Trying to centralise as much of the internet and how people interact with it under their control is dangerous and open to widespread abuse - and this is already happening.
See:
YouTube demonetisation
YouTube content ID abuse
Chrome extension changes
Gmail is already completely broken on IMAP unless clients throw in google specific workarounds, and now they’re moving on to break the next layer of email too.
Joy.
- the largest browser people use to view pages (Chrome)
- the largest platform people use to run that browser (Android)
- the largest way people discover content online (Google Search)
- the largest way people advertise online (Google Ads)
- the largest way people share video online (YouTube)
- the largest email provider (Gmail)
This is way too much power over the internet in one corporate entity.
It’s way beyond what MS ever accomplished at their height, and it’s way beyond anything Apple ever accomplished either.
The power Google have over the internet at large and the content people consume at this point frankly terrifies me.
Google wields too much control and is forcing the evolution of technology to further their grasp. They reach into every sector of technology, and every play they make deepens their moat.
Look at how fast they spin up new products to see if they can claw into a new space. They move mountains if they sense they can grapple something new, and if it doesn't work out they tear it down without considering the users. It isn't about the individual - they want total control.
Google is 90's Microsoft's Embrace/Extend/Extinguish executed to perfection.
(See my thread from yesterday [1] where I argue these points as they pertain to the app store.)
I'm going to talk with my local lawmakers. I don't know what leverage I have, but I'll be damned if I sit on the sidelines.
Truly independent governance of separate projects within Google at the very least, but ideally totally separate legal entities that are carefully regulated and monitored to ensure they're not giving each other preferential treatment.
For better or worse, this is how it has to be for the market economy to function well in a society. A company can be successful up to a point - they cannot be allowed to win. The victory every for-profit entity seeks - permanent domination and monopolization of their market - is something potentially disastrous to society at large.
OTOH it's like a standard that you can build upon if it's foundational communication infrastructure (channels, touch points).
This means that stability on lower levels facilitates competition on higher levels. As long as nobody is excluded it's not problematic. It shouldn't be allowed to scrap services users depend on though, this would be a good organic regulator.
The problem with amp4email isn't that it makes everyone part of Google (though I'm willing to bet it'll ultimately imply all MUAs will end up having to embed Chrome engine). The problem is with Google using its near-monopoly position to push a "standard" that makes e-mail serve its users less, and serve companies seeking to exploit those users more.
I disagree. At some point, such a company effectively becomes the same as a government. I think that's hugely problematic.
I don't hear many people talking about punishing companies for their success. I hear a lot of people talking about punishing people for their abuse, though.
The network effect "free" user generated content platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc) are the low hanging fruit here. The reason they have sustainable monopolies is because they have exclusive use of the user generated content on their platform. This is really easy to fix. Require that companies beyond a certain scale (1 million users perhaps?) that make user generated content freely available default to free use + attribution licenses for that content, unless users specifically opt-out on a per piece basis. And furthermore mandate that companies provide a means of easily accessing said free use content, such as through an API. Also require that users be able to 'remotely publish' content to the site again, through something such as an API. And finally prohibit companies from censoring discussion of competing sites except in obvious cases of abuse such as e.g. automated spam.
There - problem solved. Now you can create an e.g. Facebook competitor where people can keep their exact same friends (and even talk to the ones still on Facebook) except gain whatever benefits the new platform has to offer. Similarly for something such as a YouTube competitor where now you'd be able to seed yourself with what would likely be the vast majority of the user generated content from YouTube. You might also want to add a rule that sites cannot clone content from sites smaller than they are. Again the idea is to create unique incentives for users to try new sites. You'd get access to most of the content you already have from big site + whatever unique content the smaller site offers. And, just like that, you now have created massive competition with minimal direct 'punishment' of the existing behemoths.
- the way people get news (Google News)
- the way people learn about their website (Google Analytics)
- the way people fight spam (reCaptcha)
- a major way of embedding web fonts (Google Fonts)
- a hugely successful cloud document suite (Google Docs)
- a safe browsing service, making them effective gatekeepers of what can load in Chrome (Google Safe Browsing)
- an ever growing system for schools to manage assignments (Google Classroom) - this one particularly concerns me because paired with Chromebooks, it brings kids into an entirely closed Google ecosystem very young
> this one particularly concerns me because paired with Chromebooks, it brings kids into an entirely closed Google ecosystem very young
I'm not too concerned as many other big corporations (Apple, Microsoft) are fighting this ;)
The other corporations are only fighting small battles, but you can't compete with free, which is how Google gains its foothold.
"Each site you visit is checked against the Safe Browsing list on your system. If there's a match, your browser sends Google a hashed, partial copy of the site’s URL so that Google can send more information to your browser. Google cannot determine the real URL from this information." -- https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/#safe-browsing...
There's no way Firefox would be ok with sending all their user's visited URLs to Google.
(Disclosure: I work at Google)
How do I disable this in Firefox? Is this the section about "Content Blocking"?
- One of the most popular ways for running surveys / forms (Google Forms)
My knowledge is a year or two out of date (haven't hosted forms in popular websites anymore), but it doesn't seem like this could have changed that rapidly. Bots don't suddenly understand English, and neural nets aren't much better or worse at word CAPTCHAs than picture CAPTCHAs. It's just that Google didn't need books anymore.
I do still host a bug report form on a smaller site, and that just filters <a href, and more recently, http://. If someone enters that, the site gives the helpful message that http is not allowed for spam reasons and they should use hxxp:// instead and that I'll understand what they meant. Haven't gotten any spam since I started including that.
The cases where reCAPTCHA is a good idea are really rare. Logins can be solved with exponential back-off, forms can use spam filters similar to email and a simple CAPTCHA to catch the vast majority. With reCAPTCHA, I often spend minutes solving the because Google has no other markers to go on (deleting cookies, localstorage). I used to not mind them when other people were all complaining about those word CAPTCHAs (I found them easy) but now reCAPTCHA just take your time instead of your reading skills and they're absolutely awful. It rewards not using privacy technologies in your browser and so a lot of laymen don't experience the issues. Please don't use reCAPTCHA if at all possible...
Akismet is a third party service that works really well. You send data there with a HTTP POST and it will reply with a yes or no, it is spam or not spam. It is not that hard to implement. You do have to be aware that you are sending user data to that service, which you have to mention in your privacy policy.
Stop Forum Spam is a similar third party service. You send it an ip address and an email address. It will reply on both items if it is spam, together with a confidence level. Quite interesting way to reply :) It is originally intended to fight registration spam, but you can use it for comment spam or contact forms as well.
JavaScript spamfilters can be very usefull. Most spambots do a HTTP GET for a page with a form. They fill in all the fields and submit it with a HTTP POST. They don't run any JavaScript on that page. You can have honeypot and timeout fields on a form that get manipulated by JavaScript, and spambots will not validate. Works really well, and all transparent to the user. The only "risk" is that in the future spammers might start using more sophisticated spambots, like using Electron or Chromium. I implemented spamfilters like this in a WordPress plugin and it works really well for me: https://wordpress.org/plugins/la-sentinelle-antispam/
With power comes responsibility. Google has earned our trust with every new product they develop. If they misstep, they will hear it. In fact, they have to keep listen to keep being at top.
This made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
I mean, I have noticed those harder captures too since I switched to Firefox, but I didn't realize it was due to the different browser. I thought it was just a newer version.
If you have their tracking cookies, if you don't use a VPN, and if you block ads (which would have more tracking cookies), Google's certainty of who you are is higher, increasing the chance that you are a human.
Firefox's default settings, especially with the new Content Blocking features, are enough for reCAPTCHA to be less sure you're a human, and try to make you prove it more often.
So Google manages to sell a product (reCAPTCHA), show good intentions (bot-prevention), increase usage of Chrome (because it's a smoother experience through reCAPTCHA), and get more information on everyone.
Win x4
I sometimes use Random User-Agent as well to resist fingerprinting; this makes ReCAPTCHA not just extremely tedious (up to about 10 rounds of sl-o-o-o-wly fading pictures) but literally impossible (it never ends).
See also [2].
[1] https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/alt.r...
*I later also sought out a Google+ Beta invite. That one is harder to justify with just naïveté.
It might be a pain to move, but it is certainly possible, and it's certainly worth the effort.
They've gone out of their way to become impossible to reasonably avoid.
Regulatory action is the only thing that will stop them from completely destroying the concept of decentralization on the internet.
1. Do they reduce complexity of the (already insanely complicated) web/internet infrastructure?
2. Do they reduce barriers of entry for new companies?
If you look at thing Google consistently pushes forward, the answers are almost always in the negative.