[HN Gopher] De-AMP: Cutting out Google and enhancing privacy
___________________________________________________________________
De-AMP: Cutting out Google and enhancing privacy
Author : w0ts0n
Score : 533 points
Date : 2022-04-19 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
| alanh wrote:
| Recently I came across the AMP website at https://amp.dev/ (after
| some years since first seeing it). It's really remarkable how
| much Google wants to pretend this is an industry standard and not
| their own little fiefdom. I don't see the word Google anywhere,
| not even on the About page.
| a5aAqU wrote:
| The whole AMP thing is shady. Be sure to read this:
|
| https://wptavern.com/amp-has-irreparably-damaged-publishers-...
| user3939382 wrote:
| It kind of reminds me of the OOXML thing where Microsoft
| hijacked the standards process for its own benefit.
| lupire wrote:
| The.dev gTLD is Google's; it exists for Google projects to hide
| their Google relationships.
|
| amp.dev does make a tiny out of context mention at the bottom
| of the page, that Google runs the AMP CDN.
|
| But overall it's obvious that the AMP Project trying to hide
| it's Googleyness by being "Open JS Foundation", which itself is
| a corporate trade group hijacking the word "Open".
| mcdonje wrote:
| Google administers .dev, but it's open. You or I could get a
| .dev domain and use it for a project that has nothing to do
| with Google.
| matth3 wrote:
| I've seen AMP pages really fail for retail sites. I followed this
| link yesterday and ended up on an AMP page with no way to
| purchase the item or continue on within the site. No idea if
| that's the site's fault or Google's but it must be costing them
| customers.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/woodworkersworkshop.co.uk/amp/v...
| misterbishop wrote:
| AMP is probably the single worst thing Google has produced. But
| as a Pixel 6 user, I think the real solution to bypassing AMP
| would have to live at the VPN level. Using Firefox Nightly as my
| primary browser, I don't really get AMP search results. The place
| I see it is in Google's news feed on the right side of the home
| screen. Brave wouldn't solve my problem there, and I already
| trust Firefox more.
| stiray wrote:
| It is not the worst. It is just "one of them", how to get the
| monopoly over web content.
| misterbishop wrote:
| It is the worst. It offers nothing to anyone, it has a
| terrible user interface, and it breaks basic features of the
| world wide web.
|
| If AMP is genuinely a way to enhance online user experiences,
| then make it opt-in, instead of the current no-way-to-opt-
| out.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Ok there's a lot of amp hate here, and a lot of it justified,
| but when amp first picked up steam as just a regular mobile
| user it was _amazing_. I basically filtered searches to only
| look at those with the amp icon because in the real world in
| real conditions on mobile connections they legitimately &
| consistently loaded 10x faster than non-amp pages. And
| basically never had the dreaded random scroll jumps during
| loading.
|
| Since then networks & phones got faster, a lot faster, and the
| difference maybe isn't worth the cost anymore. Also I think the
| amp restrictions have greatly relaxed, making amp just as slow?
| But "single worst thing"? Hardly. At launch it _delivered_ and
| big time, the UX experience was night & day.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > Second, AMP is bad for security. By design, AMP confuses users
| about what site they're interacting with. Users think they're
| interacting with the publisher, when in actuality the user is
| still within Google's control. User-respecting browsers defend
| the site as the security and privacy boundary on the web, and
| systems like AMP intentionally confuse this boundary.
|
| They've actually been pushing to confuse that boundary even more
| since 2019, with their Signed Exchanges specification[0][1]. In
| essence, when you (unintentionally) visit an AMP page from Google
| Search, the URL typically starts with
| google.com/amp/websiteyouwantedtogoto.com. Signed Exchanges is
| essentially a way to drop the "google.com/amp/" bit, as
| demonstrated by one of the animations on [0].
|
| Even Cloudflare supported this and rolled it out on their free
| tier[2].
|
| [0]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/04/instant-
| lo...
|
| [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/16/18402628/google-amp-
| url-p...
|
| [2]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/
| 37 wrote:
| This seems insane and malicious as hell and I can't believe
| it's being sold as a feature. It's essentially just lying to
| users about which website they are currently visiting, or maybe
| I'm missing something.
| nybble41 wrote:
| The original version where the content was served from
| Google's cache without any cryptographic verification but
| displayed as if it came from the original site was...
| misguided at best. It meant that you were trusting Google's
| servers to only cache the content and not modify it.
|
| The new system adds verification that the content is exactly
| what was intended by the original site, despite being served
| through a cache, so the user agent is no longer lying about
| which website the user is visiting. Sure, the data was
| fetched from Google, but that's not the important part. It's
| been verified to have originated from the server shown in the
| address bar.
| jabbany wrote:
| Google modifying the content is not really the threat model
| most people care that much about though (similar concerns
| exist with other caches/cdns)...
|
| Google redirecting traffic to servers they control to mine
| interaction and interest data on the other hand...
| nybble41 wrote:
| That was Mozilla's objection to the Signed Exchange
| standard: you lose some privacy because the cache server
| can see the page data in the clear, even if they can't
| modify it. But IMHO resisting Signed Exchange doesn't
| help here at all, since you gave up that data to Google
| when you followed the link (which is _not_ obfuscated).
| It makes no difference at that point what is shown in the
| address bar, as the page has already been served. Also,
| since Signed Exchange means you don 't have to trust the
| cache, it implies that Google's cache could be replaced
| with a different (but still not fully trusted) server
| behind the scenes without changing the result.
| thomasahle wrote:
| > you gave up that data to Google when you followed the
| link
|
| I gave up information on what site I was visiting, but if
| I enter any information on the page, won't that still go
| to Google? It's going to look like I have an https end-
| to-end channel with the site I'm visiting, but really
| Google is Man-In-The-Middleing the whole thing?
| nybble41 wrote:
| > I gave up information on what site I was visiting, but
| if I enter any information on the page, won't that still
| go to Google?
|
| So far as I can tell the user agent uses the original
| (non-Google) URL for the purpose of same-origin tests
| when it's returned from Google's cache using the Signed
| Exchanges standard, so the risk is effectively the same
| as if the page were served from the original server and
| Google were not involved. The page _could_ send anything
| you enter to Google, but it would need to be coded that
| way to begin with. It wouldn 't do so just because it was
| served through their cache.
| jabbany wrote:
| > It makes no difference at that point what is shown in
| the address bar, as the page has already been served.
|
| If this were truly the case (that it didn't matter), the
| argument can be made that there is no reason to change
| the host -- just show it as google.com like it does now.
| The only reason that you'd want the address bar to show a
| different domain (i.e. the "author" rather than
| "publisher") is exactly because it _does matter_ to the
| user!
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Why exactly does it matter to the end user?
|
| Given Signed Exchanges are entirely opt-in by the
| publisher/website operator, what's the difference between
| this and a CDN? Isn't that "lying" about what site you're
| on? It's not theverge.com - it's Cloudflare!
| nybble41 wrote:
| It makes no difference _for privacy_ in that you already
| told Google which page you were going to by following the
| link. Naturally the address shown in the URL bar matters
| to the user or we wouldn 't be discussing this at all.
| With Signed Exchanges it can correctly reflect the origin
| of the content rather than being cluttered with
| irrelevant details about the cache server.
| 37 wrote:
| >It makes no difference at that point what is shown in
| the address bar
|
| This is ridiculous. Of course it makes a difference. The
| address bar is how basically 100% of users know what site
| they are on.
| nybble41 wrote:
| It makes no difference _for privacy_ in that you already
| told Google which page you were going to by following the
| link. If they implemented AMP as a more traditional
| redirect instead of a cache then they would get the same
| information and you would still see the non-Google site
| in the address bar at the end.
| magicalist wrote:
| I feel like this conversation comes up in every signed
| exchange thread, and it's also always pointed out that
| this is how CNAME records and CDNs already work, except
| now the response is signed by the author.
| dmw_ng wrote:
| This hasn't been true since the first third-party JS
| script was published. In reality a giant proportion of
| web users today are 'on Google' or 'on CloudFlare' or 'on
| CloudFront' even if they aren't aware of it. The address
| bar has been broken in this regard for at least a decade
| BrendanEich wrote:
| ICYMI,
| https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1516492008700796929
| kodablah wrote:
| I was hoping SXG would help people leverage CDNs on their
| mostly-static domain without requiring TLS termination. I
| wonder if there is enough non-AMP value there to make the spec
| worth it.
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| perihelions wrote:
| How does AMP interact with Brave's advertising monetization, BAT?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Great question. Brave's advertising is presently done on the
| New Tab Page, via Sponsored Images. No AMP impact there. Users
| who opt-in to Brave's Ad Notifications will occasionally
| (frequency thresholds are governed by the user) see a native
| notification displayed outside of the browser. No apparent AMP
| impact there either.
|
| Where AMP could impact things is for the publisher. Publishers
| are able to verify their domains/properties, and receive BAT
| contributions from Brave users visiting their content. If that
| publisher is having their content served through Google's
| domain, that would impact their ability to receive support from
| visitors.
| [deleted]
| a5aAqU wrote:
| For Firefox:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/
| silicon2401 wrote:
| For some reason, I got this idea at some point that brave has a
| built in crypto miner as its form of monetization. Can anyone
| confirm if that's true or not? A browser cutting out amp sounds
| like exactly the kind of browser I want
|
| Edit: not sure why I got downvoted. I'm asking a genuine question
| because I'm always looking for google alternatives, and firefox
| has been disappointing lately.
| jaywalk wrote:
| They do have a weird crypto thing (not a miner, as far as I
| know) but it's easy to disable and forget about.
| PaulBGD_ wrote:
| They're monetized by selling ads in exchange for BAT, plus they
| probably hold plenty of BAT which they can sell over time as
| they continue to increase its value.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| No miner; in fact we were the first browser (to my knowledge)
| to block crypto-miners back in 2017/18 when they began
| appearing on the Web (and being delivered via third-party ad
| networks).
|
| Brave does come with Brave Rewards, and optional component
| which enables users to participate in privacy-preserving
| advertising (ads are matched locally, on your device). Users
| who opt-in receive 70% of the associated revenue for ads they
| see. Rewards are delivered in the form of BAT (and ERC-20
| token), which can be kept, or gifted to content creators across
| the Web as a means of support.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| Thanks for squashing that rumor. I'll definitely give brave a
| try with that crypto rumor resolved and the news that brave
| cuts out amp
| InCityDreams wrote:
| I'm a joe blow. Average user. I've been using brave for 3+
| years. I try the other browsers fairly regularly. Always
| come back to brave. Check the brave:// flags (?), and go
| through _every_ option under settings.
|
| I have the crypto off, but - looking more at the brave site
| (including the many problems), I'm beginning to err.... be
| convinced(!?).
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Users who opt-in receive 70% of the associated revenue for
| ads they see.
|
| The other 30 percent goes right to Brave's pockets. In other
| words, they directly profit off of showing you
| advertisements.
|
| > Rewards are delivered in the form of BAT (and ERC-20
| token), which can be kept, or gifted to content creators
| across the Web as a means of support.
|
| *only if those creators have an ERC-20 wallet. Many creators
| (like Tom Scott) have had their likeness appropriated without
| their consent to advertise this monetization scheme, despite
| the fact that they have no intention of ever using the
| service. As such, Brave dangles their ad revenue over their
| head, refusing to pay out in anything other than their own
| altcoin. It's a scummy design, arguably many times worse than
| the act of advertising in the first place.
|
| I hate ads, and I go to extreme lengths to stop them and the
| scummy behavior they inspire. That's why I can't support
| Brave in good conscience.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| > The other 30 percent goes right to Brave's pockets. In
| other words, they directly profit off of showing you
| advertisements.
|
| Correct. We are able to continue developing Brave with the
| remaining 30%. In this arrangement, the user chooses
| whether or not to opt-in, governs the degree to which they
| will participate, receives more than 2x what Brave gets,
| and never has their data harvested in the process. Win-win,
| no?
|
| Regarding the Tom Scott topic, you're quite mistaken there
| as well. Please see this response (to another user in this
| thread) for context:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086397.
|
| Brave offers auto-conversion of received BAT into various
| other types of assets and currencies. If you prefer
| Bitcoin, for example, you can choose to have your BAT
| automatically converted into that asset. No requirement to
| hold BAT.
| aww_dang wrote:
| My only problem is the KYC. I'm happy people are making
| money with ads. The KYC stuff is contrary to the privacy
| narrative. Fix that and I'm sold as a user, publisher and
| ad buyer.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| KYC isn't required for users. You can download Brave,
| opt-in to Rewards, earn BAT, and support content creators
| across the Web, and all without KYC. But if you wish to
| deposit/withdraw, then KYC is required (by relevant AML
| laws/regulations). Brave can't break the law if we wish
| to reform the Web into a privacy-preserving medium for
| communication and more. It's not up to us whether KYC is
| part of the equation; we have to follow the law.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Correct. We are able to continue developing Brave with
| the remaining 30%. In this arrangement, the user chooses
| whether or not to opt-in, governs the degree to which
| they will participate, receives more than 2x what Brave
| gets, and never has their data harvested in the process.
| Win-win, no?
|
| Not really? There's no reason you should be entitled to
| that money. You're effectively doing nothing in this
| scenario: at least traditional ads actually support the
| content that is delivered on the site you access.
| Blocking ads isn't morally objectionable, but playing the
| role of the middleman and the tax collector certainly is.
| You can pretend like you deserve the compensation all you
| want, but from a technical level it's a pretty petty move
| that's ultimately designed to take advantage of the end-
| user and turn them into revenue-generating cattle. Yes,
| they get more money per ad, but they also don't have the
| benefit of scale. Individually, these users make what, no
| more than $3 a month from opting-in to ads? Meanwhile,
| Brave pockets hundreds of thousands. It doesn't add up.
|
| > Regarding the Tom Scott topic, you're quite mistaken
| there as well. Please see this response (to another user
| in this thread) for context
|
| So, I wasn't mistaken. Reading through that comment,
| you're basically admitting that you made a mistake, and
| had to rush out an update as damage control for a pretty
| obviously dark pattern. Case closed, don't treat me like
| a moron.
|
| > Brave offers auto-conversion of received BAT into
| various other types of assets and currencies. If you
| prefer Bitcoin, for example, you can choose to have your
| BAT automatically converted into that asset. No
| requirement to hold BAT.
|
| But you still need to hold crypto. That's not a
| refutation for the ERC-20 wallet point.
|
| Ultimately, I think the Brave team is falling into the
| self-righteous Apple trap. Pretending like you always
| know what's best for your users and hiding behind a guise
| of privacy is pretty laughable, and it certainly doesn't
| make for good optics in the eyes of the greater FOSS and
| privacy community.
| Vladimof wrote:
| I thought that Google finally gave up on AMP... I guess not
| fidrelity wrote:
| As someone who myself relies on Google's SEO traffic I'm a bit
| hesitant to say this (but luckily I'm small enough that Google
| doesn't care about me at all): AMP is terrible for everyone
| except Google themselves. It's a plain abuse of their quasi
| monopoly and I support everything that fights AMP.
|
| Another reason why I'm happy to use Brave both on desktop and
| especially on mobile.
| codalan wrote:
| Right on. Hopefully this feature is added to Vivaldi Mobile, too.
| anticristi wrote:
| I wonder that the EU commission hasn't used GDPR or some anti-
| conpetition law to ban AMP in the EU.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| GDPR enforcement is severely lacking unfortunately. None of the
| record-breaking "4% of global turnover" fines have materialized
| even for malicious actors that definitely deserve it.
| nomilk wrote:
| My main gripe with AMP may seem pedantic or even petty, but it's
| the way it messes with the URL. Copying and sharing or saving a
| URL is fundamental to web, and AMP makes me have to mess around
| to get that standard URL. It's about as small as first world
| problems get, but it's annoying all the same.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| _It 's about as small as first world problems get, but it's
| annoying all the same._
|
| This logic needs to stop. We may as all well live in mud huts.
| Then we can have "real problems". You can presume privilege is
| your problem, or, we can continue to strive for better
| conditions always as a culture. Low standards will lead you
| exactly where you belong, your mud hut.
| seelmobile wrote:
| [Google employee, opinions are my own]
|
| This was 'fixed' by Signed Exchanges[0] which sites can
| implement. This is (imho) a cool new web tech that got drowned
| out in the AMP noise.
|
| [0] https://web.dev/signed-exchanges/
| pineconewarrior wrote:
| Last I checked, this feature is paywalled behind specific
| certificate authorities.
|
| Any news on that?
| seelmobile wrote:
| I don't work in this space and hadn't heard of it this. A
| quick search suggests LetsEncrypt and Mozilla are
| intentionally not implementing support: https://community.l
| etsencrypt.org/t/cansignhttpexchanges/153...
| fooey wrote:
| It's a thing _only_ Google wants, so it 'll be an
| interesting flex of their monopoly powers if it goes
| anywhere
|
| Very similar to what they tried and failed to do with FLOC
|
| I suspect Google is solidly in too many anti-competitive
| crosshairs around the world to be able to pull anything
| like this off.
| jwr wrote:
| Google doesn't want you to use URLs. Google wants you to use
| Google. Makes sense.
| folkrav wrote:
| Doesn't sound petty to me.
| lupire wrote:
| Even without AMP, Chrome is dedicated to hiding URLs from
| users.
| freedomben wrote:
| This bothers me greatly too and is my biggest gripe. I
| understand it's hard to build something like amp without that,
| but I think it will have unfortunate reverberations for many
| years to come. Especially if at some point Google pulls the
| plug on Amp. Will all those amp links suddenly die?
| gruturo wrote:
| It's neither pedantic nor petty - I find it so annoying too.
| It's like a car wash operator placing an unwanted sticker on my
| windshield.
| knodi wrote:
| I fucking hate APM. As firefox iOS user I can't seem to get rid
| of it.
| pedro2 wrote:
| thankfully it was replaced by ACPI
| fleddr wrote:
| Google's AMP has to be one of the best examples of how
| manipulative Google has become towards developers, users, the
| world.
|
| AMP is presented as "the web on a diet", and AMP's speed
| advantage supposedly achieved by its clever and enforced
| constraints. Protecting us irresponsible web developers from
| coding slow pages. Sounds believable, sounds good.
|
| Problem is, that's not at all the reason AMP is fast. It's fast
| because as you scroll through Google's search results on mobile,
| AMP pages are preloaded as you scroll by them. Then you click one
| and its instantly there, because it was preloaded.
|
| Which is something Google does not do for non-AMP pages, for
| "privacy reasons". Which is quite rich when you force users of a
| publication to consume it via Google in the case of an AMP page.
| Anyway, this is why an AMP page has a 3-5s head-start compared to
| any other non-AMP page.
|
| As more and more people notice the blatant lie that is AMP
| "performance", here comes the next manipulative tactic. They show
| some vulnerability.
|
| "OK OK, maybe this wasn't the proper 'standard' way to do it, but
| we were in a rush to solve the performance crisis".
|
| The performance "crisis" for which there seems little internal
| Google consensus, as every single fucking of their own products
| violate best practices or actively contribute to it (Google tag
| manager), yet never get a ranking penalty, but I digress.
|
| This next part is a stroke of genius. What really happened here
| is that Google failed to fully trick the user. They want the user
| to believe they are on domain.abc whilst in reality they are on
| google.com. They tried all kinds of hacky glitchy methods to
| conceal reality but could never make it water tight.
|
| So by admitting to some error and promising to improve their
| game, they'll now use the standardized approach: signed
| exchanges.
|
| Good guy Google "listened" to criticism by now implementing a
| standard that allows them to FULLY trick the user, as it's built
| right into the browser. So they'll be back.
|
| So whenever Google tries to sell something as good (speed, web
| standards), know how full of deceit they are. The other tactic is
| "open source", as if that means anything.
|
| You know what the real disappointment is though? The complete
| lack of regulation. How on earth can a company that is a
| monopolist in search, browsers, analytics AND advertising do an
| obvious power grab like this in the open and just fully get away
| with it, not a care in the world?
|
| We need modernized digital regulation, drastically.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| > Google's AMP has to be one of the best examples of how
| manipulative Google has become towards developers, users, the
| world.
|
| It's a publicly traded company (which makes rich people richer
| AND funds our retirement plans). It's simply optimizing its
| feedback loops. Any publicly traded company gets more and more
| evil as it extracts more and more value.
|
| To change this, we'll have to recognize how ubiquitous of a
| utility for all walks of life the internet has become. And
| begin thinking about certain aspects of it in the same way we
| do other public utilities.
| nanidin wrote:
| I de-AMP'd by switching my default mobile search to DDG.
| mastazi wrote:
| But AMP can pop up in unexpected places, for example Twitter
| links on mobile used to be AMP until recently. Just changing
| search engine will not prevent AMP completely
| phreack wrote:
| I felt literally forced to leave Google on mobile by AMP. DDG's
| results are often worse and I end up having to !g, and it's
| always a punch in the stomach having to see two screens worth
| of poorly marked ad-results, SEO spam and AMP - all of those
| getting worse every month. And even then, their indexing of
| sites like Stack Overflow, Reddit, and other major players with
| good content is still miles ahead than DDG when I'm trying to
| find the solution to a problem.
| mdoms wrote:
| I didn't realise AMP still exists. It definitely seems to be less
| relevant today, I hardly ever find myself on AMP pages anymore. I
| assumed Google had killed it.
| disadvantage wrote:
| It's easy to slag AMP because it's Google, and privacy-aware
| people really don't like Google and denounce all their actions
| without even thinking. But on the other hand: what if AMP is
| actually a good thing? Like if it speeds up the web and addresses
| web obesity, why not embrace it?
| dogleash wrote:
| Yes, that's the carrot. Now look for the stick.
|
| >what if AMP is actually a good thing?
|
| People said this when AMP was first announced too.
|
| Good for people with lives comfortable enough to be so off-
| guard that this didn't set off any alarm bells; but businesses
| are not your friends.
|
| Thankfully with the benefit of time and hindsight the Texas
| Attorney General has documented some of the catches for us:
| https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Please see the "Why is AMP Harmful?" section :)
| https://brave.com/privacy-updates/18-de-amp/#why-is-amp-harm...
| robonerd wrote:
| So what if it saves me a few milliseconds of load time and
| megabyte or two of RAM? _Maybe_ that has some value a shitty
| mobile connection, but such marginal gains are not worth
| conceding _even more_ control of the web to Google. I 'd rather
| websites take 10 minutes to load than have Google MITM my life.
| UberFly wrote:
| If you run Pi-Hole here's the RegEx to add to your blacklist
|
| ^(.+\\.)?amp\\..+\\.com$
|
| ^(.+\\.)?ampproject\\.org$
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Honestly, this is win-win and I applaud Brave for taking on this
| engineering task.
|
| - Users who are concerned about AMP can use Brave to bypass
| Google's infrastructure
|
| - Users for whom AMP is a benefit can continue to use it
|
| - Everybody wins
| stiray wrote:
| Really? What happens when google no longer indexes non amp
| pages as most of the web pages are on amp? Just a thought
| teaser. As it looks like there is not much people seeing
| further from their noses.
| RedComet wrote:
| Brave has a search engine for that.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > What happens when google no longer indexes non amp pages as
| most of the web pages are on amp?
|
| Your thought experiment is equivalent to "What happens when
| Google no longer indexes the open web," and I think the
| answer is "Bing takes Google's place."
| s17n wrote:
| Totally agree! (And I'm usually in these threads just to defend
| AMP)
| BuckRogers wrote:
| While I moved to Edge after 19 years on Firefox and I'm happy
| with it, for me it's clear that Brave is the new Firefox.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| This reads like a parody of somebody who doesn't understand the
| web making their own modifications and proudly sharing their
| project. They explain how AMP works by preloading and then they
| contradict themselves by saying it loads slower. It can't load
| slower for people reaching an AMP page from an aggregator page.
|
| Then they say that it monopolizes the web. It competes with
| preloading technologies like Apple News, which require the
| publisher to work directly with the aggregator. Any aggregator
| can consume AMP, just like any aggregator can load RSS, but
| nobody complained that RSS and Google's RSS aggregator
| monopolized the web or that the RSS posts were served from Google
| Reader instead of the publisher.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| I think you read too quickly, or skipped over a few key parts.
|
| Yes, AMP can cause some pages/content to load more slowly. This
| was stated in the write-up, and supported a link to Google's
| own DOJ disclosures. In that source we read that Google knew
| that some publishers avoided AMP because their own pages were
| shown to load more quickly without it, especially considering
| 1-second throttling on Google's part for non-AMP pages, aimed
| to give AMP a "nice comparative boost".
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I think you didn't read that report at all. The nice
| comparative boost was for ads. AMP pages loaded from an
| aggregator are rendered before you click on them, and the DOJ
| disclosures did not dispute that this would cause them to
| load faster for users as it obviously would.
| bigp3t3 wrote:
| Nobody complained about Google's RSS monopolizing because the
| search engine doesn't provide RSS URLs in the top results,
| unlike they do for AMP links, at least nearly as frequently.
| RSS is also far from a similar case study to AMP in how web
| content is delivered. RSS optional, AMP was a lazy web dev's
| means to presenting pages over mobile without having to think
| about layout. At least that's what if felt like to me as a web
| user.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| And how is showing AMP in top results monopolizing the web?
| Bing does the same thing. A social news aggregator could do
| the same thing if it thinks people could read the article and
| go back to scrolling the feed faster.
|
| AMP loads instantly. There is nothing lazy about supporting
| it. Just like RSS, it requires extra work for the publisher
| to get the user the instant-loading behavior they desire.
| freediver wrote:
| I haven't noticed that many AMP pages recently. Is it still a
| thing and what kind of sites use them?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Google no longer marks AMP pages in its results, but Bing does.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" what kind of sites use them?"_
|
| Here's a good sample set (AMP posts on Reddit, sorted (roughly)
| by popularity):
|
| https://old.reddit.com/user/AmputatorBot/?sort=top&t=week
| p1peridine wrote:
| "AmputatorBot" lol
| rchaud wrote:
| Commercial blogsites that post often, and specifically focus on
| 'new' stories that people are searching for online.
|
| Think websites that do news, celebrity gossip, music, games and
| movies.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| They pop up on reddit fairly frequently. Lot of news sites push
| them, hard...when people get a share link, especially on
| mobile, they end up with an amp link. Lot of subreddits have
| automod rules that delete amp links, and there are bots that
| look for amp links and reply to the comment with a de-amp'd
| link.
| halotrope wrote:
| On a slight tangent: I am a very happy user of "Amplosion" on
| iOS. Gets rid of this god-awful AMP bullshit for good. Did not
| see any AMP "enhanced" page for two years now.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/de/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/i...
| karlzt wrote:
| That's mentioned in the article.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Imagine working at Google on AMP
|
| The banality of evil
| dafelst wrote:
| Join Google to change the world as a top tier software
| engineer, then spend all your time updating protobuf
| definitions to keep internal tools glued together as Yet
| Another Widely Used Internal API implements breaking changes.
|
| Such a lot of wasted talent.
| fellerts wrote:
| I wanted to read the justification for why "AMP harms users'
| privacy, security and internet experience", but the link
| ironically points to a Google doc for which access is restricted.
| Is there an open version of this somewhere?
| jonathansampson wrote:
| That link is meant to jump to https://brave.com/privacy-
| updates/18-de-amp/#why-is-amp-harm..., just a bit further down
| the page. Apologies for the confusion
| gundmc wrote:
| I don't remember coming across many AMP pages recently. Since
| Google stopped favoring AMP in the search results the other year,
| it seemed like AMP was dying off. Is this feature even still
| relevant in 2022?
| gruturo wrote:
| Kudos to Brave - they're a sometimes weird actor, but some of
| their initiatives are commendable, and they often do what Mozilla
| should have, but didn't.
|
| I rarely end up in AMP pages on my mobile, but when it happens I
| immediately feel like I stepped on a turd, and promptly backtrack
| / close the tab before it hijacks my back button, half the
| screen, standard controls (including doing something weird to
| scrolling) and other unpleasantries like banners whose "x"
| somehow overlaps my browser's bars, and are therefore out of
| reach (and said browser bars somehow do NOT autohide when
| scrolling, unlike on normal pages)
|
| Getting AMP results from Google search has been one of the
| drivers leading me to switch to DDG, so congrats Google, one less
| customer.
| mulmen wrote:
| > Getting AMP results from Google search has been one of the
| drivers leading me to switch to DDG, so congrats Google, one
| less customer.
|
| It is a cliche but you are not Google's customer. You are their
| product. If you don't find AMP compelling they don't want to
| serve you ads anyway.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, but less product is less profit, and they _do_ want to
| sell you ads, AMP or not!
|
| So yes, it is a loss for Google.
| agilob wrote:
| Brave is doing for us all the things Mozilla promised
| dralley wrote:
| And a lot of other shaddy things that Mozilla has never done,
| like the affiliate link hijacking (which yes, was supposedly
| a "bug" but you have to admit that it's an awfully convenient
| "bug"), and setting up crypto wallets for content creators
| without solicitation and then collecting money on their
| behalf.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Maybe it's because I use Brave (as a "Chrome with less
| Google" and with all the crypto stuff disabled), but when I
| look at the "shady things" they've done, it doesn't look
| that shady:
|
| - The affiliate link "hijacking" was - if I remember
| correctly - to sites of crypto companies that partner with
| them. I'd prefer if this didn't happen, but most seem to be
| fine when other browsers (Safari, Firefox, etc) add
| something like "?client=safari" when searching or when
| their search engine (eg: DDG) use affiliate links to sites
| like Amazon or Ebay. It's not a new thing.
|
| - The money collection (brave rewards)... if one doesn't
| understand how the system works, it looks like they are
| stealing money... but the money is returned to the sender
| after a while if the website/creator doesn't claim it. Is
| this that bad?
|
| And then there's them not blocking some trackers (Google,
| Facebook, etc) by default, but if they did, they would
| break logins on many websites.
|
| Maybe all this is bad, but I'm not sure if there's any
| browser out there without a history of shady behaviour.
| Even Mozilla has messed up a few times.
| dralley wrote:
| >The money collection (brave rewards)... if one doesn't
| understand how the system works, it looks like they are
| stealing money... but the money is returned to the sender
| after a while if the website/creator doesn't claim it. Is
| this that bad?
|
| I don't think anyone ever accused them of _stealing_ that
| money, but yes, hijacking people 's personal brands to
| collect money without their explicit knowledge is a bad
| thing.
|
| Imagine if I saw the icon and gave "them" money via Brave
| instead of joining their Patreon or some other official
| channel that they explicitly set up. If they don't
| collect, then yes, I might get my money back - nothing
| was "stolen". But that was money I wanted to send to the
| content creator in that particular moment, and that
| creator will probably never see it. The creator got
| screwed out of money that otherwise would have gone to
| them.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Please see the second half of this response:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086397.
|
| Imagine I presented you with $10 (from my own pocket),
| and asked you where it should be spent. You told me
| "Doc's Pub, over on 9th." So I walked over to Doc's Pub,
| but found them to be closed. So I waited outside for a
| few hours, just incase they opened up. I later went home
| and wrote down "try to spend $10 at Doc's tomorrow."
|
| Brave staked users with BAT (from our token sale). Users
| could direct that BAT to the sites/properties of their
| choosing. The BAT then went into an omnibus settlement
| wallet (note: the BAT originated in one Brave wallet, and
| was sent to another Brave wallet).
|
| There was no hijacking of brands, or anything of that
| nature. I would encourage you again to please visit the
| aforementioned link. In it I mention our blog post on the
| topic, which includes screenshots and more. I hope this
| helps!
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Maybe the problem is the way it used to work and not so
| much how it works right now? Things seem to have changed
| a bit.
|
| At least for websites I have to manually click the Brave
| Rewards icon (wasn't prompted to do it on a new profile)
| and it shows if the site is verified or not:
|
| - My personal website (verified):
| https://i.imgur.com/WZykI2U.png
|
| - Google[.]com (unverified):
| https://i.imgur.com/89XvzIz.png
|
| And if we hover over the "unverified creator" text, this
| is displayed: https://i.imgur.com/IfKQUME.png
|
| I guess the right way to do this is to only allow
| tips/donations for websites already verified... still, if
| you're going to use Brave Rewards, you probably have an
| idea of how it works.
|
| Maybe things are different for creators on platforms like
| YouTube? I don't know how it works. I couldn't find a way
| to make a direct contribution with Brave Rewards.
| w0ts0n wrote:
| >hijacking people's personal brands to collect money
| without their explicit knowledge is a bad thing.
|
| Brave gave users BAT to tip content creators. They tipped
| it, if it wasn't claimed in 90d, Brave returned the BAT
| to the pool. There was no collecting money. It was
| Brave's promotional BAT and it never actually left
| Brave's possession unless claimed.
|
| The issue was that it wasn't clear if the creator had or
| hadn't signed up. Which was fixed within 48h.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Heads up: I work at Brave. As such, I encourage you to
| check my claims, verify my sources, and don't take anything
| I say for granted. Always happy to provide more context as
| needed :)
|
| Firefox literally sends your keystrokes to Google, right
| out of the box. Brave, however, was found to be the most
| private popular browser by reputable researchers: https://w
| ww.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.
|
| Brave [never] hijacked links either. Affiliate Links were
| offered among suggested sites for relevant search input. So
| if you searched "Binance," the browser would offer (among
| other suggestions), an affiliate link for the site. Users
| could then choose to browse to the property with the
| affiliate link, and in so doing support the development of
| Brave. No impact to privacy or security at all.
|
| The mistake here was with input handling. Built to handle
| search input, this feature also mistakenly handled fully-
| qualified domains. While we intended the app to offer
| affiliate links (when relevant) to something like "what is
| binance?", it was also offering them for "binance.us". The
| latter case was corrected quickly (and the feature itself
| was disabled out of the box).
|
| More about that on our blog: https://brave.com/referral-
| codes-in-suggested-sites/.
|
| To your second point, about setting up crypto wallets and
| soliciting donations on behalf of non-participating
| publishers, you're mistaken there as well.
|
| To prime the support-system in Brave (called Brave Payments
| at the time), we staked Brave users with tokens, inviting
| them to direct those tokens to creators they would like to
| support. More clearly, Brave gave Brave users say over
| where Brave ought to direct its own tokens.
|
| Unfortunately, our UI/UX wasn't very clear about which
| creators were verified, and which were not (we followed the
| Twitter approach, marking verified creators with a
| checkmark, but doing nothing for others). This resulted in
| some confusion at the end of 2018, where users were
| directing Brave's tokens to non-participating creators
| (most notably Tom Scott).
|
| We received considerably helpful feedback about how the
| system could be improved (both from a UI/UX side, and
| operationally). Frankly, I don't think I've ever seen our
| team work so hard, and churn out such a monumental update
| in so little time. We had made massive changes within 48
| hours IIRC. Creators were explicitly marked as verified or
| unverified in all cases, the BAT that Brave stakes with
| users would remain in the local wallet until it could be
| received by a verified creator. And BAT that sat pending
| for 90 days would be unlocked again for the user to direct
| elsewhere.
|
| Tom Scott was kind enough to review our changes, and
| explicitly gave us his approval soon-thereafter. What is
| now 'Brave Rewards' wouldn't be doing so well today were it
| not for Tom and so many other incredible users helping us
| find the best path forward.
|
| More about that on our blog: https://brave.com/rewards-
| update/
| lupire wrote:
| I appreciate this respectful, thorough, evidence-backed
| response to criticism that makes claims you dispute. It's
| so rare on HN and the wider world.
| agilob wrote:
| Not that I'm downplaying your points, but please next
| time start a comment saying you're working for Brave ;)
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Good point. On Twitter my name is "BraveSampson," and I
| often forget that isn't the case here as well. FWIW, I'm
| Sampson, and I work in Developer Relations at Brave. I
| have that in my bio here, to help a bit.
| dave5104 wrote:
| > On Twitter my name is "BraveSampson,"
|
| It doesn't look like this is the case, fwiw. (Unless your
| HN profile lists an outdated handle?)
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Nice catch! I was referring to
| https://twitter.com/BraveSampson/. Profile updated.
| benatkin wrote:
| > Firefox literally sends your keystrokes to Google,
| right out of the box.
|
| Keystrokes in the URL bar.
| bduerst wrote:
| Which is how instant search works, right?
|
| Describing the cost without explaining the why is
| _really_ putting a spin on things.
| nocman wrote:
| Yeah, I don't like that this is the default, but "Firefox
| literally sends your keystrokes to Google" could easily
| be interpreted by many people to mean _all_ of your
| keystrokes (not just the ones typed in the URL bar).
|
| It would have been better to say "by default Firefox
| literally sends every keystroke you type in the URL bar
| to Google".
|
| In my opinion it _is_ a user-hostile "feature", and
| should be pointed out, but not in way that could be so
| wildly misinterpreted.
| benatkin wrote:
| > In my opinion it is a user-hostile "feature", and
| should be pointed out, but not in way that could be so
| wildly misinterpreted.
|
| I agree. I don't like a lot of what Mozilla does but I
| don't like Brave at all, so I'll gladly defend Mozilla
| against hyperbole coming from Brave. Brave isn't even a
| browser, so I just ignore it most of the time.
| freeplay wrote:
| It can also be disabled in preferences if you don't like
| that functionality.
| [deleted]
| tempest_ wrote:
| People around here love to pile on Mozilla for every
| perceived slight or misstep but they rarely have any ideas
| on how Mozilla is supposed to fund itself.
|
| Some of the ire is earned but I have yet to see how Mozilla
| is supposed to fund Firefox development without that google
| search bar.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > they rarely have any ideas on how Mozilla is supposed
| to fund itself
|
| If we're talking about the Mozilla foundation, they
| should seek donations and grants and focus on being the
| best user web tooling.
|
| If we're talking about the corp, they could've kept rust
| under the umbrella and pioneered the WASI runtime and
| built an alternative to k8s that runs webassemblies and
| built out a paid cloud infra.
|
| It doesn't make sense to have a foundation that is user
| aligned and a corp that is user hostile. There should be
| aligned incentives.
| agilob wrote:
| In 2013/2014 when Snowden started whiste-blowing we were
| hoping for Mozilla to monetize privacy, but they never
| did. They only recently made some very poor attempts at
| private email, VPN and integrated some DoH. They were
| very hesitant for any cryptocurrencies integration. I
| would be happy to pay for a serious VPN and email service
| (remember Mozilla owns Thuderbird) with promises like
| Tutanota or Proton have. They could have acquired them,
| but instead they acquired pocket. Mozilla had the perfect
| brand and enough userbase to do it. Mozilla started doing
| that work 5-7 years too late and did too little to be
| meaningful. I feel they are doomed now and their space is
| shrinking and there's no future for Firefox in the long
| term.
|
| There's a lot that can be added here:
|
| Mozilla promised to opensource pocket server and never
| did.
|
| They promised to hire someone full-time for Thunderbird,
| but never did. afair there is a German company that has
| full-time developer working on Thuderbird.
|
| They promised a VPN... yes, delivered something.
|
| They promised anonymous email, I know they were giving
| access by invites, but nothing more about it.
|
| They promised to unfork Tor browser and integrate Tor
| into Firefox, they were even running a few Tor nodes.
|
| Remember how hyped everyone here was for Servo in Firefox
| and electron competitor?
|
| MDN could have integration with GH or GL and educational
| content for web development, they literally had
| resources, brand and ability to join an online university
| and give degrees or at least serious bootcamps. Mozilla
| was a meaningful brand to do it.
|
| They had a lot of opportunities to sell privacy, we
| literally demanded it from them, but they weren't
| interested in listening. Instead they delivered 6
| rebrands each breaking my muscle memory.
|
| Do you remember how they advised EU to regulate monopoly
| on the webbrowser market? There was time when they had
| all ability, but 0 will to keep it this way
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
| kyleee wrote:
| on the other hand, colorways
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| agilob wrote:
| wow this escalated so fucking fast i have no idea what
| happened
| [deleted]
| blihp wrote:
| By not spending the >$1 billion they've taken in over the
| last decade as fast as they got it. A billion+ is a ton
| of money in the open source world and had they been
| responsible stewards they would have been able to fund
| development for a very long time without short term
| funding concerns. The fact that they've pissed away every
| cent taken in is their problem.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >how Mozilla is supposed to fund itself.
|
| 1. Stick to building a more private browser
|
| 2. Become a non-profit or Benefit Corp
|
| 3. Fund #1 through all of us donating and encouraging our
| less tech savvy connections to use it and donate
| drath wrote:
| 1. Why focus on privacy? The niche is already taken by
| brave 2. To do so, they'd have to drop their half-billion
| default search engine deals 3. Currently, the donation
| figure is about $20mil. They'd have to somehow
| additionally collect $1.5 from every single user annually
| to prevent layoffs.
| vasco wrote:
| For starters Mozilla could operate with a much smaller
| footprint, much less projects in parallel and less vanity
| projects. That would reduce the amount of money required
| by a lot, which is the big problem in the first place.
|
| Developing a browser isn't easy and requires a few teams
| of developers, but in 2020 it spent 242 million dollars
| in software development costs, 137 million dollars in
| administrative costs and 37 million dollars in marketing
| and branding costs. I don't live in a lala land where I
| think you can develop a browser for free, but I think we
| can all agree that you don't need to spend this amount of
| money on it either. Are 100 developers enough? 200? How
| much does that cost? Do they all need San Francisco
| salaries to develop a good browser?
|
| In terms of funding, they got 440 million dollars from
| royalties (what they get from setting default search
| engines on their browser) and 25 million dollars in
| subscription revenue (Pocket and VPN subscriptions type
| things - products they actually sell).
|
| Now, can you develop a browser on 25 million dollars per
| year? Maybe it's cutting it short, but for sure there
| could be a strategy to invest more on this side of the
| equation to phase out the need to be Google's bitch in a
| more intentional way.
|
| Source:
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2020/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| mattnewton wrote:
| > Are 100 developers enough? 200? How much does that
| cost?
|
| 100-200 developers probably roughly costs on the order of
| 25-50 million a year (assuming a made up number of 250k
| fully loaded cost with benefits and taxes, which might be
| lower or higher than their average, idk. This number
| seems almost too conservative to my gut). From this back
| of the envelope math, I don't think the royalties
| business is enough to support the development cost alone.
|
| > Do they all need San Francisco salaries to develop a
| good browser?
|
| If you don't want them to leave to work on safari or
| chrome, probably? This experiment was more or less tried
| by opera, right?
|
| Brave gets away with a lot lower overhead by bascially
| piggybacking off chrome. Opera similarly gave up selling
| their own browser engine and cut their development teams
| while switching to another wrapper on blink. Firefox
| could become yet another skinning of blink and chrome
| code, but it's not clear to me how that's helping them
| with being "Google's bitch in a more intentional way".
|
| I think there are problems with Mozilla's side project
| expenditures, there is definitely some bloat, and they
| have had some expensive failures like Firefox phone.
| However I don't think Mozilla could have survived without
| Google's funding and people vastly underestimate how
| expensive quality software is.
| vasco wrote:
| > From this back of the envelope math, I don't think the
| royalties business is enough to support the development
| cost alone.
|
| Did you mean subscription business? Like I mentioned, the
| royalties were 440 million which is way larger than
| 25-50. If you put 200 developers on this project, with
| fully loaded costs of 400k / year each, that's 80 million
| dollars per year. You add 20 million dollars for
| administrative and other expenses and we come to 100
| million dollars per year burn rate.
|
| In 2020 they made ~25M on subscriptions, if 50 of the 200
| developers focus on improving the subscription business,
| at the current rate of growth they had from 2019-2020, in
| a few years they could totally phase out of needing
| royalties at all to cover their $100M / year expenses,
| with 200 developers earning competitive salaries.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Yes, sorry, I meant non-royalties business. I don't
| believe the kind of growth you mentioned is likely, but
| maybe I am missing things about their business. I think
| they bet big on diversifying with other initiatives like
| Firefox phone that just didn't hit, lots of browser
| things like you were talking about.
| agilob wrote:
| >Brave gets away with a lot lower overhead by bascially
| piggybacking off chrome
|
| Chromium get contributions from a few big companies, why
| couldn't Mozilla create a "contributor community group"
| something like Java has? Oracle keeps control over Java
| but there is a democratic process on what gets into
| Java/JDK. At some point Samsung was contributing to servo
| when it still was experimental.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > why couldn't Mozilla create a "contributor community
| group" something like Java has?
|
| Mozilla regularly accepts code from unpaid community
| members and has since its inception.
| roughly wrote:
| It'd be a nice start if they'd let me give them money for
| their product.
| xtat wrote:
| This is the thing everyone always points to when they hand
| wave "a lot of other shady things" - not sure why folks
| generally like to FUD Brave. I was working there when this
| issue happened and it was a very big deal internally and
| was patched immediately. FWIW I got zero hint that this was
| some kind of shady thing someone would have been trying to
| sneak in.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| You wrote "link" which is an element in a page, but we
| never "hijacked" or rewrote any such URL-bearing element.
| (We do for De-AMP, now.) Please dont fall for such lies
| about us couched as "link hijacking".
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31088549
| pmurt7 wrote:
| Mozilla faces blowback after slipping Mr Robot plugin into
| Firefox:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-
| robo...
| huhtenberg wrote:
| There's an irony there somewhere. I can feel it.
| coldpie wrote:
| I like having more than one browser engine in the world, but
| I do hope Brave pushes Mozilla to do more.
| alanh wrote:
| To be fair, Brave doesn't really have their own browser
| engine (it's Chromium), but it is good to have browser
| choice, so I agree with the sentiment. (I am a Brave user.)
| devmunchies wrote:
| Agree, but at least brave has the expertise and interests
| ($$) that if chromium goes off the rails, they could fork
| and maintain an alternative.
| reflexco wrote:
| Except building the only modern alternative rendering engine
| on desktop, which is necessary to keep web standards serving
| the users instead of Google!
| nickysielicki wrote:
| I'm surprised that Apple doesn't have a desire to play this
| role. They don't sell ads so there's no cannibalism and they
| have painted themselves (and advertised themselves) publicly as
| a company that cares about privacy and security. It seems like
| a natural avenue to win users in a world where the Windows
| alternative has more analytics and spyware than ever.
|
| A man can dream.
| HNHatesUsers wrote:
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Apple only nominally cares about the web. They would rather
| all interactions go through apps and the app store where they
| get their cut.
| toper-centage wrote:
| It's funny because if you go watch the iPhone launch
| presentation, Jobs was all about the web, and having web
| apps on your phone. Fast forward and PWA are just recently
| possible, barely supported, and Apple would really prefer
| you not to use them. The incentives are clear, but it's
| still a sad story.
| hbn wrote:
| It's not so much that Jobs was "all about the web," it's
| just that he didn't want people writing bad software for
| the iPhone so he was against allowing third-party apps on
| it until after much convincing.
| _jal wrote:
| > Jobs was all about the web
|
| That was just the best answer he had to questions about
| third-party apps until they had the infra in place for
| it.
|
| Apple will never tell you ahead of time about changes
| like that. So, while I wouldn't exactly call it lying,
| you'll get answers like the above.
| soperj wrote:
| Why wouldn't you call it lying?
| glatisaint wrote:
| Because it was the truth at the time.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Glad you've talked with leadership there and can confirm
| what many suspect but can't prove
| pid-1 wrote:
| Understanding how a company makes money will tell you a
| lot more than talking with any leader
|
| That's even more true for publicly traded companies
| scarface74 wrote:
| Apple makes money on games with in app purchases. Not
| random apps that don't charge users on the phone.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Fine, allow me to rephrase
|
| Based upon their actions I don't believe that Apple cares
| about the web beyond the bare minimum they have to to
| provide a tolerable browser experience for their users
| until everything happens via Apps.
| nixass wrote:
| Is it brown in there?
| lupire wrote:
| For news, the common AMP use case, Apple uses Apple News
| news.apple.com as their version of AMP hijacking websites.
|
| It's not a paid app, just part of the walled garden
| experience.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Apple "cares about the web" and wants people to use the web
| because Google pays them $12 billion+ a year to be the
| default search engine.
|
| Most of the money Apple gets from the App Store is from pay
| to win games - north of 80%. It came out in the Epic Trial.
|
| Apple doesn't really care if your banking app is a website
| or an app. They don't make money either way.
|
| Most apps on the App Store that could be a web app don't
| charge users.
| s17n wrote:
| The more native apps you use, the stickier the ios
| platform is. To the extent that they don't care whether
| you use the web or not, it's only because they've already
| won in the markets that they care about and don't really
| view Android as a serious threat anymore.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Every single app on my phone besides Overcast (the
| podcast player) has an Android version. Hardly any non
| game app developer creates apps for iOS only.
|
| Not only that, the data for those apps are on a remote
| server that is accessible via any other platform. Even
| when an app uses the standard file picker, you can choose
| any installed cloud storage device to save and load files
| - ie iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive etc.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Apple gets at least $99 per year plus device sales and
| usage data if it's an app. They also get to sell App
| Store ads to competing banks.
| scarface74 wrote:
| $99 a year is a nothingburger. It wouldn't even move the
| needle enough to motivate them. That's not even pure
| profit.
|
| But the money they make on ads in the App Store has to
| pale in comparison to how much they get from Google
| [deleted]
| searchableguy wrote:
| Apple said there are 20 million registered developers in
| _2018_.
|
| Now there must be more but $99 * 20 million is not
| nothing in annual revenue which is mostly profit.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > nothingburger
|
| What the heck is a nothingburger?
| [deleted]
| nomel wrote:
| > I'm surprised that Apple doesn't have a desire to play this
| role.
|
| They're being paid handsomely, by Google:
|
| > In 2020, The New York Times reported that Apple receives an
| estimated $8-12 billion per year in exchange for making
| Google the default search on its devices. According to one
| analyst, Google's payment to Apple in 2021 to maintain this
| status quo may have reached up to $15 billion.
|
| 1. https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/05/google-pays-apple-
| stay-...
| tyrfing wrote:
| > They don't sell ads so there's no cannibalism
|
| Apple sells huge amounts of ads, I believe it's the fastest
| growing part of the business right now. Estimates are $5
| billion in advertising revenue in 2021, with one projection
| of $20 billion annually within 3 years. In addition to this,
| Google pays them $15 billion to be the default search engine
| and sell ads.
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286.
| ..
| 1propionyl wrote:
| Apple does not offer an equivalent tool, however as of iOS
| 13, the system hooks exist for one to be implemented. In
| particular, there is Christian Selig's Amplosion (same author
| as the Apollo Reddit client)[1], which works quite well.
| Costs a few dollars up front, but well worth it.
|
| There is sadly not a version or equivalent on macOS, but
| Christian has confirmed it is in-development.
|
| [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-
| links/i...
|
| P.S. Pairs well with PiPifier to bypass YouTube not allowing
| picture-in-picture or playing in the background without a
| subscription, and a good ad blocker.
| dexterdog wrote:
| Why don't people just use a redirect extension and redirect
| ^https?:\/\/(. _)(\ /amp\/|\?amp|\?amp=._)$ to https://$1
| lupire wrote:
| Because that only works in browsers with extensions, and
| extensions are yet another third party to trust.
| mdavidn wrote:
| AMP pages consume less power (thus battery life) on Apple's
| mobile devices.
| nostromo wrote:
| Apple is disincentivized to take this on.
|
| Apple sells ads on search indirectly via Google. (Google pays
| Apple to be the default search engine.)
|
| Google's payment to Apple is bigger than the revenue Apple
| makes from the Apple Watch.
| kingo55 wrote:
| > sometimes weird actor
|
| Like that time Brave replaced links to a site with their own
| affiliate links? Yeah, I no longer trust them.
| BrendanEich wrote:
| That never happened. We never "replaced links".
|
| The issue was about address bar input autocomplete for two
| domains, binance.us and binance.com, along with keywords
| which all browsers offer several possible autocompletions
| for, we autocompleted by default not just via dropdown
| suggestion, with referral code attribute identifying us (not
| the user) to Binance at end of domain name. We fixed this
| right away and made nothing off of it. But it was a blunder
| for sure.
| go_prodev wrote:
| I generally trust the Brave folks, but have reservations about
| rewriting URLs becoming a new tool in their toolbox.
|
| DDG sounds like a promising alternative.
| spicybright wrote:
| I'm sure it just changes the URL bar so you can see what
| happens.
|
| Regardless, it's already in their tool box because they make
| the browser.
|
| They could be re-writing urls and not showing you, if they
| wanted to. And as long as no one notices, you can keep doing
| it.
| go_prodev wrote:
| Good point. It also sounds better to build it in than
| having a browser extension for it.
| mastazi wrote:
| > DDG sounds like a promising alternative
|
| Unfortunately, switching to a different search engine does
| not prevent you from ever stepping onto AMP again. For
| example all links in the mobile version of Twitter used to be
| AMP until recently:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791002/twitter-amp-
| ios...
| nocman wrote:
| I suspect go_prodev is referring to the DDG app (
| https://duckduckgo.com/app ) and not just the search
| engine.
|
| I only recently became aware that the app existed, so I
| don't know how/if it deals with all things AMP-based.
| dheera wrote:
| AMP sometimes helps me get past paywalls though.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I didn't experience anything you described with AMP pages.
| Generally, I find AMP pages to be among the best by news site
| standards, which I agree are pretty low.
|
| I never understood why AMP gets so much hatred from end-users.
| I understand why publisher hate it (it takes away control), and
| I understand the monopoly concerns, but for me, as an end-user,
| 99% of the times, the AMP version is better: faster, with less
| of the annoyances you described. As for privacy, these 99% are
| loaded with Google ads and analytics anyways, so not much of a
| win there. I don't know what your configuration is, what kind
| of ad-blockers you are using, but I never met the horrors
| people make AMP to be.
|
| And sure enough, there are sites that are better than any AMP
| sites, but these almost never have an AMP version. So for me,
| AMP makes terrible sites a little less terrible, and good sites
| unchanged.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Isn't it publishers deciding if they want to make an AMP page or
| not? Also, there is no way to make sure publishers aren't
| harvesting your data. So if a publisher cares about privacy, how
| about they just don't make an AMP page? Seems like common sense
| and most other people here are complaining over nothing. I don't
| see people here complaining about Cloudflare proxying half the
| Internet.
| stakkur wrote:
| This is great. I believe Firefox does this already, and you can
| do it on Safari via extension/plugin (Amplosion, Overamped).
| nicklaf wrote:
| Not sure about Firefox cutting out AMP directly. I personally
| use this extension to do it: https://www.daniel.priv.no/web-
| extensions/amp2html.html
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I'm really impressed to see this, Mozilla should've led here on
| implementing something like this years ago. This is a pretty big
| nudge for me to consider Brave as a future browser.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Mozilla is a joke now. They've now converted Firefox into an
| ad-ware / spyware (
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22715179/firefox-suggest-...
| ) because the current geniuses leading Mozilla have decided
| that apart from the _5+ million users_ of uBlock Origin, every
| other Firefox users loves ads and wants them! They 've earned
| 100's of millions of dollars from Firefox, and still claim that
| they don't have the resources to refactor the browser,
| modularise it and innovate it.
|
| I have always suspected that the current Brave CEO Brendan Eich
| was a victim of a malicious campaign intended to get him
| removed from Mozilla (which he co-founded, and later become a
| CEO of), because he would have been more vocal against Google
| in Mozilla, and wouldn't have been happy to let the Firefox
| codebase stagnate while everyone in Mozilla was content with
| the millions of dollars they were getting from Google. (His
| religious beliefs / political ideology was just an excuse and
| just made him an easy target).
|
| _Edit_ : I am not endorsing Brave browser either, as there are
| some questionable privacy issues with it.
| coldpie wrote:
| Unfortunately for Brave, I think Eich's conservatism is going
| to be a real barrier to adoption. His views were very far
| outside the tech mainstream even in the late-2000s, as shown
| by his exit from Mozilla, and he's currently diving into
| COVID conspiracy theories and anti-vax stuff[1]. If Brave
| starts to get traction, his views are going to become a real
| stumbling block once more people start paying attention.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/BrendanEich
| webmobdev wrote:
| I can't comment on his personal ideology - I just respect
| his technical skills and contributions. But if what you say
| is true - that he has been leaning more and more to the
| right - I can't help wonder if the vicious campaign against
| him perhaps _pushed_ him more to the right and made him a
| hardliner. The irrational beliefs of fundamentalists often
| rest on a foundation of victimhood (real or perceived, they
| are undoubtedly a painful personal experience). As we are
| learning, the internet 's "cancel" culture (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture ) and echo
| chambers are making people's beliefs more rigid, and
| creating an unhealthy us vs them mentality. Till the
| scandal, Eich seemed to be quite professional in separating
| his work from his personal life / belief. If that has
| changed now, for the worse (like you seem to be hinting),
| then I do feel sorry for his situation.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| What's a joke is claiming that paid suggestion search results
| "have converted Firefox into an ad-ware / spyware [sic]"
|
| I'm not a fan of them adding this and switching it on, but
| it's easily disabled...
|
| > Click on the hamburger menu and then select Settings
|
| > Click on Privacy and Security in the sidebar and scroll to
| Address Bar -- Firefox Suggest
|
| > Select or deselect the checkbox for contextual suggestions
| to turn the feature on or off
|
| > Select or deselect the checkbox for "occasional sponsored
| suggestions"
| dogleash wrote:
| >but it's easily disabled...
|
| No it's not. That's about as buried as it gets without
| hiding it in about:config.
|
| "Easily disabled" would be a button right next to the ad
| that said "never show me this dogshit again."
| kreeben wrote:
| >> I'm not a fan of them adding this
|
| Excuse me sir but you definitely sound like a fan.
|
| The really real joke is claiming that proclaiming that
| Mozilla is a joke is some sort of a joke.
|
| Out-of-the-box I would definitely classify Firefox as ad-
| ware/spy-ware.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Does that make Brave adware as well, since it ships with
| a suite of features fundamentally designed to serve you
| ads of their own creation?
| kreeben wrote:
| Isn't Brave's ads opt-in? I thought they were opt-in.
| Aren't they opt-in? So what are you on about?
| webmobdev wrote:
| Technically you are right, ofcourse. An adware is unwanted
| software designed to show you ads maliciously (no way to
| remove or turn it off). But let's look at some common
| features of adware / spyware:
|
| 1. Advertisements appear in places they shouldn't be. (
| _Yes in Firefox - ads in new tab and address bar_ ).
|
| 2. Your web browser's homepage has mysteriously changed
| without your permission. ( _Yes in Firefox - default custom
| home page_ )
|
| 3. New toolbars, extensions, or plugins suddenly populate
| your browser. ( _Yes in Firefox - bundles unwanted,
| uninstallable extensions_ )
|
| 4. Your computer starts automatically installing unwanted
| software applications. ( _Yes in Firefox - studies can
| install extensions without your knowledge_ ).
|
| 5. Collect personal data without your knowledge ( _Yes in
| Firefox - ad partners and studies_ ).
|
| Again, technically you are right that there are options to
| disable some of these things, (most of which are all
| enabled by default that the majority of users won't be
| aware of) ... But when a software imitates and behaves like
| an adware / spyware, Mozilla would do best to listen to
| their users criticism than call us ignorant.
| speeder wrote:
| Mozilla kicked one of its main creators years ago too, and that
| guy is the one making Brave... so no surprise ;)
|
| Features that should come out on Mozilla will instead come out
| of Brave...
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| mikem170 wrote:
| Did his resigning have something to do with him personally
| donating $1000 in 2008 in support of California's
| Proposition 8 referendum? (opposing gay marriage)
|
| Just checking, you really didn't mention why he resigned.
| RedComet wrote:
| To be more clear, it was to do with media frenzy once
| they found out about it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I'm not sure why you would be impressed by something that has
| been possible in Firefox and Chrome for many years with a de-
| amp extension (though I would recommend a more general-purpose
| URL-de-cruftifier, such as ClearURLs, which will also remove
| most tracking bits from URLs.)
|
| Google removed ClearURLs from the chrome add-ons store because
| (I wish I were making it up) _the extension 's description was
| too detailed_: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/25/the-curious-
| case-of-clearu...
|
| Brave implementing this, while nice, is basically a
| nothingburger.
| [deleted]
| skaul wrote:
| https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/11750 describes the
| more technically-involved part of the feature - we had to
| make sure that we detect an AMP page before it gets to the
| Chromium renderer process, in order to prevent the page from
| loading the AMP resources (and thus leaking the user's IP
| address and browsing behaviour to Google).
| jonathansampson wrote:
| I think you demonstrated in your own post why this is such a
| big deal.
|
| Extensions can certainly deliver this type of functionality
| in large part, but you have to [run an extension]. You need
| to ran an extension process (with its additional overhead).
| You need to make sure Google doesn't swoop-in with breaking
| changes between manifest versions. Then you have to make sure
| the extension is permitted in the Web Store, and not removed
| over something as silly as a detailed description.
|
| By delivering this functionality natively, Brave offers a
| more reliable and efficient solution to the problem of AMP.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Or...and bear with me here...I just don't run Chrome. I
| don't run Firefox, but a derivative. On rare occasion an
| extension I use has been removed from the store over
| "silly" reasons (this has happened once, maybe twice in
| over half a decade) I've been able to re-install it from
| the author's site.
|
| > By delivering this functionality natively, Brave offers a
| more reliable and efficient solution to the problem of AMP.
|
| Just because it avoids a separate process doesn't mean it
| is more reliable or efficient. Further, you offer a subset
| of the functionality of the URL-cleaning extension I do
| use, so it's moot.
|
| I don't care if your browser ever becomes a superior
| product for me. I can't stand the community, who are easily
| the most aggressive and zealot-y bunch of any open source
| project I can think of. The comments section of any HN
| article about Brave becomes a shit-show as Brave users with
| the emotional maturity of teenagers dogpiling on shouting
| about how Brandon was the victim of a conspiracy by 'The
| SJWs', Firefox is "spyware", we're all stupid sheeple for
| not using Brave, etc.
|
| And then at least one person from Brave shows up and starts
| condescendingly responding to every comment that isn't
| supportive of Brave.
|
| There's the history of crypto-bro-y nonsense. The donation-
| scamming where creators had to "opt out" of Brave
| pretending to collect donations "for them." And so on.
|
| I also don't want to support a company run by a person who
| has spent vast amounts of his money supporting some of the
| most bigoted politicians in our nation's modern history and
| to causes working to strip people of human rights. I don't
| want to support him, and I don't want to support people for
| whom his political activities are not an issue.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| You have to run Brave, which is a considerable overhead.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Running a browser is better than running a browser in
| addition to several extensions for functionality that
| could be integrated natively, resulting in less overhead.
|
| But yes, you will need to use a browser to browse the Web
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't trust Brave's implementation in the first place.
| You have a direct conflict of interest with protecting
| user privacy since you also make money off of the ads you
| serve users (because of how you skim BAT revenue).
| Furthermore, your scummy behavior of holding site
| operators ad revenue hostage is pretty disgusting, and
| doesn't provide much of a moral compass for us to base
| your actions off of. I'd trust stock Chromium before I'd
| install Brave on any of my machines.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| Brave's Ads are optional (off-by default in the case of
| Ad Notifications), and matched-on device (so no user data
| leaves the machine). There is no conflict of interest
| here; Brave doesn't harvest user data. The Brave
| Rewards/Ads model is centered around _attention_, not
| data.
|
| Regards to the "holding site operators and ad revenue
| hostage," I'm not sure to what you're referring. Perhaps
| the UI/UX of Brave Rewards ("Payments" at the time) in
| late 2018? If so, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086397 what, I
| hope, will be a helpful answer.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Extensions are a massive security vulnerability. Any time you
| can accomplish something without opening yourself up to
| browser extensions is a huge win.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| plus extensions see all website you visit in cleartext so
| make damn sure you really trust the extension. it might be
| something innocuous like history eraser but is harvesting
| your info across banking & credit card sites.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| So is Brave.
| jonathansampson wrote:
| No application is perfect, but running Brave is pretty
| safe. The browser is based on aggressively-tested
| components, hosted in the open, updated regularly, and
| routinely hammered-on by reputable folks in the security
| industry. Not to mention, we pay folks who find weak
| spots.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I am not a Brave user at present, but I'm curious what
| you'd refer to here.
| cphoover wrote:
| I agree 100%.
|
| There are still things about brave that confuse me... like the
| browser feature that allows giving crypto to content
| providers...
|
| but as someone who loathes AMP... I support this feature.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| If you're in iOS then there's an extension available to redirect
| to non-AMP versions of sites.
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/i...
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Yes! I love it, easily worth the few bucks and works
| seamlessly.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Note that iOS Browser extensions only work for Safari, and not
| other browsers such as Firefox or Chrome.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Another recommendation for Amplosion!
|
| When I found out about this a few months ago this was the
| quickest purchase I have made on the App Store in a long time.
| I despise AMP and how Google has infected the internet with it.
|
| Told all my friends about it, even offered to pay for it for
| them if they wished. Anything to help AMP die.
| karlzt wrote:
| That's mentioned in the article.
| tyingq wrote:
| Everything you need to know about AMP is in one very specific
| section of the spec:
|
| _" AMP HTML documents MUST...contain a <script async
| src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> tag inside their
| head tag"_ [1]
|
| Meaning, _" Your content must load and run some Google controlled
| javascript, that does who-knows-what to your content and end
| users"_.
|
| In the past, that's included injecting a big header that pushes
| your content down, hijacking swipe events on your page, an [X]
| button that looked like it would delete the AMP banner header,
| but instead navigated away from your page back to google, etc.
|
| [1] https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-
| tutorials/learn/spe...
| bduerst wrote:
| The Amp javascript can be self-hosted [1] away from Amp's
| servers, there's even a framework demonstrating how to do it
| [2].
|
| The only difference is that it doesn't pass Amp validator,
| which is necessary for the Bing search result icon. Developers
| have requested the feature for the Amp validator to include
| self hosting but it hasn't been added yet (or have any plans to
| AFAIK).
|
| [1]
| https://gist.github.com/mdmower/b56e94f0dc36beafb825b0c5e31f...
|
| [2] https://github.com/mdmower/amp-self-host-demo
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting, though I am citing the AMP spec, and it does say
| MUST. I'm curious if Google would put a self-hosted AMP page,
| for example, in their carousel. I think it probably can't.
| bduerst wrote:
| It's been exactly a year since Google announced they are no
| longer prioritizing AMP content in the carousel, or as SEO
| in general:
|
| >Besides algorithm changes, there will be several user-
| facing changes. For starters, the Top Stories carousel in
| Search will no longer be limited to AMP content. The Google
| News website and mobile apps will similarly surface more
| non-AMP content. Lastly, the AMP lightning bolt icon will
| no longer be used to badge eligible content:
|
| https://9to5google.com/2021/04/19/google-search-page-
| experie...
| skybrian wrote:
| Isn't this going to make mobile performance worse? They should
| publish performance numbers.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Responsible engineers will prioritize privacy over absolute
| performance. Nevertheless, investigations into Google's conduct
| have already discovered internal admission that AMP would
| actually slow down the web.
|
| "Google falsely told publishers that adopting AMP would enhance
| load times, but Google employees knew that AMP only improves
| the [redacted] and AMP pages can actually [redacted] [redacted]
| [redacted]. In other words, the ostensible benefits of faster
| load times for cached AMP version of webpages were not true for
| publishers that designed their web pages for speed. Some
| publishers did not adopt AMP because they knew their pages
| actually loaded faster than AMP pages."
|
| "Google also [redacted] of non-AMP ads by giving them
| artificial one second delays in order to give Google AMP a
| [redacted] [redacted] slows down header bidding, which Google
| uses to turn around and denigrate header bidding for being too
| slow."
|
| And of course, the reason they did all this:
|
| "Google also designed AMP to force publishers to route rival
| exchange bids through Google's ad server so that Google could
| continue to peek at rivals' bids and trade on inside
| information. Third, Google designed AMP so that users loading
| AMP pages would make direct communication with Google servers,
| rather than publishers' servers. This enabled Google's access
| to publishers' inside and non-public user data. AMP pages also
| limit the number of ads on a page, the types of ads publishers
| can sell, as well as enriched content that publishers can have
| on their pages."
|
| https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
| ec109685 wrote:
| If Google's servers pre-cache the contents of the article,
| the experience is instant when you click on a link, so the
| idea that it's slower to read a Google Amp Link on a Google
| Search Result compared to clicking out to a separate website
| is false.
|
| If a publisher simply uses Google Amp on their own site to
| display websites, then it can be slower.
|
| They slowed the non-AMP ads because they didn't want loading
| them to interfere with the content the user was interested in
| reading.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > They slowed the non-AMP ads because they didn't want
| loading them to interfere with the content the user was
| interested in reading.
|
| This is what Google may have told the public, and obviously
| would like you to believe. However, internal Google emails
| demonstrate very differently: AMP was designed to increase
| Google's ad revenue.
|
| Same source:
|
| "Google ad server employees met with AMP employees to
| strategize about using AMP to impede header bidding, and
| how much pressure publishers and advertisers would
| tolerate."
| jefftk wrote:
| Link to the internal emails? I've read a lot of the
| emails that came out in the lawsuit, and haven't seen any
| demonstrating that.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The link I'm referencing doesn't so much as unredact all
| of the facts listed here, I'm not sure the public has
| access to the emails described in this complaint at this
| time. If you know of a publicly accessible cache of
| internal Google emails sourced from legal discovery
| processes, I'd love to know about it!
| jefftk wrote:
| The unredacted AMP lawsuit is: https://storage.courtliste
| ner.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.56...
|
| I'm not aware of other sources of internal emails on this
| topic. What were you referring to when you wrote:
| "internal Google emails demonstrate very differently: AMP
| was designed to increase Google's ad revenue."?
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Ah, the unredacted version is quite a bit nicer to read,
| thank you.
|
| I was referring to the text in the complaint: The
| complaint is written off the legal discovery process,
| presumably in the case of especially a tech company such
| as Google, the statement that these teams met and
| discussed this topic would presumably be found in the
| form of either a meeting invite or the notes from a
| meeting sent in an internal email.
|
| I think within some margin of interpretation, it's
| reasonable to state that if the text in the complaint is
| as such, it's backed by one or more internal emails I
| personally don't have access to. As I think it's pretty
| implausible that the Texas AG invented a meeting between
| the ad team and the AMP team and a reason for it out of
| thin air.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _I think within some margin of interpretation, it 's
| reasonable to state that if the text in the complaint is
| as such, it's backed by one or more internal emails I
| personally don't have access to._
|
| ec109685's explanation seems plausible and could easily
| be misexplained in this way if your goal was to get
| quotes on twitter.
|
| > _As I think it 's pretty implausible that the Texas AG
| invented a meeting between the ad team and the AMP team
| and a reason for it out of thin air._
|
| It doesn't have to be out of thin air to be exaggerated
| or misconstrued. And I definitely wouldn't rely on
| indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton for ethical behavior
| or an even handed application of the law.
| svachalek wrote:
| Wow. I always knew AMP was scammy but I didn't realize they
| actually forced a 1 second delay on other pages. How
| enraging. "Don't be evil" is so long lost I can barely
| remember those days.
| skybrian wrote:
| We don't need to rely on internal emails, which may be out of
| date anyway, and we don't need to figure out anyone's intent.
| Brave (or someone) could do performance measurements to see
| what the impact is now.
| [deleted]
| rafaelturk wrote:
| Kudos! While reading this announcement I've learned upcoming AMP
| 2.x. Impressive that Google still pusing for AMP and as mentioned
| is even worse.
| sharken wrote:
| Main reason to use AMP links is access to content that is
| otherwise restricted. But I dislike AMP to the extent that I hope
| more browsers will implement this De-AMP feature.
|
| Brave is also fighting another fight with Google, this time with
| the Brave for Android browser, where Google has decided that all
| users want to have Tab Groups. The latest status is that users of
| the Brave browser for Android still can't get the old Cascade
| Layout back yet.
|
| More on https://community.brave.com/t/add-tab-cascade-layout-
| back-to...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Braves business is built on Google Chromes source code...
|
| Google has 500+ staff working on that codebase. When they finally
| annoy Google and they decide to rewrite the license for future
| versions, will Brave be able to keep up?
| classified wrote:
| Yep, biting the hand that feeds will only work for so long.
| tomrod wrote:
| Aye, the DOJ won't look favorably on anti-competitive
| practices.
| inglor wrote:
| Google has open sourced only as much as they had too for using
| Webkit's GPL codebase and have been notorious in close-sourcing
| bits when they are able (like the DevTools WebAssembly
| debugging tools and a ton of other stuff).
|
| So the fact Chromium is (mostly) open source (Chrome is most
| certainly not) is certainly not charity or the goodness of
| their hearts. It is the work of idealistic individuals like
| Lars Knoll who gave us this among other things like Qt.
|
| This is also true for a lot of other Google projects like
| Android.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Having spent a lot of time working on the codebase... Far
| more is opensource than Google needed to make open, and the
| development model is far more open than androids. In the
| chromium codebase, there are even some modules where the key
| technical decision-makers aren't Google employees.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Google has open sourced only as much as they had too for
| using Webkit 's GPL codebase_
|
| This isn't remotely true. Most of Chromium code is
| BSD-3-Clause.
|
| > _have been notorious in close-sourcing bits when they are
| able (like the DevTools WebAssembly debugging tools_
|
| I'm not a fan of that either, but to be fair it's a Chrome
| extension[1], not part of Chrome.
|
| > _and a ton of other stuff)._
|
| Like what? The trend has generally been the other way. Flash
| was removed, PDFium was released. Video codecs? But they've
| always been that way.
|
| [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cc%20%20-devtoo
| ls-...
| freedomben wrote:
| People won't want to hear your comment (myself included) but
| it's a fair and important point. I've been on the other side so
| it does resonate with me. I worked for Red Hat at the time when
| CentOS changed their model and it was amazing how many people
| were like f*k Red Hat and their greedy money grab[1], I'm
| switching to <replacement>. Without realizing that the distros
| that do very little except rebuild Red Hat are only possible
| _because_ Red Hat makes it possible. They could absolutely kill
| the clone if they wanted to[2]. To be clear I have nothing
| against the clones (in fact I use them), I mainly get bothered
| by people thinking a quality linux distro happens by accident.
|
| [1]: It was a little more complicated than just "money grab":
| https://freedomben.medium.com/centos-is-not-dead-please-stop...
|
| [2]: Pre-empting the inevitable "but the GPL", Red Hat goes
| above and beyond the requirements of the GPL and could make it
| way harder to build. Also a huge important chunk of the distro
| is BSD/MIT/Apache/etc. Without that the GPL'ed only stuff would
| never be a feasible distro anyway
| passivate wrote:
| The open-source (also high-profile) nature of the project
| probably helps Google themselves keep their own team in check
| with outside accountability.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Switched to Brave a few weeks ago after getting fed up with
| Mozilla, not sure how I feel about using yet-another-chromium
| browser but it's fine so far. Posts like this help ease my mind a
| bit at least.
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