense of the word? Don't have a reason to think you're a bad person, but if I abandon you in an island with weaker people, there's a high chance you'll end up eating them to survive. But you're not a bag person. In other words, there's a limit of what you can do in any context, and those limits are imposed by the context.

Maybe it's easier to stop projecting our ideas of what "ought to be" into entities who inhabit a system in which those ideas don't have value, like for-profit businesses, no?

gmerc2• 3 years ago

for profit vs profit above all else, including planetary level destruction.

sdfghswe2• 3 years ago

What did google "once stood for"?

My understanding is that google tries to make money, everything else is brand marketing.

lemper• 3 years ago

to any Google engineers who read this message. if you have any love for open and free web, you can either get out of Google or change it from within. but let's face it, you are impotent if you want to do the latter.

sam0x17• 3 years ago

Google has evolved to a size and point where they really can't (and shouldn't) be trusted to manage their own vision and direction. Critical infrastructure like this should belong to and be beholding to the people.

JohnFen4• 3 years ago

Let's be honest here. Most of what Google does these days goes against everything Google once stood for.

The Google of today is a completely different company than the Google of yesterday.

2devnull• 3 years ago

Just have to laugh at the headline. “What google once stood for” lol

OhMeadhbh• 3 years ago

Lol. I think I was a part of this story. In the early 2000s, I was one of those faceless, nameless government people who were complaining to MSFT that their software was insecure compared to Solaris or even ConvexOS. I KNOW I am not the only one to have done this, but we gave them a copy of the rainbow books at a meeting and asked them to read them. MAC (Mandatory Access Control) isn't the be-all/end-all of computer security in general, but it IS a good model for government computers in the 1990s. Plenty of people understood the Bell-Lapadula model, all our machines were self-managed behind locked doors and we could afford a small army of sysadmins and infosec people.

I've talked about interviewing as the Office Security Architect in 2003, but the job that got me talking to MSFT was one in what was going to become NGSCB, bits of which were eventually rolled into Windows Vista. My interview for that team was scuttled when I talked with their senior tech person who asked me... "Oh. I see you have experience in Crypto(graphy), then you clearly know how to tractably factor a 2000 bit number." I admitted that I was still under the impression that it was a difficult problem, but he assured me that all you had to do was print it out in binary and apply a particular regular expression to it. When I pointed out that primality testing and factoring are different things the interview went south. I later found out this was some sort of MIT shibboleth and I was supposed to respond with some comment about the compilers class.

In any event... It always seemed odd to me that NGSCB tried to make MAC a mainstream feature, but I wasn't really thinking about DRM. Like I said, if you're a big organization and can properly manage the classification problem, and have info security peeps who are cleared and trusted, MAC (as embodied in any of the C2 Unices from the 90s, NGSCB or SE Linux) can be useful. But yeah, the only reason you would want this on a consumer machine is to prevent the "owner" from doing something with downloaded media the person who produced the media doesn't want you to do (aka DRM.)

jamesgill• 3 years ago

I’m fascinated by this rose-tinted view of Google as once being ‘good’, but somehow being ‘evil’ now. I watched this film lay out with Microsoft over decades, too.

But, TL;DR: Google and Microsoft have always been ‘evil’. We’re just arguing about which circle of hell they rule over.

pino83• 3 years ago

I would love to be wrong... But hey, you let Google happen so far, Chrome, YouTube, you let GMail happen, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, you let WhatsApp happen, you let Cloud happen, subscription models, Android, iPhones, EME, Discord, ..., ..., ...

And anybody here actually thinks that you will be strong enough to stop WEI?

One could just laugh, if it wouldn't be so sad....

You will - as always - stop nothing from happening, I guess. And you will again happily call it 'pragmatism' or say 'ohh, but I had to; they forced me'...

motbus3• 3 years ago

We knew it would happen when that guy demanded to remove the "don't be evil" from company policies

mediumsmart• 3 years ago

Google is an advertising agency. Advertising agencies do not stand for anything. Never did and never will. So please cut google some slack. It is their web after all.

Google’s Plan to DRM the Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

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