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by 3cats-in-a-coat 1060 days ago
There's however the important detail that this company has been doggedly working for achieving that end by first co-opting the browser of a competitor (Safari WebKit), then forking it, then taking over the web standards process, and putting in every API possible on the web, including access to USB devices and so on, so they can make an OS around it.

Because if it's the web, Google sees it. And if everything is the web, then Google sees everything.
2 comments
wood_spirit 1060 days ago
And Apple had in turn had cop-opted KDE’s KHTML and KJS project to start WebKit. An illustrious linage.

(I remember several awesome hobby OS projects ported KHTML to get a really good browser back in those days. It was a really solid and portable codebase and much tidier than Firefox.)

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fauigerzigerk 1060 days ago
Google doesn't see anything just because it uses web technology. For instance, the payroll system I use is a web app, but Google doesn't see my company's payroll data. What Google sees is a marketing blurb about the payroll system.

Google sees everything that is public and everything that uses their ad network, including data from apps that don't use the web at all.

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