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Comment by roywashere | Hacker News Reader

If Chrome would need to be sold off, or Android, or Maps, those can only become even more pressured to be monetized for user data, I’m afraid

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More pressure than the max? Do you think they are going to start using your password hashes to mine bitcoin?

Whatever Google stopped tracking they did because of regulation not out of user backlash or goodwill.

It's not the max yet. You could find yourself dealing with the same kind of dark pattern exploitation as you're dealing with in restaurant checkout experiences this day, around the preservation of your own data. I hope you have backups for yourself if you want to keep these docs and photos!

> You could find yourself dealing with the same kind of dark pattern exploitation as you're dealing with in restaurant checkout experiences this day, around the preservation of your own data.

When it comes to Google, we already find ourselves dealing with worse.

Have you started seeing browser embedded ads in Chrome ? It replacing competitor ads with it's own ? Rewriting referral links ? Pushing compromised extensions from "third parties" to siphon data they legally can't. Right now it's just there to cover Googles market position - it doesn't need to make a profit, if it had to make a profit and it couldn't do exclusive search default deal I guarantee you it will get ugly - like those scam search bars in IE in 2000s.

They don't need to embed ads into the browser if the websitet that the user will load are already loaded with google ads. They also don't need to replace competitor ads with google ads if there is no meaningful market share by any competitor.

Why should they siphon data to a third parties when they themselves want the data, and its a competitive advantage to keep that data for themselves.

What we are seeing is chrome becoming the new IE where alternatives browsers are not longer allowed on the internet. "You’re using a web browser that is not supported. In order to use [Insert website], please download Chrome for the best experience. Download Chrome here!". (https://www.datanyze.com/browser-support/ie/index.html)

This is my point - Chrome isn't there to play dirty, it's there so competitors can't. But if it had to make money without Google all that BS would get bundled in the browser.

> Chrome isn't there to play dirty, it's there so competitors can't.

Like Manifest V3, which explicitly makes it harder to strip out Google's own ad products on websites you visit?

> without Google all that BS would get bundled in the browser.

Or maybe it wouldn't. There are already lots of other browsers that don't.

Manifest v3 being tied to ads is a fantasy fiction. This is no proof of it and ample evidence it is a good security move which other browsers did first. Is apple doing similar things with Safari for nefarious reasons?

> This is no proof of it and ample evidence it is a good security move which other browsers did first.

You crush up the bitter pill in a spoonful of jam to make it easier to digest.

> Is apple doing similar things with Safari for nefarious reasons?

Yes? Look at what they tried to get away with with PWAs as an example.

Making moves so that competitors can't play at all is so far beyond playing dirty. It's anti-competitive and illegal.

They can play, but they are competing with a raised bar which benefits consumers. It's not illegal to make things better.

They aren't competing with a raised bar, they are competing with a bar that can only be passed if you already have a massive presence in an unrelated area. You can not compete with an entrenched existing player when they are giving their things away for "free", subsidized by a massive ad tax. This entrenchment is tailor-made to make competition infeasible.

This is illegal for a reason. It does NOT benefit consumers to make it impossible for anybody to compete with you. This is anti-competitive, not competition.

What are you talking about? No, the answer is no, I haven't seen any of that.

But it's things a company could do to try to squeeze the lemon a bit more. Something which they have more incentive to so if they don't have a large, and fairly stable revenue stream from elsewhere.

After all there's a reason people here care about PiHole and such, because ISP's are doing such shenanigans. Or TV makers peeking at pixels so they can phone home to report on what you're watching.

Another good reason to use Firefox. BTW, Firefox will be another collateral victim if it Google dies.

Or for someone finally to solve the micropayment problem. I don't mind paying the 53 cents it costs google to provide me their services per month with 30 or 40% margin. But I refuse to subscribe for close to zero value services for 10 or 20 dollar a month.

I have been hearing some version of this refrain since Mosaic was invented. "Make the web suck so that someone solves this problem" is just going to result in the web sucking.

Do you want the web to work like clash of titans?

Well sending bytes and creating them costs money. Someone has to pay them. So it is either ads or payments. The money it costs are close to zero, so we need a way to pay close to zero, that is easy if we don't want ads.

Thank you for concisely expressing the core justification for micropayments. I have many arguments for why it's possible to implement, but I've never found a good way to describe why it's necessary before.

Maybe we'll get something from Mozilla eventually - but I'm not holding my breath. I suspect it'll only happen if there's a massive awareness campaign that produces a demand signal for it in the general public (as opposed to just tech nerds).

What? This is nonsensical. Why did you post this?

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