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by linuxandrew 700 days ago
Not only that, they are the advertising industry, or at least a major player. Moves like Manifest V3, continuing 3P cookies and user-hostile moves on YouTube are all a part of that.

Chrome should really not be a part of Google IMO. It's a significant conflict of interest.
1 comments
jauntywundrkind 700 days ago
In spite of Manifest V3 being a shit show, I continue to see all manners of evidence that Google wants genuine honest reform for user privacy. The attitude & negativity is at severely problematic levels, and Google actually gets that improvement & reform is necessary to keep going for another decade without some kind of boil over/explosion.

I agree that Chrome in theory shouldnt be a part of Google. But generally I think there is incredibly little self-dealing, that some ideas do go wrong but usually there's not such a sinister backstory of self-interest driving things. I don't know about today, but I'm the past engineers would pretty definitely say they'd never seen anything like the insinuation & top down steering that's so regularly casually implied, and it's remarkable how this casual accusation of rot is left to dominate. It's really unfortunate.

But I still think I'm principle there should ideally be harder separation. But I really doubt we can get an adequate funding source lined up. Chrome supports humanity's preeminent multi-media platform, is a huge gift to the world. And that online world that exists because of Chrome and FF, the general health of that world, that's what keeps Google alive & keeps the money pouring in. If Google can't invest in the web who would step up?.I'd love to see hundreds of millions a years allocated to this collective treasure we all enjoy, that runs on almost as many systems as Doom runs on, but alas there's just not the collective motive & will to support our great works.

I really hope Chrome can offer users a choice here, and that the choice really is good and that we can opt to leave this terrible 3rd party cookie world behind. I like the idea of not having a hard break, of this being more of a shift, one that the world can be more involved in navigating. Fingers crossed.

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linuxandrew 700 days ago
> In spite of Manifest V3 being a shit show, I continue to see all manners of evidence that Google wants genuine honest reform for user privacy. The attitude & negativity is at severely problematic levels, and Google actually gets that improvement & reform is necessary to keep going for another decade without some kind of boil over/explosion.

> I agree that Chrome in theory shouldnt be a part of Google. But generally I think there is incredibly little self-dealing,

OK, I'll bite. If Google cares about privacy so much, couldn't they simply disable 3P cookies like everyone else (minus Edge)? [1] Am we really to believe that the Chrome team is busy playing a game of 4D chess in the conquest for user privacy? I for one do not.

1: https://clearcode.cc/blog/browsers-first-third-party-cookies...

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jauntywundrkind 700 days ago
Everyone else disable 3rd party cookies but has unspecified/undocumented workarounds & carve-outs that they've had to keep expanding on. It broke a ton of login and valid diagnostic systems.

Google's playing hard mode by trying to actually specify how the new world is going to work. A third the current explainers they are working on relate to trying to get login flows working again. https://github.com/orgs/explainers-by-googlers/repositories . Google's commitment to specifying & standards has made this much harder.

Meanwhile they also have vastly more scrutiny. I'm not sure if the UK's CMA or ICO have updated the public on what their concerns are, but the UK in particular has come out strongly saying that they get full say in what Google does here, in one of the strongest repudiations of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace that the world has seen.

And meanwhile the slithering reptiles at the IAB are generating as much chaff nonsense and outcry as they can against Google, and putting forward proposals about making sure advertisers can tell what you had for breakfast & whether or not you flossed last night.

This is the least enviable spot to be in. The web has to change but trying to get the mandate for it to happen is neigh on impossible; giving users options & capabilities to pick seems like the only option at this stage.

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youngtaff 698 days ago
> But generally I think there is incredibly little self-dealing,

You might want to ask why INP wasn’t a Core Web Vital in the beginning and FID was… might have something to do with AMP scoring well on FID

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