A list of recent hostile moves by #Google's #Chrome team; handy for sharing with your entourage, to explain why they should stop using #Chromium / #GoogleChrome and use #Firefox or #Epiphany as their main #web #browser :
* The "Manifest v3" sabotage of content blocking extensions: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23131029/mozilla-ad-blocking-firefox-google-chrome-privacy-manifest-v3-web-request
* The attempted sabotage of #JPEGXL: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/chrome-banishes-jpeg-xl-photo-format-that-could-save-phone-space/
* #WebEnvironmentIntegrity a.k.a. #DRM for whole websites would hurt the web, #opensource browsers and OSes: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrity-api-sounds-like-drm-for-the-web/
Everything we can do push people away from Chrome (and some other Chromium browsers like Edge) the better. Their market share gives them the power to dictate terms. Their search share and marketing dominance would still give them too much power, but at least not “dictate how the web works” power.
I started seeing these red flags back when they were pushing the https everywhere initiative. Because, while there were a lot of insecure sites that are now more secure, there are also billions upon billions of pages that have no need to expend the CPU cycles (wasting electricity and increasing carbon footprints) on encrypting and decrypting all external traffic. But site admins had to do it or chrome would make a stink. If “hackers” find out I was looking up stroganoff recipes on a site I’m not signed into, I think I’ll find a way to cope with the intrusion.
Everything we can do push people away from Chrome (and some other Chromium browsers like Edge) the better. Their market share gives them the power to dictate terms. Their search share and marketing dominance would still give them too much power, but at least not “dictate how the web works” power.
I started seeing these red flags back when they were pushing the https everywhere initiative. Because, while there were a lot of insecure sites that are now more secure, there are also billions upon billions of pages that have no need to expend the CPU cycles (wasting electricity and increasing carbon footprints) on encrypting and decrypting all external traffic. But site admins had to do it or chrome would make a stink. If “hackers” find out I was looking up stroganoff recipes on a site I’m not signed into, I think I’ll find a way to cope with the intrusion.
If your ISP can track your web traffic Google’s position is weaker