Guys, if you don’t like these proposals from Google, you need to switch to Firefox now! It’s the only way to defend freedom on the web!
Over 85% of Mozilla’s income comes from their Google search deal. Google is keeping Mozilla alive to prevent antitrust issues. If Mozilla rocks the boat too much, Google will fund a more obedient alternative.
So your answer to “Google is evil use another browser” is… if we all swap to Firefox google will kill it?
Google is keeping Firefox alive because 5% of all web users using Google search by default is pretty useful for them.
If you want to avoid that, simply use firefox and set your search to DuckDuckGo/Bing. If Google drops them, Microsoft have already shown a want to step up into that position.
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By paying for Bing to be the default search engine of Firefox.
Why are you pushing Firefox when Vivaldi did the work of writing this article and Vivaldi has consistently been pro-user, pro privacy, and anti-google even while using Chromium as their backbone. Viva Vivaldi.
Using any chromium fork is supporting chromium as the default browser, and choosing gecko-based browsers means you throw your hat in the ring to show websites that not just chromium browsers visit them. Using a chromium fork also means you accept that google will dictate standards less harmful than web integrity. While it’s not the end of the world, the last time this happened IE9 happened. Using Firefox means google can’t simply decide to implement any spec they want and that spec becomes true because all user agents have it (exactly what is at risk of happening here. Vivaldi may make nice blog posts but if this ends up happening they’ll be happy to implement it else risk losing their entire user base)
The would have been an argument to be made about performance but nowadays blink and gecko are pretty much at the same performance level.
Death to chromium forked browsers. Vivaldi is chromium.
I have used Vivaldi and even led my kid to use it, but I still always go back to Firefox and/or LibreWolf for peace of mind and extensions like uBlock Origin and Anesidora.
Because it’s better to support a diversity of web render engines instead to avoid a situation like back in the days with IE.
Firefox has officially stated their position on this https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/852
I really think the world needs a few more Elon Musks around. I mean, wouldn’t it be great to have a Musk at Google to destroy it from the inside just like he’s doing to Twitter?
You had me at the first half, ngl.
Cory Doctorow talked a bit about this, among other enshittification problems, on his Pluralustic post today.
Thanks, enjoyed reading that
Man that article points out some scary trends. It’s just crazy the way they’re using digital technology to economically enslave us with subscriptions for product function and maintenance. Then the way they use that technology to monitor us. I saw the end coming with the John Deere business some decades ago. My feeling was I sure hope that practice never comes to normal consumer products, but here it is. It’s feudal for sure and a blatant violation of consumer rights. You don’t own products anymore and you still get to pay for them like you do.
This is a fantastic overview of the issue with this proposal, in the broader context of enshittification.
I do not trust Google at this stage. I pine for the day when Google seemed like a good company. Gmail was awesome when it came out, for example, and Google search worked well. Now I feel they are harvesting all my data to jam ads down my throat. Google search now sucks ass and just returns websites that have a bunch of AI nonsense or aggregated content that is effectively worthless.
I am migrating away from Google.
Does anyone know a good way to migrate to a good gmail alternative?
Proton Mail is a good alternative. A good thing to watch for a either a lack of or a very limited free account. This means they’re not making money off harvesting your data. If it’s free, you’re the product.
I get your point and also have a Proton subscription, but is the Proton Mail free tier really that limited? 1GB of inbox space seems plenty to me for most “casual” users, especially if you regularily clean up mails you don’t need anymore. The paid tiers are definitely interesting if you do more than that though.
The free tier is plenty but I pay for it because I use my own domain.
Skiff are pretty good too. Worth a look.
Get yourself your own domain and set up proton mail. It costs a little bit, but you can create email addresses for everything you want.
Zoho is still a corprate mail service, ive ised it and they are “okay” in terms of integrity
Edit: wrong comment to reply to
Now I feel they are harvesting all my data to jam ads down my throat.
I’m curious: how did you expect them to pay for the overhead of providing this service? I’m sure you didn’t think that they would just eat the cost of providing it forever, right?
recurrant subscriptions, Corprate mail hosting, non invasive ads, not double-dipping, notreadimg your mail
It doesnt make all the money, but its not corrupt.
Read more about their actual budget.
I don’t understand your comment. Can you elaborate?
They run roughly a 50% profit margin, with ~80% of their budget coming from advertising revenue. Given that that’s amounting to about 100B year over year, with the Orwellian scope of their, what word can I use, surveillance - I would call it excessive.
This is not the users problem. This is googles problem.
If they want to give away a thing for free, then don’t be surprised when people take that thing for free.
My point was that people should have known it was never free to begin with.
apologist use that soundbyte even if thats not what you ment. Ive made the same mistake.
Personally I’m surprised that there’s not a premium tier that we can pay for to get quality back on Google services. Google business is the same crap but with a custom domain
Final nail in the coffin of don’t be evil. Next they’ll require this for accessing gmail
I have always struggled with this corporate motto from Google. If this is something you call out from day one then it feels like someone was thinking about doing evil but needed to be kept in check. It is like those “remove baby from stroller before folding” messages that you know is there because someone thought about it or did it already.
Any time you employ MBAs, you need strong reminders to not be evil.
I hope the EU can get to a quick decision on this. I trust they’ll provide a carrot on a stick to maintain the open internet in a way that’ll make Google suffer if they decide to not play ball with Brussels’ terms.
It’s already being pushed to the Chromium repo, or so it seems:
https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd
I’m really hoping this doesn’t make it into Brave their teams has removed a lot of Google crap in the past. Mullvad’s fork of Firefox can always replace them.
You don’t seem to understand. This is not a feature that a browser can simply choose not to implement. The WEBSITES that you are accessing will be checking that you are using a verified browser and that you are a confirmed user.
I have no idea what this means
Eh something had to happen. The prevalence of ad blockers and people not wanting to pay for things.
Ad blockers are prevalent because ads are a giant fucking malware vector.
Maybe don’t make websites 80% ads?
Firefox should implement this next
