Alphabet will definitely try to do that (within their business interest and all that), but I still choose to believe in the precept that “the net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”, as old and outdated as that sounds.
A number of my privacy-minded friends choose a bi-modal approach: have two phones, one for work and one for personal. They don’t get the recent model (costing half as much), hold onto the old phone for as long as they can, use one phone for “required” apps (Okta, Slack, those websites that only work on Chrome…) and the personal phone for everything else.
As annoying as it is, i think that compartmentalized devices/accounts/apps are the only way forward.
Interestingly, I think if the Chrome browser gets spun off from Google, it might make sense for Google to have to make annual payments to support the development of Chrome like they do Firefox. Obviously being the default search in Chrome should have significant value worth paying for the same as Firefox and Safari. And it might be the most plausible economic model for Chrome if it's not being funded by Google.
They will try, but anti-trust laws and -lawsuits should compel them otherwise. Microsoft had to pay hundreds of millions in fines to the EU for not complying with a previous browser choice order [0], following previous lawsuits in the US about their tight coupling of Internet Explorer [1] in which they settled for $1 billion. Google has to pay a fine in excess of 4 billion (!) to the EU for anti-competitive practices in Android [2].
This does raise a very interesting point though in my opinion. There's been some debate about whether Google should be compelled to sell off its chromium browser, but I wonder if it makes more sense to spin off Google's various attempts at boning internet infrastructure such as AMP and 8.8.8.8.
I guess AMP is being wound down but it was a play for shifting more of the Internet onto Google infrastructure.
Now we are talking! Let's see the required steps, not necessarily in this order:
1) create a dominant browser
2) create a dominant mobile OS
3) create a dominant e-mail service
4) create a dominant search engine
5) leverage each of these to make other solutions, especially open ones, difficult to use
6) make other browsers perform badly when interacting with your services
7) lock other browsers from accessing your services, effectively crippling them
There are some more minor steps, like making your main browser competitor dependent on your funding, but we can leave out the details. So we are now at... step 6?
IHLayman|7 months ago
A number of my privacy-minded friends choose a bi-modal approach: have two phones, one for work and one for personal. They don’t get the recent model (costing half as much), hold onto the old phone for as long as they can, use one phone for “required” apps (Okta, Slack, those websites that only work on Chrome…) and the personal phone for everything else.
As annoying as it is, i think that compartmentalized devices/accounts/apps are the only way forward.
GeoAtreides|7 months ago
kaszanka|7 months ago
normalaccess|7 months ago
prasadjoglekar|7 months ago
glenstein|7 months ago
Cthulhu_|7 months ago
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_13_...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Google...
glenstein|7 months ago
I guess AMP is being wound down but it was a play for shifting more of the Internet onto Google infrastructure.
seanclayton|7 months ago
unknown|7 months ago
[deleted]
pivo|7 months ago
psionides|7 months ago
bornfreddy|7 months ago
1) create a dominant browser 2) create a dominant mobile OS 3) create a dominant e-mail service 4) create a dominant search engine 5) leverage each of these to make other solutions, especially open ones, difficult to use 6) make other browsers perform badly when interacting with your services 7) lock other browsers from accessing your services, effectively crippling them
There are some more minor steps, like making your main browser competitor dependent on your funding, but we can leave out the details. So we are now at... step 6?