Nobody is being forced to any attention to their pronouncements. The only reason they are of any relevance is that a lot of people freely choose to use services and software that incorporate them.
In Chrome and firefox, if google decides your website isn't up to scratch for some random reason, then visitors will see a big scary red warning and be turned away.
Yes, in theory you could get people to use a browser that doesn't incorporate Google censorship, but that's becoming a big ask.
If your website does become blacklisted by Google, good luck finding out why. They won't tell you, and will instead make you click on a "request review" button a million times while you change things to see if it floats their boat.
Isn't it slightly worrying to have the entity who decides if websites are "safe" or not, also have a monopoly on online advertising? What's to stop them blacklisting sites that use competitors advertising? They could claim that it benefits the users some how, whilst squashing any hint of competition.
Google has become the absolute gatekeeper, and (To me at least) it's a very very sad state of affairs. The www used to be free and open.
There is naturally a tradeoff between the value of this information for avoiding dangerous sites, and the risk that Google might be abusing the power that goes with its role in publishing it. At the moment users are mostly deciding that the risk is worth it.
If Google becomes obviously abusive then users will have to re-assess that equation. But it's the users' decision to make; not ours.
Users aren't making a conscious decision. Browser vendors are making the decision for them. Most people don't change the default settings, especially something that claims to make your browsing "safer".
We're talking about Chrome, a browser that comes as the default setting on zero major operating systems.
https://security.googleblog.com/2015/12/protecting-hundreds-...
I wonder if newer versions of SamsungBrowser use it.
No we aren't. We are talking about the Google Safe Browsing service. They are different things. One is a web browser, the other is a blacklist that any software can use.
It's used by Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Together those make up a majority of browsers.
Not necessarily true, your website being flagged by Google can get you blocked on multiple browsers. That's enough to destroy your traffic. Granted, I'd say 99% of these are legit flags from JS injections, etc.
Sure, you could use a browser that doesn't do this...but, you won't.