Google needs to be broken up. It needs to separate in at least 5 different companies:

1. Admob/Adsense
2. Ads/Adwords
3. Search
4. Android
5. Chrome

Luckily, other browser manufacturers (Mozilla, Vivaldi, Brave, and even the WWWC) have already spoken out against this proposal. Google loves marketing it as ‘optional’, which it obviously won’t be once implemented. A system like this would be very dangerous for smaller browsers, as it’s incredibly vague who decides what authorities would be allowed to verify browsers.

Additionally, this is presented as a way to remove captchas from the web by proving a request is coming from genuine hardware. However, this proves absolutely nothing about a request being genuine or non-spam. The only thing this proves is that it was created by a ‘genuine device’, so all a malicious user would have to do is to (automatically) send the request via a verified device and they’d pass the check.

They dropped the “don’t be evil” a while ago.

i mean this is like working on the nuclear bomb except you’re eager to drop it on yourselves in the name of corporate profits and ad revenue. virulently disgusting

Google became what it is because they had the best search results. Today, other like qwant and sometimes even bing are better. If it was not for Android, the reasons for remaining stuck with Google would have become sparse already. And I daresay Apple is now the less evil option.

I am really hoping some regulatory body strikes this down. Where’s the EU when we need them?

Question: Would Pi-holes get around this or would websites still recognise that there’s traffic being blocked?

Fine, I’ll make my own web, with blackjack, and hookers!

Fuck Google, I guess we’re going back to the days of BBS’.