Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification Specification Title: Web Environment Integrity API Specification or proposal URL (if available): https://rupertbenwiser.github.io/Web-E...
Google funds Mozilla to the tune of $450mus per year. That kind of money comes with strings. It seems likely that, some point in the relatively near future there will be a “we need to catch up with the cool kids” blog post after CoB on a Friday and the next point release of Firefox will have the WEI API implemented in it.
I see that, after people raised a whole bunch of issues with the proposal, there’s a new message on the Web Integrity API repository: “An owner of this repository has limited the ability to open an issue to users that have contributed to this repository in the past.” So the Google engineers’ response to people pointing out the defects of the proposal was to shut down people’s ability to raise issues with it. It’s a good little preview of how they intend to treat the web’s users.
The big G’s posting about it is merely a formality. They don’t actually have to listen. That they closed the bug tracker on that repo so quickly is not a surprise.
The whole point of them propping up Mozilla is to be able to point to it and say “we’re not a monopoly, see there’s an unrestricted alternative and we actually support it”. The moment they attempt to control it they open themselves up to antitrust investigations.
Any corporation is going to constantly be pushing the limits of what they can legally get away with. It’s up to us to hold our representatives accountable to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Relying on “the people” to uphold consumer rights usually doesn’t make much ground. We’ve already lost so much we’ll never get back. People are just too busy dealing with their own lives to be concerned about it. This is how corporations get away with what they do. The public lets it happen. As sure as the sun rises every day, corporations like Google and Apple will continually extend their reach.
It think it was unusual the US government perused an anti-trust suit over the MS browser monopoly early 2000s. The climate is much more forgiving now. I’d be surprised if we ever see a lawsuit like that again, as deserving as it may be.
The engineers on the proposal are all google employees and the presentation is consistent with proposals made as if speaking for their employers. It’s not exactly common but it happens that proposals like this are made on the proposing employee’s account, as google is so unfathomably large that many employees may not have push access to Google repos. However, given that this is a rather large and controversial proposal, I’d wager that this was a political decision to not “taint” official Google repos with this, enabling them to say “well it’s not a proposal by Google the company we actually love our users :)”
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
Google funds Mozilla to the tune of $450mus per year. That kind of money comes with strings. It seems likely that, some point in the relatively near future there will be a “we need to catch up with the cool kids” blog post after CoB on a Friday and the next point release of Firefox will have the WEI API implemented in it.
I see that, after people raised a whole bunch of issues with the proposal, there’s a new message on the Web Integrity API repository: “An owner of this repository has limited the ability to open an issue to users that have contributed to this repository in the past.” So the Google engineers’ response to people pointing out the defects of the proposal was to shut down people’s ability to raise issues with it. It’s a good little preview of how they intend to treat the web’s users.
The big G’s posting about it is merely a formality. They don’t actually have to listen. That they closed the bug tracker on that repo so quickly is not a surprise.
It’s definitely because they’re cowards, but to be entirely fair this is a valid course of action when your repo suddenly gets 10k views a day.
Who am I kidding it because they can’t take the hear of being this moronic
Brilliant!
deleted by creator
Sounds like more people need to donate to mozilla
The whole point of them propping up Mozilla is to be able to point to it and say “we’re not a monopoly, see there’s an unrestricted alternative and we actually support it”. The moment they attempt to control it they open themselves up to antitrust investigations.
deleted by creator
Any corporation is going to constantly be pushing the limits of what they can legally get away with. It’s up to us to hold our representatives accountable to ensure that doesn’t happen.
Relying on “the people” to uphold consumer rights usually doesn’t make much ground. We’ve already lost so much we’ll never get back. People are just too busy dealing with their own lives to be concerned about it. This is how corporations get away with what they do. The public lets it happen. As sure as the sun rises every day, corporations like Google and Apple will continually extend their reach.
It think it was unusual the US government perused an anti-trust suit over the MS browser monopoly early 2000s. The climate is much more forgiving now. I’d be surprised if we ever see a lawsuit like that again, as deserving as it may be.
The best way to control the competition is to create it. Failing that, the second best way is to fund it.
deleted by creator
It’s real, unfortunately. Here’s a writeup on Ars Technica.
The engineers on the proposal are all google employees and the presentation is consistent with proposals made as if speaking for their employers. It’s not exactly common but it happens that proposals like this are made on the proposing employee’s account, as google is so unfathomably large that many employees may not have push access to Google repos. However, given that this is a rather large and controversial proposal, I’d wager that this was a political decision to not “taint” official Google repos with this, enabling them to say “well it’s not a proposal by Google the company we actually love our users :)”
404 page not found. My ass google.