Google has announced that it is cutting off access to the Sync and “other Google Exclusive” APIs from all builds except Google Chrome. This will make the Fedora Chromium build significantly less functional (along with every other distro packaged Chromium). It is noteworthy that Google gave the builders of distribution Chromium packages these access rights back in 2013 via API keys, specifically so that we could have open source builds of Chromium with (near) feature parity to Chrome. And now they’re taking it away. The reasoning given for this change? Google does not want users to be able to “access their personal Chrome Sync data (such as bookmarks) … with a non-Google, Chromium-based browser.” They’re not closing a security hole, they’re just requiring that everyone use Chrome.
Or to put it bluntly, they do not want you to access their Google API functionality without using proprietary software (Google Chrome). There is no good reason for Google to do this, other than to force people to use Chrome.
This is what we in the business call a “dick move”.
I use Firefox. I will continue to use Firefox. It is fast enough, works very well with Linux (my preferred platform) and Android, and there’s none of this garbage going on. The more I can get Google out of my life, the better.
Yeah, Firefox is really good these days. There was some pain there, but it’s paid off. Any problems I have these days are self-inflicted or JS.
JS is no small thing though but yes, most things work. Personally I can think of one thing that does not work for me and that is PMs on a popular Swedish auction site. Annoying, but I can live with it.
If I may add, Chrome assumes that whatever Google account you ‘ve chosen for bookmarks and history syncing is your main Google account, and will “helpfully” use that account by default every time you visit YouTube, Google Drive etc no matter how many times you switch accounts in those websites. Oh, and logging out from those website pauses syncing in the frickin’ browser! Firefox allows you to use any email address you desire for syncing, as long as it can receive emails.
Also, Chrome has banned Video DownloadHelper plugins from downloading videos from YouTube.
Ugh… no thanks Google, I ‘d rather my browser isn’t provided by the world’s biggest online service provider if I can. Firefox is my main browser.
What worries me is Google services becoming walled behind Chrome in one way or another in the future. Google has entered their let’s be evil phase, so nothing can be ruled out.
Well, I’m a big user of Google services, even though with time my dependance to them has decreased to reach a point where it’s “only” gmail and google play services on android. If Google walls its garden and blocks firefox from its websites, I certainly won’t switch to a chrome-based browser to accomodate them. And I’m not so unique that I believe there wouldn’t be a fair number of others to do the same. They’d shoot themselves in the foot pretty bad if it reached that point, I believe.
Google has one big weapon: YouTube. Not only does YouTube host a great portion of the world’s videos, at the same time it’s a “creator’s platform” with lots of high-quality content (channels) under its belt, with the owners of those channels locked to YouTube’s subscription service (no channel owner will attempt to move to another service and have to rebuild their subscription base from zero). Google doesn’t even need to fully cut Firefox off from YouTube. All they have to do is make sure this and that feature doesn’t work (say premium videos and google cast).
Google DRM will become a thing. Mark my words. It will not have a name (like AACS and SecuRom have). It will be silently phased-in for 4K or 8K videos in the YouTube app, and will move downwards to more resolutions and eventually expand to the website. By the time people realise why YouTube has limited resolutions in Firefox, it will be too late.
Time for the regualtors to step on and begin asking for open standards to be implemented. Some of which may include standards which implement alternative hosting or P2P solutions in their lower layers. I think this solves a lot of problems and where things may head. Your own comments show we are wise to monopolies and the “boiled frog” techniques.
Democratising the internet does not mean a corporate or libertarian or political free for all. Nor does cleaning up the internet mean some kind of soulless killjoy dystopia. You can have standards which support democracy and the rule of law and human rights and ethics. Anyone who says different is a liar with an agenda and simply doesn’t understand technology or how to use technology.
Regulators are especially inept at regulating tech monopolies (on-purpose or out of ignorance, I don’t know). They still think with a Standard Oil mentality, aka how much stuff and how much market share a company has and not what proprietary standards a company has and how it abuse them to achieve their monopoly status. I mean, just look at how everyone was worried about Internet Explorer’s market share and its bundling with Windows, and not about the way it subverted web standards to make other browsers incompatible, and this mentality continued even after they were shown evidence of this being all planned from day 1.
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
kurkosdr,
You’re not gonna like this, but google DRM is already a thing…
https://www.pcmag.com/news/report-googles-widevine-l3-drm-cracked
Sadly, apple and google successfully campaigned for DRM to be included in the HTML5 standard and firefox was given an ultimatum: support hollywood DRM or become irrelevant for commercial streaming services. This is provided in the form of binary blobs that are needed by firefox.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm
Obviously being dependent on 3rd party binary blobs from google causes new challenges when a browser needs to be ported (as in the case of ARM M1 CPU). Furthermore this literally gives google the power to shut out competing browsers “I’m sorry but we’re not supporting an open source solution like this”:
https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/widevine/gmail-thread.html
As far as I know youtube itself doesn’t use DRM (maybe on youtube red…?) Anyways it wouldn’t be difficult for google to enable it if it wanted to, and obviously it wouldn’t be difficult for google to block firefox and chromium if it wanted to either. Google would probably negotiate a license with bigger partners like microsoft and firefox, but chrome, youtube, netflix, etc market share are probably big enough at this point that they could afford to push an ultimatum: switch to chrome or loose access.
As far as DRM being cracked, that’s true and it’s unlikely there will ever be 100% effective DRM. However now that DRM is used for streaming services rather than physical medium (like DVDs), depending on DRM cracks isn’t very viable long term. A service update could come along and render a crack obsolete at any moment. You are 100% right that Google is in a very strong position to deprive alternative browsers of content if they chose to really crank up the pressure. With that said, I predict google’s going to sit back and let the market’s natural momentum eat away at mozilla’s share. If google do too much to actively interfere, it could be used to incriminate them in an antitrust case.
kurkosdr,
+1
I agree completely. Unfortunately both our political parties are corrupted by corporate influence in their respective ways. And because money talks, it creates a positive feedback loop helping to ensure both parties remain corrupt. I don’t really know what can be done about this. A rank vote would go a long way towards increasing the viability of genuinely independent parties, but hell will freeze over before the corporate parties at the helm would allow it; they have no incentive to vote against their own power.
I’ve been a firefox user for a long time as well. I honestly don’t know if it’s the best or fastest browser anymore. To be honest, I really don’t care.
It works. It syncs my bookmarks. It has tabs.
My computer and phone, while not top of the line can run firefox well enough. What more do I need?
Myself I feel big companies should act to a higher standard. They have all the advantages and tax advantages and staff to do so. Maybe I’m getting old but I like stability and people not changing the rules every five minutes just because. I use Firefox because I’m more of a standards person than a prop up a corporation person. Moves like this by Google remind me to put a plan in place for disentangling myself from Google entirely and likely as far away from an American corporation as possible so as not to feed the oligopoly. Europe has better consumer rights and privacy law so swinging in that direction.
For the most part, that’s an astute observation.
Good! Now if they’ll remove the rest of the Google junk from Chromium.
Let me get this straight… So Google is cutting off access to Google services (sync, calendar, drive, contacts, etc) in non-Google builds of Chromium. In other words, less Google’ized non-Chromium builds. And, people who dislike Google and/or want less Google in their life has a problem with this?! In what bizarro universe does that make any sense? It doesn’t matter what-so-ever their reasoning for doing it, they’re making the path to Google more restricted. People should be thanking them, not complaining about it.
The one where people still support corporations instead of using the very good non-corporate alternatives.
So this one.
So you’re mad at people who choose to use Google products & services and don’t follow your philosophy. And you think that’s perfectly fine. And I would say that could only make sense in a bizarro universe, certainly not this one.
BTW, what browsers can you name that are completely void of corporate support?
Yeah I don’t really get it either. It only seems less work for projects like ungoogled-chromium.
The distro packagers were already trying to remove these features as they were typically sneaking in.
Note that application specific API keys is an example of bad API design. A good API should never be aware of which application is accessing it. If another application wants to use these APIs it would even be better if its developer would extract the API key from the Google Chrome binaries. This way the server side cannot distinguish that application from Google Chrome.
Z_God,
It’s relative. What’s good for the user (ie privacy) is not good for google. A good API for google (with less privacy/more tracking) is not good for the user. Given that google’s making the API, you can expect it to be designed with their interests in mind.
It’s not bad design to have application specific API keys. If you have a fairly open API, there’s a lot more concerns at play. Let’s assume good intentions for a moment even though we know intentions can be nefarious (vendor lockin, tracking, ads…)
Getting statistics on your user base, so you can better serve your API clients.
Being able to troubleshoot issues. Hey, if I’m seeing a lot of failed API requests from a particular client, it makes it easier to track down and trouble shoot that issue.
Being able to end of life API keys for whatever reason without impacting everyone.
And yes, many things can be faked; especially in a kind of open API like this. But often the threat of legal action or just difficulty in doing it can make it a non-issue for most people. Like, could a particular chromium project just extract the keys from google chrome? Technically of course they could, but if they publish it somewhere where the average person could download it, then it is easy for Google to target them legally. If a project remains small and they’re stealing Chrome API keys, Google probably doesn’t care all that much.
Google APIs also support functionality that seems to be “part of the browser”, such as speech. This decreases accessibility for Chromium.
I’m not convinced of that. If a user needs text-to-speech accessibility, that user likely needs it in more than just a Chromium-based browser. I view that kind of accessibility as an OS level feature or dedicated app, not something on a per-app basis. Let’s assume you’re right though, in which case, what’s to stop any of the de-Googled Chromium browsers from simply using a different API provider? And for that matter, what’s to stop other speech API providers from jumping at the chance to be the replacement?
Decreased Chromium accessibility is something I’ll need to see to believe. It would be interesting to hear the opinions of people who rely on text-to-speech.
I suspect some people like to use open source software AND use Google services at the same time. Who are we to blame them?
This change forces them to either give up using open source software or give up using Google services. Either choice is an unnecessary break in habit. People dislike change. There does not seem to be a good reason for Google to pull a stunt like this. People will get annoyed. Hopefully that will cause them to migrate away from Google services, because imo the less people that use Google services, the better, because I don’t like monopolists at all.
These are the moments when I feel so happy to support and use Firefox.
The not so good news is that Firefox is too dependent on Google for financial support.
Caruncho,
Yeah, I am worried about that too. It’s a tenuous business model and they had to layoff a quarter of their employees several months ago.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/
Most users stick with preinstalled browsers, giving mozilla’s competitors a huge leg up. As far as I’m aware, firefox doesn’t benefit from manufacturer bundling on any android or windows devices. Obviously apple bans competing browsers on IOS. Microsoft can use OS updates to spam their warez. So unlike it’s competitors mozilla has to convince users to install firefox manually.
Then mozilla’s done some things to drive it’s own users away, which they can’t afford to do! Still, it’s my main browser and I’d hate to see them drop out of the market leaving us with fewer choices. It’s hard to envision a path where they manage to beat competitors with unlimited funds though. I’m sad to say it, but it’s rational to predict the momentum favoring the tech giants is only going to accelerate.
“Then mozilla’s done some things to drive it’s own users away,”
In a buch of cases they had to eventually move to get rid of some technical debt they couldn’t keep maintaining some things forever (specially: older addons).
“it’s rational to predict the momentum favoring the tech giants is only going to accelerate.”
Which is why we need to keep running Firefox until we can’t. Firefox is what got us out of ie5.5/IE6 hell.
We should actually demand from governments Apple should allow other browsers on their mobile platform. It’s completely crazy no other engine is allowed. Safari (engine) on iOS is behind Firefox and Chrome in a bunch of cases. I wish Microsoft would have joined Mozilla in Firefox development that would have been a lot better long term.
Lennie,
I’ve experienced the breakages too obviously. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but some of the replacements were inferior and made some pretty basic stuff impossible.
https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/webextension-read-write-access-to-about-config/12268
On top of these limitations the migration to IOS-like store restrictions was disappointing IMHO. Granted there are those who justified this as necessary to dumb down firefox for the masses, but in doing so they’ve lost some appeal as the most innovative go-to browser for power users that it once was.
Not too long ago I needed to override javascript functionality in a google docs page that was hijacking the browser’s native copy functionality, it used to be possible to do this with XUL extensions but I had to give up after trying dozens of web extensions. It wasn’t the end of the world and I did manage to get the data copied using the developer tools, but it still irks me that extensions are less capable/useful than they used to be. We’ve become more confined to what mozilla allows.
And then there was the handling of potentially unwanted features like pocket/advertising. I actually gave them a pass initially because I understand the economics and was able to opt out, but I found it very distasteful when they pushed new updates that discarded my preferences. I expect this from microsoft, not mozilla.
That’s probably what I’ll do. Even though I’m not 100% pleased that mozilla has become a lot more controlling and “corporate” over time, I concede they’re better than google.
No kidding. This BS should have been taken care of decades ago. Instead we’ve got tech giants deliberately stifling competition and getting away with it.
@Lennie
That’s a smart comment. You can often tell what someone is like by what friends they pick as well as what games they play. Microsoft siding with Google who are really aggressive with setting the argument which suits them is a big tell. I suggest it indicates there is an oligopoly at play here (including Apple et al) which reinforces corporates versus the people or “them” against “us. It’s very feudal. I doubt US/UK will make a move but this is the kind of thing which makes the EU sit bolt upright.
We should also demand governments fund mozilla to an extent.
Plenty of charities and non-profits get government grants and funding. Everything from charities that help the poor to the arts or zoos.
One might think the web browser as a fundamental piece of modern society should be thought of essential. It wouldn’t even strain many budgets. The last time I googled, I saw Mozilla had roughly 750 employees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation)
Let’s give a ball park of 100k / employee to make the math nice.
That’s $75 million to fund mozilla in terms of employees.
If we just take one country (Canada), we can see spending on things we’d consider arts, heritage… billions of dollars.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/87f0001x/2012001/t012-eng.htm
I think tech could get some of that funding. And that’s just one government. If every government threw Mozilla a bone, they could probably get away with just a few million each for our common web infrastructure.
Of course we’d hope the funding came without government influence
Yamin,
That’s an interesting thought, but I think most governments would be inclined to leave it to the private sector with private funding and/or public donations. When it comes to public utilities, more and more (US) governments have been moving to privatization even when the results are worse. Case in point: look at the state of ISPs in the US…very expensive, low competition, below average broadband service. So I just don’t think that’s going to happen.
That would seem reasonable, but mozilla makes many times that today…
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-mozilla-firefox-and-google-chrome-make-money.asp
Donations are a mixed bag for most FOSS software. It theoretically gets you more independence, but it’s a struggle to get people to pay and you’re left begging for money on a regular basis and I still don’t think it’s enough to pay the bills. Mozilla makes a ton of money from royalties selling ads and access to search engines, which they are very handsomely paid for. I have no idea where most of that money goes to be honest. But the thing is with a shrinking share of the market, it may not be sustainable. I don’t know there’s much mozilla can do about it’s shrinking market share because unlike it’s competitors, it doesn’t have a monopoly cash cow to subsidize browser development and marketing. Also all it’s competitors own the platform and can bundle their own browsers and even block others (in the case of IOS and some restricted windows variants ).
It would be interesting to see how public funding would change things. But the realist in me doesn’t think it can happen and even if it did I’m not sure it would change the tide without more direct intervention (ie like the MS antitrust cases). These were instrumental in breaking up the IE monopoly, such as the European browser selection screen in windows.
I want to continue with Chromium (on Debian) because I find its Downloads page very convenient. I don’t like its Firefox counterpart. Anyway, Firefox wouldn’t recognise all that I’ve downloaded so far using Chromium (which is quite a lot). So I want to continue with Chromium.
Same here. Chrome feels a little faster but certainly not enough reason to use it. Definitely wouldn’t ever voluntarily sync my private information with Google, that’s for sure.
What is better with the chromium page?
Debian Bullseye won’t have Chromium: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=972134
“Anyway, Firefox wouldn’t recognise all that I’ve downloaded”
That’s a one time setting which is somehow missing…? That’s odd. I thought in my cases the browser would just let the OS handle it.
Lennie,
I am not 100% certain that I understood what chakr was saying due to insufficient context. I think he’s referring to Chromium having his download history.
It sounds like you are referring to file type associations, but firefox actually handles it a bit differently because it has it’s own file association database and does not use OS file associations. You can see and configure mozilla’s list in the Preferences dialog under Applications.
Chrome on the other hand uses the operating system’s associations, which confuses some users because these are often configured from inside the programs they want the browser to open.
https://superuser.com/questions/845135/how-to-change-default-program-to-open-magnet-link-in-windows
Am I incorrect in thinking that Edge is Chromium based and this is more to do with Microsoft than to irritate Linux users?
Yes, you are incorrect. Edge already has all the Google stuff replaced with Microsoft equivalents.
Good, not that I would use either of the two. Edge, much like IE before it, is only used by me to download firefox.
I switched to Edge precisely because I wanted a Chromium-based browser that doesn’t use a Google account to sync between desktop and mobile. I also reactivated my old Hotmail address to loosen my dependance on Google.
I’m thinking it’s more things like Brave or Dissenter Browser (particularly the latter, given the current political climate)
Well, to be fair, that does cut out a lot of the spyware from the chromium browser. Though it does remove a few semi-useful things using the google API as well. Hopefully most branded forks of Chromium have their own replacements for that stuff.
I think I might be a move to boost Firefox use. Google needs Firefox to be a healthy ‘competitor’ or else they’ll get into antitrust issues again.
Vivaldi has decent privacy settings for a chromium based browser; you can enable/disable google services and extensions from the settings menu.
Techies should be pushing people to use Firefox. We also should be pushing Mozilla to innovate in browsers like Microsoft is currently doing (vertical tabs, collections, search without leaving the p[age). Also there are a lot of great ideas that used to exist as extensions but with Australis they stopped working and Australis made it impossible for extension makers to provide such functionality. I blame Google for what they did but Mozilla has been doing the equivalent for a long time too.
Remember when Microsoft were the good guys, supporting open standards such as RTF and AIFF?
I don’t actually, when was this. RTF ? Sounds like a looong time ago.
I’m rather surprised that the various third-party chromium forks (not Edge, but the other ones) haven’t banded together to establish some kind of store/repo system and sync standard to replace the Google web store and Google sync services with a standard, interchangeable service – corporate users point at their internal servers, users point at Brave’s or Vivaldi’s or whoever elses, etc.
Maybe this action by Google will encourage that to happen.
Google just de-googled Chromium for all of us. Good thing I don’t use it as my primary browser on my system. Firefox works very well and does all syncing I need between devices.
It’s not a matter of “de-Googling” but of syncing functionality. Google sync is how Chromium does syncing, it has no other “neutral” syncing mechanism like Firefox does.
Recently moved to KeepassXC for my password storage, it has browser plugins for Firefox and Chromium based browsers and even supports TOTP, so dont need to rely on these browser specific syncthings and can use whatever I want. And dont really care about bookmarks sync as anything is just one web search away, this works well.
Yeah, I sync Keepass database by storing it on a cloud drive (well nextcloud, which is self hosted)
I bet Windows 10X is a factor. It uses Chromium in its Edge browser.