People are going to dismiss Dave Winer as a crank right up until the day they or one of the things on which they rely get "googled," and then they will wish they'd listened sooner.
Google's power over the web today, already, is not healthy. There are a lot of people within Google who care deeply about the free and open web, and a lot of people who don't, or who define "free" or "open" in ways that involving trusting a for-profit corporation more than anybody wise ever should. Many people get upset when they see Google being attacked, because the part of Google they depend on is a part that really supports the free and open web, or because they themselves don't value the freeness and openness as much as they should.
Google delivers a lot of value right now, and without people pushing back, hard, that value will enable them to get away with anything.
Anybody who has been around long enough ought to understand that power you grant to someone you trust inevitably ends up in the hands of someone you don't. Political parties switch back and forth, CEOs and corporate priorities come and go. Sometimes it's best to accept an option that is second-best today in order to avoid giving too much power to the organization providing the first-best for them to misuse tomorrow.
I agree that Google has far too much control over the web. However, this is a silly reason to argue against HTTPS. HTTPS is an open standard. Google doesn't control it. HTTPS doesn't require anyone to use any Google product. You can use HTTPS just fine by getting your certificates from LetsEncrypt and browsing with Mozilla Firefox. Or Microsoft Edge. Or Internet Explorer. Moreover, the security guarantees that HTTPS brings to the web benefit everyone, not just Google.
More generally, Dave Winer seems to have an attitude of reflexively opposing everything that Google advocates, merely because it is Google that is advocating for it. It reminds me of the late 90's and early 2000's when open-source people talked about "M$" and reflexively opposed everything that Microsoft did merely because it was Microsoft that was doing it, leaving aside technical merits or other considerations.
Corporations are neither pure good, nor pure evil. They are collections of people with collective interests that they pursue. Sometimes, like in the case of HTTPS, or net neutrality, those interests align with our interests as developers and users. In those cases, we should ally ourselves with corporations and use their leverage to effect change more quickly. In other cases, such as with RSS, and vendor lock-in, our interests diverge and we should oppose them with all our might so that we don't lose the free and open Internet that we've become accustomed to.
In both cases, however, we should examine the issue on the merits of that issue, and neither support nor oppose merely because the "right" or "wrong" organization is pushing for it.
"[Google] talks to me like I have no idea how tech companies work internally, but I do. After the next reorg they won't remember any commitments the previous management made."
OMG this is so true in our experience. Google doesn't quite lie, but they come very close. They are always changing people and policies, always in a downward direction. Makes me think they won't be around for much longer. They're just maximizing a monopoly, and everything they do reinforces that view.
I don't prefer to share whether or not I agree or disagree with your opinion on whether or not google lies or almost lies, but...
Google is very healthy among many axes. Sadly, I don't think truth or honesty are as potent motivators as ubiquity and convenience. This all to say, Google will be around for a long while.
> "once Google has control of the web, they can turn off huge parts of it for whatever reason..."
What does "turn off" even mean? Following the links, it looks like the author is opposed specifically to Chrome pushing sites to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS, mainly because he claims "the web is a social agreement not to break things" and "we will lose a lot of sites that were quickly posted on a whim, over the 25 years the web has existed."
This is hard for me to get on board with. Standards evolve and improve because major players push them. We don't use floppy disks anymore either. HTTPS provides desperately needed privacy and integrity guarantees. And archive.org continues to make historical sites available -- over HTTPS even if the original wasn't.
Google is dominant in search engine (Google Search), advertising (via profiling and Doubleclick etc), e-mail (Gmail), mobile (Android), and in browser (Chrome).
There are alternatives, but they are dominant. Though perhaps Android is the worst example due to iOS there's basically two choices you got: apple juice or robot oil.
The fear is that Google -consciously or not- abuses its position to leverage another, under the guise of "doing good". They did embrace & extend with Google Reader (which is, by its very definition, proprietary software). They may do something similar with e.g. AMP or HTTP(s). If it isn't already happening. Heck, Android is more and more restrictive with each release.
Well, for one example, Google basically shut off audio for the entire web a while back and panicked and reverted it once people angrily pointed out they had messed up. Given their willingness to destroy swathes of old content (just like killing - for good reason, at least - all existing Flash and Unity content permanently) it's not hard to imagine them disabling HTTP permanently in Chrome, with exceptions for enterprise LTS builds if you have group policies.
Typically Google justifies these decisions to kill portions of the web with "security" and/or "user experience", and it's easy to use both of those reasons to justify disabling HTTP forever. You can remove the 'secure' indicator!
Google could decide that it doesn't want to be associated with guns in any way and not allow advertising for any type of gun related content and purge all gun content on any of its platforms.
Ugh, Google Reader wasn't a "huge part of the web," it was a product offered by a company. If GR and RSS were basically equivalent then Google was right to conclude that RSS wasn't popular. RSS is an open standard and GR never had any compelling competition even though it should have if RSS were used widely at all. That people are still angry over this shows how out of touch many developers are with the real world / average consumers.
That does not really follow, nor is it a good point. A product offered by a company can be a huge part of the web, and if RSS and Google Reader were equivalent it still could've been popular. One can dispute both, saying that it was only known in a small circle even back then, but none of those points speaks to that.
> That people are still angry over this shows how out of touch many developers are with the real world / average consumers.
I'd rather see it as a lesson on how long developers remember if they feel betrayed by a company. Google Reader + Google Plus real name policy + its integration into Youtube was like a perfect storm to undermine Google's popularity, and then came Snowden. But it began with Google Reader, and I think that is why people remember.
PS: Given who the author is I think no one can fault him to give in his reasoning much importance to RSS.
Google Reader was a huge part of the web experience for a small number of rather vocal people. It was a social network for many of them, and they feel like they lost something they built and owned.
Myself, I used google reader. But only for RSS. So I just moved to a different reader and I've been fine ever since.
Also, Google literally has hundreds if not thousands of products, but everyone just loves going back to the one decade old example of Reader being shut down. Also Reader was nothing special; there were dozens of other just as capable RSS readers before and many more since.
Beg to differ. The RSS Reader landscape had many, many competitors, then Twitter happened and Facebook opened up to non .edu domains. And then Google Reader happened.
RSS wasn't even the point. RSS as a standard is still in use. It's just that we've come to a point where it's a battle of platforms, and platforms mean money. Do you use Facebook, or Twitter, or IG, or Snapchat? I'd still like a unified experience, but none of those companies want to be a party to it. They want to take as much of the pie as they can get.
Lets look at technologies Google has captured then adversely affected either the adoption or implementation thereof.
* Google Reader and RSS
* Google Talk and Jabber
* Gmail and self-hosted mail (not exclusively Google, but one of the big mail senders)
The post's point was not that this is malicious, it's about what happens in big corporations with big ideas, big roadmaps and big reorgs. The fact that this has happened quite a few times is unsurprising.
... what? Ultra, ultra hyperbole much? I get it, shutting down reader sucked, but seriously you can literally use any RSS reader to read feeds. Google didn't "kill RSS".
Seriously, voicing opinions is one thing but fear mongering and hyperbole is another and this article leans far too heavily towards the latter.
Look at what happened with Google Maps recently. Was pretty cheap to use, people flocked to it. Then they changed prices. We went from never worrying about paying since we have a relatively small amount of traffic, to scrambling to reduce our usage. Now it is their product, they can do what they want with it, but how many sites are pretty locked into Google Maps?
This seems to be what Google does. They either kill off a free service that people relied on or begin charging lots of money.
Maybe when the "Web 2.0" bubble finally bursts, a key learning for the world will be: you can't build a sustainable business on top of someone else's unsustainable business. If your business depends on a long-term regular supply of anything (information, raw materials, whatever), then you probably want to figure out as quickly as possible how to pay something close to what that is worth and ignore the shifty guys knocking on the back door saying "hey, dude, look at these steaks! best quality! super low prices! don't ask where they come from... I'll even give you the first batch for free!"
Combine this with yesterday's ill-received-on-HN 'HTTPS Anti-Vaxxers; dispelling common arguments against securing the web' [1], where Scott Helme calls out Dave Winer on his past articles that bemoan the effects of browser-makers' push towards HTTPS.
> My fear is this -- once Google has control of the web, they can turn off huge parts of it for whatever reason
Ask Dennis Prager, Steven Crowder, Philip DeFranco. This is old news, not a vague fear
> It's like when we change administrations in Washington. Very chaotic
Not at all the same. In the USA, we have a baseline of actions the government cannot take: it is described in the Constitution and contains a well defined appeals process, as well as a large set of tools to protect against tyranny. Google offers its users and even its paying paying clients none of these privileges.
Google is highly influential in how information is consumed and distributed. People use chrome to browse web, google search for searching information etc. If they have major control over how information is distributed, they have major control over the web. Ofcourse there are other similar services that are not provided by Google, but they are very less influential due to lack of users.
> You should be scared of walled gardens displacing the web.
What if web becomes a walled garden ? Look at what Google did with DRM[1], even Mozilla had to give up their efforts to fight against it[2]. How could that be possible without having a major influence over the web ?
No, just because you concoct the most ridiculous analogy you can think of does not make it so.
It was only about 20 years ago that Microsoft went from thinking the web has nothing to do with their core business, to becoming the dominant browser maker, to spending 5 years without releasing an update, and hamstringing all efforts to push the state of web development forward for almost a decade.
Google is approaching a similar level of dominance with Chrome now, and it's pretty scary when you consider the kinds of power plays they could make if they really wanted to. A walled garden, by comparison doesn't have much chance of displacing something as broad as the web except by a complete paradigm shift—mobile apps are the closest thing we've had since the web became dominant, but there's still the installation barrier that has slowed or reversed the process with app fatigue.
Google is absolutely central to the overwhelming majority of the user experience of the internet in the US. From the perspective of most consumers, Google already does control the internet.
Google doesn't have any significant control over the web. Google wins big in two categories. Search and Ad Revenue.
Google Search processes 2/3-3/4 of all searches, with declining market share. Search is held hostage by user's expectations, if the quality of search were to decline users would leave.
AdSense is in a commanding position, but it is under attack from a lot of different directions. Facebook gives more targeted ads. Snap allows more qualified ads. Apple is revamping it's ad system.
Google is in a strong position, but this isn't a case of them gaining more control, and their power is defiantly under check by other interests.
Google has significant control of how people access the web with web browsers (Chrome), email (Gmail), video (YouTube), user authentication, and mobile operating systems (Android and ChromeOS).
Okay, I'm not even going to finish reading this drivel...
Using the closure of Google Reader as an example of how Google could "turn off huge parts of web" is ridiculous.
Google reader was just a web-based RSS reader. Its user base was dwindling because RSS was falling out of fashion. Google alerted users well ahead of time of the closure, and gave users ample opportunity to move their subscriptions to another RSS aggregator.
Closing their own service is not a big deal. It's wasn't the first service Google has shuttered, nor will it be the last. Every company does this to services that no longer benefit the company.
No data was removed from the web.
No functionality was destroyed.
The Google Reader source code was made available to the public.
Competing services were champing at the bit to replace Google Reader (and didn't succeed, because hardly anyone uses RSS anymore).
It seems like Dave Winner suffers from a lack of understanding of how the web works, and an irrational distrust of large corporations.
Yeah. I think a lot of people tend to scapegoat Google for the death of openly indexed content, when all they really did was jump ship well after it was clearly dying. I mean, it's true that Google Reader was a better product than the competition, and being free it probably did "suppress" the market for paid readers, leaving an impoverished landscape when they exited. But if RSS was a vibrant technology, would they have killed it? No, they'd have tried to exploit it somehow. But it was going nowhere.
Frankly, if you want to point a finger for the death of RSS, blame Facebook and Twitter.
I find this guys fears potentially coming from a place of fundamental misunderstanding.
Personally I far more fear Amazon's literal control of the web and the monoculture they've created. For us personally moving off of AWS would be a nightmare.
At this point I'm happy to do business with AWS to sustain it as a counterweight to Google and Facebook. Amazon are fairly evil to their employees and suppliers, but thus far they haven't done evil to their customers in the way that the other two have.
RSS didn't die because of Google. Other services took over once Google Reader shut down. The same will happen when Google cuts off other arms of the octopus.
From The China Hustle, Dirty Money, and The Big Short, it is clear people are putting a lot of trust in the "free market" across the board. Society seems convinced that abusive behavior is acceptable collateral damage required for "free markets" to work; that accepting white collar crime is better than regulating a big company; giving a $1B fine to a company that made $40B in profits is punishment enough to keep companies honest. It is not clear there is a better way...
All for-profit organizations employ "Boiling frog" [1] strategy depending upon the market, consumers, and as their product goes through evolution. Whether the end-goal of it is for good or not, it's hard to judge.
The fear of change expressed on this article is natural.
Enforcing HTTPS is good for consumers. But, we need to watch carefully with the market dominance of Google Chrome.
"To mangle three metaphors, if you drink that kool-aid, you’re either locked in the trunk like Dave Winer says or if you like my metaphor-ware better, you’re a sharecropper. Either way, it sucks."
The pursuit of profit kills society. All our social suffering exists because we have been trying to merge two incompatible ideas. We expect our lawyers, doctors, technocrats, politicians... to do the right thing. However, the right thing is almost always detrimental to profits. Profit always trumps "right thing".
[+] [-] pwinnski|7 years ago|reply
Google's power over the web today, already, is not healthy. There are a lot of people within Google who care deeply about the free and open web, and a lot of people who don't, or who define "free" or "open" in ways that involving trusting a for-profit corporation more than anybody wise ever should. Many people get upset when they see Google being attacked, because the part of Google they depend on is a part that really supports the free and open web, or because they themselves don't value the freeness and openness as much as they should.
Google delivers a lot of value right now, and without people pushing back, hard, that value will enable them to get away with anything.
Anybody who has been around long enough ought to understand that power you grant to someone you trust inevitably ends up in the hands of someone you don't. Political parties switch back and forth, CEOs and corporate priorities come and go. Sometimes it's best to accept an option that is second-best today in order to avoid giving too much power to the organization providing the first-best for them to misuse tomorrow.
[+] [-] quanticle|7 years ago|reply
More generally, Dave Winer seems to have an attitude of reflexively opposing everything that Google advocates, merely because it is Google that is advocating for it. It reminds me of the late 90's and early 2000's when open-source people talked about "M$" and reflexively opposed everything that Microsoft did merely because it was Microsoft that was doing it, leaving aside technical merits or other considerations.
Corporations are neither pure good, nor pure evil. They are collections of people with collective interests that they pursue. Sometimes, like in the case of HTTPS, or net neutrality, those interests align with our interests as developers and users. In those cases, we should ally ourselves with corporations and use their leverage to effect change more quickly. In other cases, such as with RSS, and vendor lock-in, our interests diverge and we should oppose them with all our might so that we don't lose the free and open Internet that we've become accustomed to.
In both cases, however, we should examine the issue on the merits of that issue, and neither support nor oppose merely because the "right" or "wrong" organization is pushing for it.
[+] [-] jasonmp85|7 years ago|reply
Maybe he shouldn't have launched an incomprehensible crusade against widespread SSL deployment in a post-Snowden world?
[+] [-] fredgrott|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnomad|7 years ago|reply
So the more Google does for the web the more dangerous they become. Should Google then start fighting the open web? Would that make the web... better?
[+] [-] microdrum|7 years ago|reply
OMG this is so true in our experience. Google doesn't quite lie, but they come very close. They are always changing people and policies, always in a downward direction. Makes me think they won't be around for much longer. They're just maximizing a monopoly, and everything they do reinforces that view.
[+] [-] rhizome|7 years ago|reply
The telltale sign for this is a lack of true commitment in their statements. It only counts when they draw a line in the sand.
[+] [-] ryanisnan|7 years ago|reply
Google is very healthy among many axes. Sadly, I don't think truth or honesty are as potent motivators as ubiquity and convenience. This all to say, Google will be around for a long while.
[+] [-] crazygringo|7 years ago|reply
What does "turn off" even mean? Following the links, it looks like the author is opposed specifically to Chrome pushing sites to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS, mainly because he claims "the web is a social agreement not to break things" and "we will lose a lot of sites that were quickly posted on a whim, over the 25 years the web has existed."
This is hard for me to get on board with. Standards evolve and improve because major players push them. We don't use floppy disks anymore either. HTTPS provides desperately needed privacy and integrity guarantees. And archive.org continues to make historical sites available -- over HTTPS even if the original wasn't.
[+] [-] Fnoord|7 years ago|reply
Google is dominant in search engine (Google Search), advertising (via profiling and Doubleclick etc), e-mail (Gmail), mobile (Android), and in browser (Chrome).
There are alternatives, but they are dominant. Though perhaps Android is the worst example due to iOS there's basically two choices you got: apple juice or robot oil.
The fear is that Google -consciously or not- abuses its position to leverage another, under the guise of "doing good". They did embrace & extend with Google Reader (which is, by its very definition, proprietary software). They may do something similar with e.g. AMP or HTTP(s). If it isn't already happening. Heck, Android is more and more restrictive with each release.
[+] [-] kevingadd|7 years ago|reply
Typically Google justifies these decisions to kill portions of the web with "security" and/or "user experience", and it's easy to use both of those reasons to justify disabling HTTP forever. You can remove the 'secure' indicator!
[+] [-] post_break|7 years ago|reply
Replace guns with ________ and repeat.
[+] [-] beaner|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onli|7 years ago|reply
> That people are still angry over this shows how out of touch many developers are with the real world / average consumers.
I'd rather see it as a lesson on how long developers remember if they feel betrayed by a company. Google Reader + Google Plus real name policy + its integration into Youtube was like a perfect storm to undermine Google's popularity, and then came Snowden. But it began with Google Reader, and I think that is why people remember.
PS: Given who the author is I think no one can fault him to give in his reasoning much importance to RSS.
[+] [-] Kalium|7 years ago|reply
Myself, I used google reader. But only for RSS. So I just moved to a different reader and I've been fine ever since.
[+] [-] ehsankia|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yesiamyourdad|7 years ago|reply
RSS wasn't even the point. RSS as a standard is still in use. It's just that we've come to a point where it's a battle of platforms, and platforms mean money. Do you use Facebook, or Twitter, or IG, or Snapchat? I'd still like a unified experience, but none of those companies want to be a party to it. They want to take as much of the pie as they can get.
[+] [-] ucaetano|7 years ago|reply
Nobody.
[+] [-] _b8r0|7 years ago|reply
* Google Reader and RSS
* Google Talk and Jabber
* Gmail and self-hosted mail (not exclusively Google, but one of the big mail senders)
The post's point was not that this is malicious, it's about what happens in big corporations with big ideas, big roadmaps and big reorgs. The fact that this has happened quite a few times is unsurprising.
[+] [-] deklerk|7 years ago|reply
... what? Ultra, ultra hyperbole much? I get it, shutting down reader sucked, but seriously you can literally use any RSS reader to read feeds. Google didn't "kill RSS".
Seriously, voicing opinions is one thing but fear mongering and hyperbole is another and this article leans far too heavily towards the latter.
[+] [-] aeorgnoieang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Clubber|7 years ago|reply
1. RSS readers everywhere
2. Google comes out with one
3. Other RSS readers wither on the vine b/c everyone uses #2
4. Google decides to sunset their RSS reader.
5. ???
Is that wrong?
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] systematical|7 years ago|reply
This seems to be what Google does. They either kill off a free service that people relied on or begin charging lots of money.
[+] [-] FearNotDaniel|7 years ago|reply
> that people relied on
Maybe when the "Web 2.0" bubble finally bursts, a key learning for the world will be: you can't build a sustainable business on top of someone else's unsustainable business. If your business depends on a long-term regular supply of anything (information, raw materials, whatever), then you probably want to figure out as quickly as possible how to pay something close to what that is worth and ignore the shifty guys knocking on the back door saying "hey, dude, look at these steaks! best quality! super low prices! don't ask where they come from... I'll even give you the first batch for free!"
[+] [-] intern4tional|7 years ago|reply
Only in Google's case, they capture the market fully and then kill it rather than leave it running the captive portal.
[+] [-] sarcasmic|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17287877
[+] [-] sofaofthedamned|7 years ago|reply
Edit: Yes, yes it is http://scripting.com/2014/08/08/myBlogDoesntNeedHttps.html
[+] [-] tomcam|7 years ago|reply
Ask Dennis Prager, Steven Crowder, Philip DeFranco. This is old news, not a vague fear
> It's like when we change administrations in Washington. Very chaotic
Not at all the same. In the USA, we have a baseline of actions the government cannot take: it is described in the Constitution and contains a well defined appeals process, as well as a large set of tools to protect against tyranny. Google offers its users and even its paying paying clients none of these privileges.
[+] [-] ucaetano|7 years ago|reply
How does this even make sense?
This is like saying "Once flying squirrels take control of the government...".
Sure, a government controlled by flying squirrels is something scary. But that doesn't make any sense.
You should be scared of walled gardens displacing the web.
[+] [-] siteshwar|7 years ago|reply
Google is highly influential in how information is consumed and distributed. People use chrome to browse web, google search for searching information etc. If they have major control over how information is distributed, they have major control over the web. Ofcourse there are other similar services that are not provided by Google, but they are very less influential due to lack of users.
> You should be scared of walled gardens displacing the web.
What if web becomes a walled garden ? Look at what Google did with DRM[1], even Mozilla had to give up their efforts to fight against it[2]. How could that be possible without having a major influence over the web ?
[1] https://boingboing.net/2017/01/30/google-quietly-makes-optio... [2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/05/14/drm-and-the-challen...
[+] [-] dasil003|7 years ago|reply
It was only about 20 years ago that Microsoft went from thinking the web has nothing to do with their core business, to becoming the dominant browser maker, to spending 5 years without releasing an update, and hamstringing all efforts to push the state of web development forward for almost a decade.
Google is approaching a similar level of dominance with Chrome now, and it's pretty scary when you consider the kinds of power plays they could make if they really wanted to. A walled garden, by comparison doesn't have much chance of displacing something as broad as the web except by a complete paradigm shift—mobile apps are the closest thing we've had since the web became dominant, but there's still the installation barrier that has slowed or reversed the process with app fatigue.
[+] [-] cirgue|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ozten|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lev99|7 years ago|reply
Google Search processes 2/3-3/4 of all searches, with declining market share. Search is held hostage by user's expectations, if the quality of search were to decline users would leave.
AdSense is in a commanding position, but it is under attack from a lot of different directions. Facebook gives more targeted ads. Snap allows more qualified ads. Apple is revamping it's ad system.
Google is in a strong position, but this isn't a case of them gaining more control, and their power is defiantly under check by other interests.
[+] [-] cpeterso|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RIMR|7 years ago|reply
Using the closure of Google Reader as an example of how Google could "turn off huge parts of web" is ridiculous.
Google reader was just a web-based RSS reader. Its user base was dwindling because RSS was falling out of fashion. Google alerted users well ahead of time of the closure, and gave users ample opportunity to move their subscriptions to another RSS aggregator.
Closing their own service is not a big deal. It's wasn't the first service Google has shuttered, nor will it be the last. Every company does this to services that no longer benefit the company.
No data was removed from the web.
No functionality was destroyed.
The Google Reader source code was made available to the public.
Competing services were champing at the bit to replace Google Reader (and didn't succeed, because hardly anyone uses RSS anymore).
It seems like Dave Winner suffers from a lack of understanding of how the web works, and an irrational distrust of large corporations.
[+] [-] ajross|7 years ago|reply
Frankly, if you want to point a finger for the death of RSS, blame Facebook and Twitter.
[+] [-] slrz|7 years ago|reply
It was? Where to find it? Please don't tell me it got lost when Google Code shut down.
[+] [-] donatj|7 years ago|reply
Personally I far more fear Amazon's literal control of the web and the monoculture they've created. For us personally moving off of AWS would be a nightmare.
[+] [-] dsr_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessaustin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iaml|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cautionarytale|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw1010|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swframe2|7 years ago|reply
From The China Hustle, Dirty Money, and The Big Short, it is clear people are putting a lot of trust in the "free market" across the board. Society seems convinced that abusive behavior is acceptable collateral damage required for "free markets" to work; that accepting white collar crime is better than regulating a big company; giving a $1B fine to a company that made $40B in profits is punishment enough to keep companies honest. It is not clear there is a better way...
[+] [-] fjabre|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randop|7 years ago|reply
The fear of change expressed on this article is natural. Enforcing HTTPS is good for consumers. But, we need to watch carefully with the market dominance of Google Chrome.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
[+] [-] yesiamyourdad|7 years ago|reply
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePl...
"To mangle three metaphors, if you drink that kool-aid, you’re either locked in the trunk like Dave Winer says or if you like my metaphor-ware better, you’re a sharecropper. Either way, it sucks."
[+] [-] msiyer|7 years ago|reply