this is not cancellation. This is Google taking a step back, and regroup to attack back.
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Its a common practice to do exactly that. Just demand something very absurd and let people rage about it, then "step back" to "please the masses" while in reality your "step back" idea is the thing you actually wanted to do from the beginning on. But now people are happy about it.
I learned that as a negotiation tactic. Pick the number you want to get, then ask for more. The counter will likely be around what you wanted!
They care about one thing only: Money.
Obviously this is more of a strategic retreat and nothing else. It's also a very common tactic to push for something crass, pull back, wait a bit and repeat. Most commonly resistance gets weaker each time, because people are people.
Now if anyone thinks they made money with a retreat and won't try again, because it's obviously much more lucrative, which stone exactly are you living under?
You are 100% correct. Nothing is won till you make it impossible for Google to push forward or destroy their motivation for trying again later.
Ah yes, the old Unity Trick™.
If they can't storm the front door, then try to sneak in through the back door I guess.
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Ha, I didn't know there's a name for that, but it's definitely what I assume they're going to do. My initial reaction was to wonder what they'll now present as the "reasonable" option to WEI.
Considering they're rolling it out in Android, maybe they'll just wait a moment and then integrate it into desktop Chrome as well, just without any of the fanfare?
It's a good thing that people are calling out their deception.
I would never agree with what Google proposes, though
You may not, but you'd be surprised with how many people didn't even care about WEI, let alone whatever the reasonable option will be
They grew thanks to the open internet where everyone let them scrape their website’s content. They can’t let anyone do that again.
Sure it isn't. * Wink wink nudge nudge*
It'll be back. With a different name and modified messaging.
That probably would've been true even if they did follow through.
@macleod @dean @rysiek they already started, they want to put it in android now: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2023/11/increasing-trust-for-embedded-media.html?m=1
They want to put it on the default webview in android, which doesn't seem like a huge deal to me. It would basically let apps that use webview for things like logging in beef up their security.
It's not like the entire concept of this API was bad, it's just that with Google's proposed implementation companies would abuse the fuck out of it to do bad things. Not having it in browsers pretty much eliminates that while still letting things like banking apps enjoy some of the benefits.
@dean @lisamelton One of the reasons I don’t use Chrome. Here, they’ve revealed what they are working towards. They’ll try again.
We did it!
Specifically, everyone who's not using Chrome and its derivates did it. Use Firefox, people.
That's what Google want you to believe, forget about and step back. It's not over yet. We just stopped the first wave and it will get harder with each wave.
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People here really can't just accept a win
A win is when we have forced them to abandon the wretched plan. Them taking it elsewhere with a different name, only to be brought back in the future isn't a win - it's more or less the folly the Trojans committed with the Greek wooden horse.
It's a much less broad, though. That's a win right?
I don't trust Google's word that they will keep it that way. Besides, would you have accepted this proposal if WEI wasn't proposed first? It's a form of manipulation.
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I'm convinced people on Lemmy just want to be miserable all the time.
We have won the battle, but the war is not over. If one is tired, he or she could employ escapism. But don't blame or poke those, who don't do that.
Damn? Really?
Nope. It's getting integrated into Android WebView.
Daaamn poor GrapheneOS devs...
As someone who uses GrapheneOS but knows very little about the technical side of things, what implications does this have for the OS? I'll actually just not use a smartphone anymore if I'm going to be forced back onto the privacy nightmare that is stock Android.
It means a bunch of work to undo all the things Google is about to do
I'd expect them to support basic integrity. They already do that for apps, so no reason to not expand it. It'd break compatibility.
Since they don't (want) to offer a way to circumvent the basic integrity check right now, I don't see why they would undo the expansion into the webview.
They will strip out the DRM part, maybe. GrapheneOS, other than even Firefox or any Linux Distro, has many DRM packages installed. Widevine and lots of others.
So it may be that they dont even remove it from the Vanadium Webview. But if they do, Apps may break as the Developers looove the extra control. And then GrapheneOS needs to do annoying work again, to for example have a sandboxed Webview-DRM app that can be enabled per-App.
I don't know about graphene, but doesn't some android roms allow to use custom ( more private Webview implementations) instead of default ?
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the concept is good in theory; the reasoning was not.
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