this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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The point they were making is about the underlying browser technology. Chrome and nowadays pretty much every major browser except Safari are based on Chromium. Except Firefox. Chromium is technically an open-source project and has external contributors, but in reality, it's still very much controlled by Google. See the BS they constantly pull off, leveraging their monopolistic position to cram in non-standard stuff nobody asked for except Google: Manifest V3, FLoC, Web Environment Integrity, etc. Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and a bunch of others, they all ship Chromium with their own features sprinkled on top. You're still effectively using the Google product, just indirectly.
Not so easy. It is logical that Chromium is from Google and Google naturally fills it by default with all kinds of APIs to track the user. But precisely because it is FOSS, other companies also throw these APIs out, it is a game that has been going on for years. Do you think that there is still some remnant of Google in EDGE (Chromium)? Of course not, M$ has replaced it with its own, because it is M$ that wants to track the user. At Vivaldi they have spent more than 7 years gutting the Chromiumbase to prevent any tracking of the user and so far they do it very well. Naturally there are the majority of browsers that work with Chromium, some exceptions, for example Otter Browser, which has its own with a Qt% UI, recreating the old Opera, simply because Chromium, or rather Blink is the renderer that best fits To the new web formats, these are controlled by Google to a large extent, since many websites and services use Google APIs. This standard is no longer avoidable. Firefox Gecko, as a minority, has no influence on this development and Apple with its fixation on WebKit will only ensure that Safari is going to be the new IE. This is what it is.
Not always so simple either - wildly depends on the specific feature. Take Web Environment Integrity. Yes, Brave, Vivaldi or Edge could take it and refuse to roll with it. But with Chrome having a de facto monopoly, all it takes is some industry buying in (most likely banks or similar), and it would mean a browser not implementing this new API effectively cuts itself from a bunch of users cause their bank website won't work (and will tell them to download Chrome).
Let's put it this way, all browsers must include certain APIs to function and these APIs are independent of the browser engine. A bank or other official sites require these APIs and certificates for obvious security reasons. Other Google APIs, such as safe browsing, that supposedly protects against phishing sites, are also included in Firefox, but it is also from Google, although there it is called Firefox Save Browsing. With one difference, in Vivaldi I can disable it in the settings, since the adblocker filters do the same, but not in Firefox. I can also deactivate the other Google APIs there, which the devs have left in the configuration as optional use, since without them some users cannot access Google services. In Firefox they are activated yes or yes, whether you need them or not.*
But all this is not the current problem when Google manages to carry out its WEI DRM plan, this will affect any browser equally, since it has nothing to do with the engine they use. Although it is legitimate that websites can block insecure browsers without a certificate, to protect themselves, it is not legitimate when this certificate depends on the decision of a private commercial company, such as Google, which decides which browser deserves this certificate and which does not. This would only be acceptable when this certificate or token comes from an independent institution.
As an aside, although Google has long left this "Don't be evil" motto behind and uses many dirty tricks to be able to profile and track users, because it makes money from this, not all Goggle APIs have this feature, some have a pure technical function. For this reason, it is advisable not to put on a tin foil hat when choosing a browser, the greatest danger to privacy, apart from the lack of common sense, is part of the Google search engine, this is the main source of user data for this company, not the browser (that is, if it is not precisely Chrome, Edge or Opera).