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this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I still don't get where this proposal originated. It looks like a random user, what's their connection to Google and why do we believe it's even under consideration by the organisation?
Also, <3 ff
No organisations put things through in giant blazing neon letters. One employee quietly pushes a bit, another a different bit and ten bits later we're all like, WTF?
Google has been trying to ensure they can serve everyone ads for a while. There's a reason the author of uBlock clearly states that the Chrome version isn't as good.
You get to Google pretty quickly by following links. If you look at the top of the linked issue, it links to a few things owned by Rupert Ben Wiser. If you follow the explainer link, you get this list of authors:
Authors: Ben Wiser (Google) Borbala Benko (Google) Philipp Pfeiffenberger (Google) Sergey Kataev (Google)
And in the repo, he says it's being prototyped in Chromium.
That's all written by him though, so I guess he could just be lying and making up names. So I tried looking up his name, to see if he's listed anywhere as a Google employee, but the best I could find is he's listed as a Google employee since 2022 on Facebook and LinkedIn. And he doesn't have much on his Github. (I kinda feel a little stalkery now... Don't harass anyone please). So either this is an elaborate, very late, April fool's or he's probably the fall guy for whatever exec actually thought this up.
I wasn't really doubting that he was a Google employee, rather more questioning whether the corporation (bare in mind it's huge) is aware of his efforts and this is on their immediate roadmap. It could just be a bunch of employees trying something about/proposing it internally and it might get shot down.
But I take the other commenter's point that this is how it begins
Def not a random user, it came from a committee. There's an attendees list and meeting notes attached to it if you click around a bit