• brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 hours ago

    Chromium can’t do absolutely anything they want though. Anything drastic would break compatibility with Safari and FF.

    …But if they do, if they actually get effectively 100% market share, think about it:

    • They could close Chromium’s source, and kill off 3rd party forks as a “security risk.”

    • They could literally disable adblocking, not just “softly” like the Manifest V3 switch did.

    • Similarly, they could implement custom ad and tracking APIs that are effectively unblockable.

    • They could arbitrarily block web pages, or redirect them, purely for Alphabet’s interests.

    • They could mandate that sites they use have to use Chrome, to shut out other browser efforts.

    • They could encourage similar behavior from pages depending on Google ad revenue.

    If all this sounds tin foil hat-ish (and I know it does), consider Google’s past behavior over the decade.

    …Is it that different from what they’ve already been doing? To virtually no public pushback?

    And this is why Safari and FF are so important. As long as they exist, that cant happen, but they’re getting dangerously close to market irrelevance.