Unpacking Google’s new “dangerous” Web-Environment-Integrity specification

Yeah it's truly awful.

The worst part is how disingenuous it is. It clearly exists because Google:

1. Wants to circumvent ad-blockers since ads are its primary business model, and
2. Link butts in chairs more closely to web browsers so they can sell better advertisement targeting.

If they just said they were doing it because they're an advertising company and they need better ads targeted to people, at least they would have the benefit of honesty. And in that case you might actually get some big sites on-board; like if a site can explicitly say "I need to recoup hosting fees and the only way for me to do that is targeted advertising and that makes this easier/better" there's actually a value proposition there.

But don't pretend this is for the benefit of consumers or the Internet overall, and definitely don't cloak your meaning behind vague platitudes about identity authenticity.

Guys, if you don’t like these proposals from Google, you need to switch to Firefox now! It’s the only way to defend freedom on the web!

I really think the world needs a few more Elon Musks around. I mean, wouldn't it be great to have a Musk at Google to destroy it from the inside just like he's doing to Twitter?

Cory Doctorow talked a bit about this, among other enshittification problems, on his Pluralustic post today.

Final nail in the coffin of don't be evil. Next they'll require this for accessing gmail

I do not trust Google at this stage. I pine for the day when Google seemed like a good company. Gmail was awesome when it came out, for example, and Google search worked well. Now I feel they are harvesting all my data to jam ads down my throat. Google search now sucks ass and just returns websites that have a bunch of AI nonsense or aggregated content that is effectively worthless.

I am migrating away from Google.

I hope the EU can get to a quick decision on this. I trust they'll provide a carrot on a stick to maintain the open internet in a way that'll make Google suffer if they decide to not play ball with Brussels' terms.

It's already being pushed to the Chromium repo, or so it seems:

https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b2899412e79a2727355efa9cc8f5bd

Good article. Not clickbait/ragebait, and it explains the specification simply and succinctly, while also demonstrating why it's dangerous for the open web.

I’m really hoping this doesn’t make it into Brave their teams has removed a lot of Google crap in the past. Mullvad’s fork of Firefox can always replace them.

I have no idea what this means

Eh something had to happen. The prevalence of ad blockers and people not wanting to pay for things.

Firefox should implement this next