This is especially rich coming from google's, who's 'safetynet' for android results in a significant reduction in security (contrary to its stated purpose): it locks out 3rd-party up-to-date and secure ROMs while allowing horrificly insecure manufacturer-provided ROMs to still pass, because to disable those would cause a massive user outcry. So it functions as a vendor lock-in but no meaningful increase in security for the average user, while preventing more advanced users from improving their security without needing to buy more hardware. This needs to be called out more to push back against the claim that this kind of attestation somehow has a legitimate benefit for the users.
And speaking of user-hostile, locked-down phones...
a galactic irony that Ben Wiser, the Googler who posted this proposal, has a blog where his most recent post is a rant about how he's being unfairly restricted and can't freely run the software he wants on his own device.
It's not clear when his most recent post is; the server says "Last-Modified: Wed, 26 Jul 2023 06:00:31 GMT" but I believe I saw references to this post before that in the current discussion.
(What's with the trend of completely omitting any dates on a blog?)
Not the same thing. Attestation doesn't mean you can't run software you want on your own phone, which Android allows despite having build attestation APIs.
"The term cognitive distortions has often been used as a general umbrella term to refer to pseudo-justifications and rationalizations for their deviant behavior, and pro-criminal or offense-supporting attitudes (Maruna & Copes, 2004; Maruna & Mann, 2006; Ciardha & Gannon, 2011)." Helmond et al., Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2015, Vol. 42, No. 3, March 2015, 245-262
It seems that almost any software/website can be framed as having a legitimate benefit for users, e.g., increased convenience and/or security.^1 The more pertinent inquiry is what benefit(s) does it have for its author(s). What does it do (as opposed to "what is it"). Let the user draw their own conclusions from the facts.
1. Arguably it could be a distortion to claim these are not mutually exclusive.
We can use web clients that do not leak excessive data that might be collected and used for advertising and tracking by so-called "tech" companies. Google would prefer that we not use such clients. But why not. A so-called "tech" company might frame all non-approved web clients as "bots" and all web usage without disclosing excessive data about the computer user's setup^2 as relating to "fraud". It might frame all web usage as commercial in nature and thus all websites as receptacles for advertising. This "all or nothing" thinking is a classic cognitive distortion.
Exactly! Ironically it's a possible reduction in security on custom roms as well if one chooses to bypass it, which is trivial, but requires rooting the device.
This is especially rich coming from google's, who's 'safetynet' for android results in a significant reduction in security (contrary to its stated purpose): it locks out 3rd-party up-to-date and secure ROMs while allowing horrificly insecure manufacturer-provided ROMs to still pass, because to disable those would cause a massive user outcry.
SafetyNet is deprecated, but it’s just been rolled into Play Integrity which does all the same things. All the same concerns still apply to Play Integrity.
GrapheneOS is asking developers not to use SafetyNet/Play Integrity (because they presumably block GrapheneOS), but instead to use the native hardware attestation API so they can specifically allow GrapheneOS keys. If a developer doesn’t allow their keys, they’ll be blocked.
You're using it wrong. SafetyNet is able to assert that the build the device asserts is what it claims. After you know that, it's up to you to decide whether you trust communications from that build or not. If it's a known-insecure build, you can say that you don't. SafetyNet cannot assert that a third party ROM is what it claims to be, so you have to decide whether you trust communications from that device or not based on not knowing at all what build is on the device.
> so you have to decide whether you trust communications from that device
"You" in this scenario being, most likely, an engineer at a large, regulated, risk-averse corporation that might have to justify this choice during an audit.
> Can we just refuse to implement it?
> Unfortunately, it’s not that simple this time. Any browser choosing not to implement this would not be trusted and any website choosing to use this API could therefore reject users from those browsers. Google also has ways to drive adoptions by websites themselves.
This is true of any contentious browser feature. Choosing not to implement it means your users will sometimes be presented with a worse UX if a website's developers decide to require that feature.
But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers. If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.
>But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers.
Absolutely zero large web properties do anything based on what's best for users. If this gains traction, Google will simply deny adsense payments for impressions from an "untrusted" page, and thus all the large players that show ads for revenue will immediately implement WEI without giving a single flying shit about the users, as they always have and always will.
I think this is a little reductive. WEI is likely what some people at Google felt was best for AdSense's customers, i.e. advertisers. It just so happens that Google has a whole other set of customers who this is not best for, e.g. Chrome users, YouTube users. The problem is that it's all coming from one company, and AdSense is where the money is at, so I don't trust Google to make the best decisions for their secondary customers.
I definitely agree that AdSense blocking clients that don't implement WEI seems likely. At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. That's already a question they have from users with ad blockers, although that is a little bit more challenging to detect.
My hope is that the majority of sites accept that they can't rely on ad revenue, and instead resort to directly monetizing users as a way to make ends meet. IMO that's a better relationship than indirectly selling their data and attention.
Why would Google not monetize unattested traffic?
I mean that's like Google blocking it's own ads from being shown.
I don't know much about the online ad market. I assume advertisers will pay more for attested impressions than for unattested ones. But unattested impressions will still be worth something.
Are you sure about that? I am quite optimistic, it's not the first dominant-position abusing crap from Google, they also tried to impose AMP and to rank sites without it at lower positions, but AMP was ultimately fined out of existence. I am all for regulations and fining google out of existence, but I am thinking that maybe this is another product that serves to make shareholders sleep well and will not really see any significant adoption
> Choosing not to implement it means your users will sometimes be presented with a worse UX if a website's developers decide to require that feature.
I think this makes a category error. Most browser features/APIs are indeed treated as progressive enhancements by web developers, at least until an overwhelming number of the users have access to that feature. And even then, even if the developer makes assumptions that the feature/API is present, often the result is a degraded experience rather than an all-out broken experience.
The same is not true of web attestation. If a website requires it and a browser refuses to implement it, in at least some cases (probably a concerningly high number of cases though) the result will be that the user is entirely locked out of using that website.
It's also worth noting that _even if_ Vivaldi implements WEI, there's a solid chance that the attestation authority (Google, Microsoft, Apple) or possibly the website itself[1] will not accept it as a valid environment at all! After all, what makes Vivaldi not a "malicious or automated environment" in their eyes? What if Vivaldi allows full ad blocking extensions? User automation/scripting? Or any example of too much freedom to the user. Will the attestation authority decide that it is not worthy of being an acceptable environment?
[1] if this ends up spiralling out of control by allowing the full attestation chain to be inspected by the website
> The same is not true of web attestation. If a website requires it...
I don't think I've made a category error, that again is true of all browser features. If your browser does not support JavaScript or WebSockets or WebGL, many sites would lock you out of them entirely as well. It's a choice of the website creator what to assume and what to require, and how to degrade the experience or offer alternatives when a feature is missing.
The way I imagine it, WEI will start with skipping CAPTCHA. Then it will be about serving ads (users without WEI would generate no or very limited ad revenue.) Then it's up to the owner of a site whether or not they want to allow non-WEI traffic at all. Some will choose to block users without WEI, and hopefully the number of browsers that have chosen not to implement it, and the number of users on those browsers is high enough that that option will not be appealing.
I hope that Vivaldi remains one of the browsers that doesn't implement it, whether or not the EU rules against it.
What sets WEI apart is that it, in a way, exerts power over your choice on how to implement other web features, for example whether you're allowed to block elements, or even just show a developer console.
Other than Encrypted Media Extensions (and these are much more constrained than WEI!), I don't know of any other web standard that does that.
Since Google also controls the most popular search engine and ad network, they can exert very significant pressure on web developers by refusing to place ads or drive traffic to websites that don't comply.
I already block all ads so I'm obviously not totally sympathetic to developers who make decisions based on what will maximize ad revenue, but it still is not fair to put the burden on developers here and say "it's your choice, just say no".
2) Dart: Google wanted this to replace javascript, but Mozilla and MS both said no way, as they had no part in it. So that project ended up dying.
Google tries lots of things. Mozilla, MS, and Apple are still strong enough (especially outside the US) to push back on things that they think are a bad idea.
Dart is still around. The Flutter framework is growing in popularity.
Apple already built and shipped this same feature last year, so they're not opposed. MS? Probably gonna love this. Mozilla hasn't said anything on it (yet at least). I'm not expecting any of those players to save us.
Someone argued yesterday that in instances like this users are choosing what to use of their own free will. At the micro scale sure, at the macro scale I disagree. Users want their shit to work and if you play these shenanigans it's less of a choice and more of a ransom.
Insects in a swarm can choose where to go but they can't choose where the swarm goes.
> If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.
I take umbridge at this implication. When a monopoly like Google takes anti-competitive actions it's not fair or just to expect individuals to stand up to it. Governments exist to counter anti-competitive behavior like this and governments have been doing a terrible job chopping down companies with too much vertical integration lately.
The author should have asked "Can we just implement it then?" because in some cases you literally can't implement the proposed API. That's the core issue with it. Unlike other contentious browser features, even if you wanted to implement attestation, it may be impossible to do so. More precisely, attestation may be impossible to implement on some platforms to the de facto standard that would develop over time. The de facto standard I refer to is the list of attestors web servers will accept. If your platform can't be attested by an approved attestor, you're screwed. That's why it's not that simple this time. The proposed attestation API is literally unimplementable in general. You can't implement it and you can't not implement it.
Well hold on. The problem with attestation is you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
If you use a browser which supports attestation you will be denied service by companies who disapprove of what you run on your computer.
If you don't use a browser which supports attestation you will be denied service by companies who disapprove of what you run on your computer.
So everyone loses. If this goes live everyone in the world loses.
It is an utterly heinous proposal. It is perhaps the worst thing Google has ever produced. I use Firefox and will never use any browser that implements attestation, even if I have to stop using most of the WWW one day.
But unfortunately individual action is not going to be enough here, because no matter what you do, you lose.
> If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.
This is indeed concerning. I'd like to see Brave's response to this, and we already know how Firefox has responded.
This point in the blog post saddens me. Chrome's market share is huge, but Chrome is not ubiquitous. There was public outcry when Google was suspected of making youtube have "bugs" on non-Chromium browsers - having them just straight up disable services for more than a third of users would result in an actual shitstorm, more than any of us could hope to drum up with an explanation of why this change is bad.
It would also drive the point home to the very same legislators that the author is deferring to.
If browsers now start pre-emptively folding, Google just straight up won. It's great that the Vivaldi team is against this change, but a blog post and hoping for regulation just won't cut it. You have actual leverage here, use it.
I think that just meant some users with sufficient karma flagged it, but I was a bit confused because for a while it didn't say "[flagged]" but didn't show up in the first several pages or continue to get upvotes. Is there a delay in saying "[flagged]"?
> Any browser choosing not to implement this would not be trusted and any website choosing to use this API could therefore reject users from those browsers.
If we are serious about protesting this, let’s do as follows: We implement code in our websites that checks whether the user agent implements this API. If the check passes, we tell the user that their browser is not welcome and why that is.
> let’s do as follows: We implement code in our websites that checks whether the user agent implements this API. If the check passes, we tell the user that their browser is not welcome and why that is.
I am sympathetic, I agree let's all do that....
...I cannot imagine any of the money people I work with agreeing
As usual, a thousand word essay on Google's WEI without ever mentioning that Apple sailed that ship silently a while ago, therefore not attracting any attention or backlash.
I didn't notice it because I, just like a majority of internet users worldwide, do not own any Apple products and therefore I was never affected and probably never will be.
I do, however, routinely interact with websites that implement Google Analytics and/or Google ads. If those sites start rejecting my browser of choice I will most certainly be locked out of a significant portion of the internet. And the remaining 60% of all internet users would be essentially forced to accept this technology or else. That's an order of magnitude or two more users, and seems to me like a good reason to raise the alarm.
Exactly. Websites will not require this version because they know that Safari is a minority market share and they can't force users to buy an Apple product. However if this is supported by Chrome and Safari all of a sudden the equation flips and many sites will feel that they can reject service to other users.
Safari is not only leading browser in mobile, it is the only choice any iphone users have unlike chrome where user has choice to not use it. I would be more wary of safari changes than chrome changes.
WEI can't lock people out of sites either. It's all on the website owner. A site owner could easily lock Apple users who aren't authed via PAT today if they wanted to. The only thing that's stopped them from doing so already is that most users are non-Apple browsers so it wouldn't make sense.
> It is also interesting to note that the first use case listed is about ensuring that interactions with ads are genuine.
That's just the beginning. Attestation will eventually allow advertisers to demand that user is present and looking at the screen like in Black Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits.
> In it, TV viewers are only able to skip an advert by shouting the name of the brand. Yep, crying 'McDonald's!' is the only way to make the Big Mac disappear.
Companies will do the most insane, terrible things if not stopped. This will happen.
Not sure that it is in Sony's case. But creating patents for anti-user ideas, where you don't intend on using them, locks the idea away for at least a while, and could be seen as pro-user.
Can't wait till we've added another turtle to the stack with a full browser engine implemented in WASM running in a host browser that is mandatory for all media sites.
I agree with the first. The second I think is missing the target. This really doesn't have anything to do with search. Instead this is Google (The largest ad seller) using it's market position (as the maker of Chrome/Chromium, the most popular browser) to prevent users from not seeing its ads on any website where they're displayed.
While I believe that the idea of splitting Search and Ads could be a game changer, how would Search become profitable without Ads, and without compromising the rank algorithm?
It's never going to be against the economic interest of search engines to show ads, they can sell spots on their front page which are always going to be valuable.
This should be against their tactical interests, because it hurts their accuracy driving away users, but absent a significantly more accurate competitor they'll get away with it for a long time.
Regarding Google search there are some hopeful signs. For one some people report Google's accuracy dropping, and Google keeps switching up its idiosyncrasies to avoid spam but in doing so they devalue the effort people put into SEO and into refining their Google-fu. These might be the same thing however.
I can see this show up on Youtube (why not - under Google's control, and they want you to watch the ads on their official browser) and on banking apps. Initially. In the longer run, it either withers and dies, or it leads to antitrust action. I really can't see another way.
This will probably be implemented by every streaming service very quickly to try to prevent piracy (which won't work), and will only end up harming people who just want to watch on more freedom-respecting browsers or operating systems
g**gle and other PRISM partners do not want any users on freedom-respecting browsers/OSes. forcing people onto chromium based browsers isn't an unfortunate side effect, it's a secondary goal of the specification.
Actually, absent a full chain-of-trust from boot, which I believe Android/iOS do provide, and possibly the proprietary desktop environments can provide, it should be possible to fake the "I'm a legitimate browser" exchange. Which is what the 1% that care will do. But it sucks to have to go to deep underground "crack" type stuff where before there was an open web. Not to mention the risk of getting hit by the banhammer if detected.
Banks are not the target of this. If Banks do something that inhibits people with disabilities, corporate account managers with disabilities, or senior citizens, they will get skewered. They will tread carefully.
Readit News
a galactic irony that Ben Wiser, the Googler who posted this proposal, has a blog where his most recent post is a rant about how he's being unfairly restricted and can't freely run the software he wants on his own device.
https://benwiser.com/blog/I-just-spent-%C2%A3700-to-have-my-...
https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity
(What's with the trend of completely omitting any dates on a blog?)
It seems that almost any software/website can be framed as having a legitimate benefit for users, e.g., increased convenience and/or security.^1 The more pertinent inquiry is what benefit(s) does it have for its author(s). What does it do (as opposed to "what is it"). Let the user draw their own conclusions from the facts.
1. Arguably it could be a distortion to claim these are not mutually exclusive.
We can use web clients that do not leak excessive data that might be collected and used for advertising and tracking by so-called "tech" companies. Google would prefer that we not use such clients. But why not. A so-called "tech" company might frame all non-approved web clients as "bots" and all web usage without disclosing excessive data about the computer user's setup^2 as relating to "fraud". It might frame all web usage as commercial in nature and thus all websites as receptacles for advertising. This "all or nothing" thinking is a classic cognitive distortion.
2. This was the norm in the eary days of the web.
That's not the case with GrapheneOS:
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
SafetyNet is deprecated anyway:
https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/deprecation...
SafetyNet is deprecated, but it’s just been rolled into Play Integrity which does all the same things. All the same concerns still apply to Play Integrity.
GrapheneOS is asking developers not to use SafetyNet/Play Integrity (because they presumably block GrapheneOS), but instead to use the native hardware attestation API so they can specifically allow GrapheneOS keys. If a developer doesn’t allow their keys, they’ll be blocked.
"You" in this scenario being, most likely, an engineer at a large, regulated, risk-averse corporation that might have to justify this choice during an audit.
What would your decision be?
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But as a software creator, it's up to you to determine what is best for your customers. If your only hope of not going along with this is having the EU come in and slapping Google's wrist, I'm concerned that you aren't willing to take a hard stance on your own.
Absolutely zero large web properties do anything based on what's best for users. If this gains traction, Google will simply deny adsense payments for impressions from an "untrusted" page, and thus all the large players that show ads for revenue will immediately implement WEI without giving a single flying shit about the users, as they always have and always will.
I definitely agree that AdSense blocking clients that don't implement WEI seems likely. At that point, it will be up to websites that rely on AdSense revenue to decide what to do with customers they aren't monetizing. That's already a question they have from users with ad blockers, although that is a little bit more challenging to detect.
My hope is that the majority of sites accept that they can't rely on ad revenue, and instead resort to directly monetizing users as a way to make ends meet. IMO that's a better relationship than indirectly selling their data and attention.
I don't know much about the online ad market. I assume advertisers will pay more for attested impressions than for unattested ones. But unattested impressions will still be worth something.
I think this makes a category error. Most browser features/APIs are indeed treated as progressive enhancements by web developers, at least until an overwhelming number of the users have access to that feature. And even then, even if the developer makes assumptions that the feature/API is present, often the result is a degraded experience rather than an all-out broken experience.
The same is not true of web attestation. If a website requires it and a browser refuses to implement it, in at least some cases (probably a concerningly high number of cases though) the result will be that the user is entirely locked out of using that website.
It's also worth noting that _even if_ Vivaldi implements WEI, there's a solid chance that the attestation authority (Google, Microsoft, Apple) or possibly the website itself[1] will not accept it as a valid environment at all! After all, what makes Vivaldi not a "malicious or automated environment" in their eyes? What if Vivaldi allows full ad blocking extensions? User automation/scripting? Or any example of too much freedom to the user. Will the attestation authority decide that it is not worthy of being an acceptable environment?
[1] if this ends up spiralling out of control by allowing the full attestation chain to be inspected by the website
I don't think I've made a category error, that again is true of all browser features. If your browser does not support JavaScript or WebSockets or WebGL, many sites would lock you out of them entirely as well. It's a choice of the website creator what to assume and what to require, and how to degrade the experience or offer alternatives when a feature is missing.
The way I imagine it, WEI will start with skipping CAPTCHA. Then it will be about serving ads (users without WEI would generate no or very limited ad revenue.) Then it's up to the owner of a site whether or not they want to allow non-WEI traffic at all. Some will choose to block users without WEI, and hopefully the number of browsers that have chosen not to implement it, and the number of users on those browsers is high enough that that option will not be appealing.
I hope that Vivaldi remains one of the browsers that doesn't implement it, whether or not the EU rules against it.
Other than Encrypted Media Extensions (and these are much more constrained than WEI!), I don't know of any other web standard that does that.
I already block all ads so I'm obviously not totally sympathetic to developers who make decisions based on what will maximize ad revenue, but it still is not fair to put the burden on developers here and say "it's your choice, just say no".
1) FLoC: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/25/22900567/google-floc-aban...
2) Dart: Google wanted this to replace javascript, but Mozilla and MS both said no way, as they had no part in it. So that project ended up dying.
Google tries lots of things. Mozilla, MS, and Apple are still strong enough (especially outside the US) to push back on things that they think are a bad idea.
Apple already built and shipped this same feature last year, so they're not opposed. MS? Probably gonna love this. Mozilla hasn't said anything on it (yet at least). I'm not expecting any of those players to save us.
Apple already implements equivalent functionality.
MS has been pushing "trusted computing" left and right.
Mozilla alone is irrevelant.
Insects in a swarm can choose where to go but they can't choose where the swarm goes.
I take umbridge at this implication. When a monopoly like Google takes anti-competitive actions it's not fair or just to expect individuals to stand up to it. Governments exist to counter anti-competitive behavior like this and governments have been doing a terrible job chopping down companies with too much vertical integration lately.
If you use a browser which supports attestation you will be denied service by companies who disapprove of what you run on your computer.
If you don't use a browser which supports attestation you will be denied service by companies who disapprove of what you run on your computer.
So everyone loses. If this goes live everyone in the world loses.
It is an utterly heinous proposal. It is perhaps the worst thing Google has ever produced. I use Firefox and will never use any browser that implements attestation, even if I have to stop using most of the WWW one day.
But unfortunately individual action is not going to be enough here, because no matter what you do, you lose.
This is indeed concerning. I'd like to see Brave's response to this, and we already know how Firefox has responded.
It would also drive the point home to the very same legislators that the author is deferring to.
If browsers now start pre-emptively folding, Google just straight up won. It's great that the Vivaldi team is against this change, but a blog post and hoping for regulation just won't cut it. You have actual leverage here, use it.
Makes me recall Flash.
Once was a time when very large parts of the web were dark to me because I would not install Flash
Not an exact comparison, but we've been (near) here beforehand
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Google is already pushing WEI into Chromium - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36876301 - July 2023 (705 comments)
Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36875226 - July 2023 (439 comments)
Google vs. the Open Web - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36875164 - July 2023 (161 comments)
Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36862494 - July 2023 (413 comments)
Google’s nightmare “Web Integrity API” wants a DRM gatekeeper for the web - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36854114 - July 2023 (447 comments)
Web Environment Integrity API Proposal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36817305 - July 2023 (437 comments)
Web Environment Integrity Explainer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36785516 - July 2023 (44 comments)
Google Chrome Proposal – Web Environment Integrity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36778999 - July 2023 (93 comments)
Web Environment Integrity – Google locking down on browsers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35864471 - May 2023 (1 comment)
Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36862494
- “I don't know why this enrages folks so much.” Googler re Chrome anti-feature https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36868888
I think that just meant some users with sufficient karma flagged it, but I was a bit confused because for a while it didn't say "[flagged]" but didn't show up in the first several pages or continue to get upvotes. Is there a delay in saying "[flagged]"?
If we are serious about protesting this, let’s do as follows: We implement code in our websites that checks whether the user agent implements this API. If the check passes, we tell the user that their browser is not welcome and why that is.
#BoycottGoogle #BoycottChrome #BoycottBullshit
I am sympathetic, I agree let's all do that....
...I cannot imagine any of the money people I work with agreeing
Also if google wants to, I'm sure they can obscure it
https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-att...
https://toot.cafe/@pimterry/110775130465014555
The sorry state of tech news / blogs. Regurgitating the same drama without ever looking at the greater picture.
I do, however, routinely interact with websites that implement Google Analytics and/or Google ads. If those sites start rejecting my browser of choice I will most certainly be locked out of a significant portion of the internet. And the remaining 60% of all internet users would be essentially forced to accept this technology or else. That's an order of magnitude or two more users, and seems to me like a good reason to raise the alarm.
The "look! there's a bigger asshole over there" defense.
Never a winning strategy.
That's just the beginning. Attestation will eventually allow advertisers to demand that user is present and looking at the screen like in Black Mirror episode Fifteen Million Merits.
https://www.creativebloq.com/sony-tv-patent
> In it, TV viewers are only able to skip an advert by shouting the name of the brand. Yep, crying 'McDonald's!' is the only way to make the Big Mac disappear.
Companies will do the most insane, terrible things if not stopped. This will happen.
It must be made against the economic interests of search engines to show too many ads.
This should be against their tactical interests, because it hurts their accuracy driving away users, but absent a significantly more accurate competitor they'll get away with it for a long time.
Regarding Google search there are some hopeful signs. For one some people report Google's accuracy dropping, and Google keeps switching up its idiosyncrasies to avoid spam but in doing so they devalue the effort people put into SEO and into refining their Google-fu. These might be the same thing however.
I can see this show up on Youtube (why not - under Google's control, and they want you to watch the ads on their official browser) and on banking apps. Initially. In the longer run, it either withers and dies, or it leads to antitrust action. I really can't see another way.
It rejects Firefox and Chrome outright. The solution is to use either browser on Wine, then copy the session cookies over.
Exactly, absent all platforms except OSS operating systems like Linux.
Windows 11, with its required hardware TPM, can absolutely do this. So can modern macOS.
Or probably CFAA, it seems inevitable to me that these organizations will use state violence to enforce their monopolies.
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