This is a fucking childish take. If you don’t like what Google is doing with Chromium that’s one thing, but acting as if the code itself is evil is just straight-up magical thinking.
The thing is, Google has so much influence on chromium that even if you don’t use Chrome, using chromium based browsers means you still help google maintain its monopoly on web. Only real alternatives are Firefox, Librewolf etc.
@Spudwart@lolcatnip, wrong, Chromium is FOSS and every browsercompany is free to gutt it out and modify it to their like, it's not more controlled by Google than Gecko with several Google devs working in Mozilla on Firefox.
The Problem is Google itself with it's imperialistic behavior in internet, not which browser you use. This is precisely why he invented this WEI crap, because previous attempts to control it through Browser engine APIs didn't work.
But putting in the work to maintain a Chromium fork whose engine significantly differs from upstream? Especially over time as more changes are made that you’ll want to remove, and new features you DO want rely on some you DON’T…
Takes a lot of dev time/money.
Realistically other than Microsoft I don’t think any of the alternative Chromium browsers have the resources.
And most users are going to be on a browser fully confirming to pretty much all engine changes Google makes.
In reality, the larger Chromium’s market share - the bigger Google’s iron fist on web development.
Just because nobody else wants to do the work Google is doing, that doesn’t mean Google controls it. It just means people who have a lot more skin in the game than you do have looked at the situation and decided that making use of Google’s work is the best way for them to achieve their goals.
Google accounts for some 80%+ of Mozilla’s revenue. Firefox struck a different kind of deal with the devil than chromium browsers, but Google is the one pulling the strings.
Well, there’s Safari but that’s for apple only, and technically they don’t really control chromium-based browsers - they’d have to do yet another cycle of EEE to actually kill of competition. And firefox can survive without google for a while by downsizing massively and focusing on chinese market as they still have that baidu deal AFAIK.
But overall, yes, Google has in fact cemented themselves as the middlemen for all things internet, on both mobile and desktop.
And I actually wouldn’t have a problem with using google for searches if it weren’t for the fact they constantly do the captcha thing when I’m connecting via VPN. Captchas for a simple google search.
I’m not against google making money off of a good product, but they’ve enshittified it too much to be considered good now.
A lot of people don’t bother with changing defaults and corpos like Google, Microsoft, and the likes are well aware of this which is why Google pays Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars per year to be the default search engine.
I understand the compromise at the surface level but the implications just result in Google gaining more power and data, making it harder for “alternatives” to replace it over time which puts us all in an a bad situation when they decide to pull shit like WEI.
That’s a good point, though I still think the average person is already entrenched in Google. Being the default on an alternative browser isn’t really going to make the difference to the average, uncaring individual.
In a perfect world it wouldn’t be necessary but on the bright side Google search is already doing enough itself to make the average person want to try something else.
Bit of a weird thought, but I wonder also if they see Mozilla as a sort of controlled opposition too? As in, keep Firefox around so they don’t get in trouble over antitrust or something like that?
Mozilla.org is the corpse of Netscape that Google keeps animated so that it looks like they have competition when they really don’t.
The existence of Firefox is something they can point to to say they’re not a monopoly. The fact that 80% of the revenue Firefox receives is from Google means that Google effectively controls them. Mozilla has to weigh every decision against the risk that it will cause Google to withdraw their funding. That severely restricts the choices they’re willing to consider.
Firefox is only 5% of browsers, so it really doesn’t matter to Google if that 5% of users considers using a different search engine. Because of the Firefox user base, many of them will have already switched search engines, and because Google is such a dominant player, many others would switch back to Google if the browser used a different default. So, maybe 10% of that 5% would permanently switch search engines if Google stopped paying. Is that really worth billions per year? Probably not. But, pretending like you have competitors in the browser space and using that to push back on antitrust, that’s definitely worth billions per year.
Google makes something like $100 Billion a year in search ad revenue. 5% of that is $5 Billion.
It’s odd that people think Google is incredibly worried about having too large of a market share in the browser market (which they don’t make any money from) yet their 92% market share in searches is not concerning at all in terms of the potential for regulation.
The truth is nobody does anti-trust anymore (though they definitely should) and the big corporations aren’t worried at all about it. Google makes Chrome, Android, and pays Mozilla because they want to maintain dominance in the search market. Which is the thing they make money form. What they pay Mozilla is a drop in the bucket compared to what they pay Apple to be the default search engine on their devices.
Google doesn’t directly make money from their browser, but controlling their browser means they lock in the thing that drives their revenues. They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t. We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers, something they could only consider if they lock down the entire browser market.
They can always test it out against all their ads and make sure it works, putting out a fix if it ever doesn’t.
They could do this even if they weren’t funding mozilla. Ad’s aren’t exactly reliant on bleeding edge web standards anyway. You’re thinking about tracking tech, which they don’t have any input in for firefox.
We’ve also seen recently how they’re trying to make it so people can’t run ad blockers
Well yes, and mozilla was quite vocal in their opposition, demonstrating that Google doesn’t have much control over them.
For an example, Mozilla being forced to use Google Location Services as default even though Mozilla has its own. I am also a Firefox user but it always makes me wonder what other TnCs forced on Mozilla as part of the search deal.
I’m sure you’re aware Firefox isn’t in the search market. They are in the browser market and need to fund browser development. They’ve used Yahoo in the past and will go with whatever deal gives the best value. They could go with Bing if they wanted.
Funding from them does not mean control, and your insinuation is misleading and false.
I just checked it out. Seems that The Spiffing Brit is trying to break youtube or something and is having people open as many tabs of his livestream as they can to get as many views as they can.
I just checked it out. And to test, I opened 15 tabs in firefox and refreshed. Just fine lol. Not sure what problem that person has besides maybe too many firefox extensions.
I did the same and RAM usage on went up 20% for me. Using flatpak Firefox if that makes a difference. It's still responsive though as I type this comment.
Firefox Ram usage just kept going up during that stream for some reason. It was using 6GB of 8GB ram. Edge stayed at 2GB. The stream got boring after a while tho
If you use Firefox nightly (and maybe some of the other beta branches too, I'm not sure), there's a way to get any extension, they just might not work properly. I haven't really had issues with nightly, despite it being such a bleeding-edge build - although I would recommend keeping a backup browser since sometimes it decides to just stop working
You can install any extension you want on the Dev version and some forks like mull by setting a custom extension collection. It’s a bit of a pain but it works.
Honest question… I get that Chrome has a bunch questionable privacy practices that sends data back to Google, but do the chromium based browsers do that as well? My understanding is that Chromium is just the rendering engine. How is it bad?
Also, if Google implements their bullshit DRM features, I wonder if the derivative browsers will be able to disable it. I believe I saw that Brave said they won’t use it.
Up to date chromium is 100% just as bad. Forked and selectively maintained version (like brave) aren’t 100% just as bad, but varying degrees well below up to maybe even slightly above this hypothetical 100% marker. Not advocating for Brave (I don’t personally use it), but the way they update is my main point here.
Not all of chromium’s constituent components are required for a functional browser. At the end of the day, Firefox is just easier to trust and better supported than any of the chromium forks, personal opinion.
And when they control the vast majority of browser share (already true):
They add non-standard features, some websites use these features which locks out browsers that follow the standards.
Sure, you could maintain a Chromium fork that strips all the “bad” stuff. But that’s a lot of dev time and money… and it only gets worse with time as they add more. And why go through all the trouble to make your user’s experience worse?
And now Google de-facto controls web development standards.
The more users we can get off Chromium the better. Right now it’s literally just Firefox and Safari that are holding out.
The problem is largely that it gives power to Google to implement what they want (and how they want it) and everyone else just has to go along or become incompatible with 70% of all web users
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