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Comment by freeone3000 | Hacker News Reader

It’s horizontal tying.

If Chrome was not owned by an ad company, the owners of chrome would push for instead of against privacy protections (see: firefox, safari).

The browser monopoly, which Chrome sells at a loss, enables the ad company. This is the problem.

Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google. So anything against ads does not get upstreamed to Chromium.

Chrome also is a major browser vendor, whereas kiwibrowser and opera are not, which means the standards boards listen to them more. If those seats were not owned by an ad company, standards would likely be different.

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As much as I find Chrome’s ownership and market share problematic, that doesn’t seem fair.

What exactly do things like WebUSB and Web Bluetooth contribute to Google’s ad business?

(Except if you mean that any new and initially exclusive feature bolsters Chrome’s dominance further, in which case I’d somewhat agree.)

> What exactly do things like WebUSB and Web Bluetooth contribute to Google’s ad business?

Google keeps proposing specifications like Web USB, Web Bluetooth, Web MIDI, Web Serial, etc., and both Mozilla and Apple keep shooting them down on privacy and security grounds. Meanwhile Google ignores the problems and builds them into Chrome anyway, and guess what happens? They start getting used to fingerprint and track people.

Who knows, maybe it’s just a coincidence that all of these technologies that advertisers can use to fingerprint and track people keep making their way into the browser owned by one of the world’s largest ad companies.

How would you use WebUSB or Web Bluetooth for device fingerprinting?

HID, mass storage devices etc. are required to be filtered by implementations, and why would I grant a random news or social media site access to my MiniDisc player, Arduino board, Bluetooth thermometer/hygrometer etc. when it asks for it?

The prompts are pretty scary/disruptive, and I've never seen any website actually try (unlike for e.g. web push notifications, which are fairly private but can be super annoying).

> why would I grant a random news or social media site access to my MiniDisc player, Arduino board, Bluetooth thermometer/hygrometer etc. when it asks for it?

Part of the problem is that a vast number of users neither understand nor care about these prompts. They just click to make them go away.

There’s a few long discussions on the unsuitability of these specifications in the Mozilla standards positions repo:

Web Bluetooth: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/95

Web USB: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/100

Web MIDI: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58

Web Serial: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336

Here’s some Hacker News discussion about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063

Or things like Web USB start getting used to provide useful features without needing to install whole apps, like mouse/keyboard dongle pairing, phone OS flashing, etc.

As far as fingerprinting/tracking goes, I have never seen a random site prompt for these features, only apps where it makes sense.

Same here, so I'm really not sure why you're getting downvoted. I'd be really curious to hear any examples of sites doing that!

"Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google"

What does this mean?

"We already have this feature in Chrome, why would we let you add it to Chromium?"

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