
Web by Google (TM) - alangibson
https://landshark.io/2020/08/16/web-by-google.html
======
simias
The problem is that, IMO, centralization of the internet is simply the natural
course. Especially when people seem to care so little. Centralization is
cheaper, easier to monetize, easier to control, easier to update and upgrade.
That's why people prefer Discord to IRC, that's why people prefer Slack to
SMTP or Jabber, that's why for many people these days the distinction between
git and GitHub is blurry.

I suspect that if you broke those companies up you'd only win in the short
term, then it would consolidate again. You'd need a constant pressure to
prevent this situation and given that the USA would be in the best position to
do that I'm not holding by breath.

The internet started decentralized because there was no money to make and we
were still figuring things out. As soon as it became mainstream it started to
coalesce and we're just now reaching the final stage of this evolution. Even
here on HN you have threads full of people coming up with excuses for why they
won't run Firefox, and that's a community that should understand the
implication of those things. Good luck convincing the internet population at
large.

Are there statistics on the browser usage on HN? Just for a good laugh.

~~~
crispyporkbites
Meh, I think the longest lasting protocols are the decentralised ones, the
good ones just can’t fail by design. SMTP is still going very strong,
BitTorrent isn’t going away, bitcoin won’t die anytime soon

slack/discord will probably disappear and be replaced by another closed system
until we find the right way to do real time chat in a decentralised way.

~~~
brianush1
As for SMTP, most people use Gmail nowadays anyway. Google might be able to
kill SMTP if they wanted to.

~~~
crispyporkbites
Google will not be able to kill smtp, gmail is only one side of the email
market. They’d have to offer a transactional and marketing email service and
get every app/company to use that over smtp. It’s monumental and I don’t think
it will change for decades.

~~~
simias
You can damage open/federated email without having to break the lower level
layers. See winmail.dat for instance[1].

I don't know if it's still in the pipeline but I remember that Google proposed
an "AMP for email" not so long ago, with basically self-updating email
contents.

Open email can be severely damaged if good old SMTP is only used to tunnel
proprietary formats, especially if those formats are effectively just metadata
that's used to fetch the actual content of the email from 3rd parties.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Neutral_Encapsulation_Format)

------
dmje
Asking a rhetorical and irritating question - but one which web nerds need to
be much better at answering: why, exactly does it matter?

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally uncomfortable with a monopoly of this scale;
I'm a Firefox user, a Pihole user, a non-FB user. But when people (non nerds)
ask me why, it's hard to answer. They're all happy enough: Chrome is fast, AMP
is faster, they get to find out the stuff they want to find out from
incredibly accurate search, or Facebook - so what's the actual problem here?

My answer is normally about principles or competition or fairness but in
practical terms, I haven't got a lot of answers.

Help me out here.

~~~
zanny
Having any infrastructure controlled by a publicly traded corporation has
enormous historical precedent to lead to the dissolution of that
infrastructure for shareholder profit.

Once Google feels comfortable with doing so not allowing arbitrary routing in
Chrome will be on the table to control what websites people visit. The only
things stopping that is a feeble threat of state intervention or the threat of
competition in the browser space reclaiming market share as a result.

They can, and probably will, take Chrome wholly proprietary at some point.
Microsoft kowtowing to their engine is in their favor for now, but long term
its in their business interests that Microsoft not _have_ a browser anymore.
That they present Chrome as the only option to users.

We can mire in the details of what a browser is, but for 99% of people Chrome
is a program you run that shows you the stuff you want. The http, html, etc
underpinnings are totally irrelevant. Chrome could be doing _anything_ as long
as it were showing the content the user of it expects. Google has already done
this in the past with things like SPDY. I'm sure standards realize this - its
why http/2 was a thing after all - that at this point if Google creates a new
protocol it is de-facto required to become a standard because that is the only
way for alternative browsers to keep pace with Chrome.

As such Google gets to dictate the future of hypertext. Not the users of the
platform, not standards bodies formed to collaborate, the board of directors
of a publicly traded US company.

~~~
satyrnein
Even if Google takes Chrome proprietary in the future, Microsoft and others
can continue on their forks. That's the beauty of open source in this case.

As for SPDY, standards bodies like to "pave the cowpaths" so they codify
existing implementations. Apple and Mozilla supported SPDY, it eventually
became http/2 as you say, and then everyone dropped support for SPDY. This
sounds like everything worked as intended.

~~~
Drakim
> Even if Google takes Chrome proprietary in the future, Microsoft and others
> can continue on their forks. That's the beauty of open source in this case.

It won't help much if a huge part of Chrome's proprietary new future involves
running on proprietary content as well. Just wait until Chrome has some
special non-HTTP integration with "lightning fast AMP pages" that other
browsers can't serve, or serves a lot slower.

------
texasbigdata
AMP still makes no sense. On iOS, Android and Windows it’s completely broken
and friction increasing to grab a link to send to a friend in another medium.

Not only that but it seems the page slightly degrades sometimes.

For what? A theoretical page load time improvement? Maybe that’s naive but we
already have “request desktop mode” to allow for bifurcated experiences. Why
do we need a third thats seemingly even worse?

Total “get off my lawn” complaint but how do you turn the damn AMP off? :)

~~~
mattacular
It's a lot of effort to maintain AMP pages for all your site content alongside
the standard pages over time. That's why they tend to degrade.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
Reminds me of the old-fashioned "m. _< domain>_" sites we used to have to
maintain for mobile browsing; often using wonderful tech like WML.

That sucked.

~~~
mattacular
Yes, it is effectively like operating an "adaptive" site alongside your
(probably) responsive main site

------
cocktailpeanuts
The issue is not the fact that Google owns the web. It is that the web itself
has become decimated to the point where a company like Mozilla does not have a
future.

Facebook, Uber, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. None of them are
optimized for Google index.

Most top consumer internet applications don't take place in your browser.

~~~
nqzero
This

And I'd argue that google's about the only thing propping up the internet.
Chromium's a reasonably open platform (certainly more so than internet
explorer, which not that long ago looked destined to become the dominant
platform), gmail has kept email viable, android is somewhat open (and without
it, apple might own that space entirely), etc

Every other player that's gotten traction has set up a walled garden

~~~
jacquesm
Gmail is actually a major force in further consolidation of email to a very
few number of players. Ever increasing rulesets to be able to send to Gmail
from other email servers increase the barrier to entry step-by-step until even
the last holdouts will have to pick between a very limited number of parties
to host their mail.

~~~
screamingninja
Not sure what rulesets you're referring to. I understand the spam prevention
techniques (DKIM, SPF) but those are all widely accessible open standards.
Could you give an example of the barriers to entry that you mentioned?

~~~
ivanche
Try setting up your own email server and you'll see. There were even a few
horror comments on HN from people owning domains for 15+ years with stellar
security email servers setup + DKIM + SPF whose emails are going straight into
spam.

~~~
jacquesm
Mine was one of those. Highly frustrating.

------
zpeti
It does look pretty tragic at this point. But it’s worth noting that every
tech business so far was talked about as if it’s taken over the world,
forever, and without 5-10-20 years they were overtaken. IBM, Intel, Microsoft.

I think google is overplaying their hand in many areas, and this will
inevitably lead to the downfall of their dominance. Just like most other large
businesses in history.

~~~
nightcracker
Microsoft is overtaken by who exactly?

In desktop & laptop Windows still holds a 87% market share.

~~~
innocenat
Back then Windows is >90% of all consumer computing devices. Right now it's
87% of just _desktop & laptop_.

~~~
nightcracker
I don't think it's a fair comparison. Microsoft still dominates the exact same
market they did before (desktop & laptop), with roughly the same market share.
What you're describing is a _new_ market bundled with the old market.

"Consumer computing devices" is such a vague market. If you study markets at
such a big scope something like Texas Instruments wouldn't even make a blip
while if you're paying more careful attention you'll find they absolutely
dominate the scientific calculator market.

------
mvn9
>I think it’s safe to say that Google’s AdWords is the dominant advertising
platform on the open Web, which means it holds a commanding position in the
Web’s finances.

That's a very interesting observation. Google will thus prevent a native
payment option at all costs, which leaves a huge opening for Brave or another
payment provider. (Which is enhanced by content providers being threatened by
AMP.)

I don't see Google in a very secure position. Their employees nowadays don't
seem to care which will become a huge problem once Google has to actually
react to a changing market. Amazon is getting product searches and Facebook
can take over everything else whenever they want because Google's results
don't come from analysing the web but from showing the pages that other people
with the same queries are visiting.

Additionally, Huawei is forced to setup their own app store. If they have the
better TikTok app, and online payment with wechat, the next generation of
users will switch. China has so much more developers that a Chinese app store
will become the more interesting place for new apps. With Zoom and TikTok,
they have shown that they can create competitive apps.

~~~
cheph
> That's a very interesting observation. Google will thus prevent a native
> payment option at all costs, which leaves a huge opening for Brave or
> another payment provider.

Can you elaborate on what a native payment option would entail? How would it
be different from non native payment options? How would it be different from
crypto or other payment options that already exist?

~~~
mvn9
Like barrenko said in another comment [1]:

>Wasn't it that the creators of Netscape wanted to put some kind of payment
protocol similar to crypto in the original browser but ran into trouble with
the government, can't remember anymore. 402 error was famously reserved for
money trouble.

You could have one standard, in the same way that webpages are standardized.
Then you could use your preferred option on any webpage. It would come with
your browser, so no need to install anything. Unlike the Apple app store, you
wouldn't have one player controlling everything, so the payment network
wouldn't take 30% of all profits.

Of course, whatever is feasible as a standard is also feasible as a plugin, or
at least, like Brave, as a new Browser, if Google limits the plugin api. The
difference is that nowadays, every payment option tries to be the winner,
preventing every other player from advancing. With a standard, those fights
would be over and users could start paying for everything.

I think the biggest difference would be that people would pay for single
articles and videos from obscure sources. Nowadays you have to hand out your
credit card or register for an obscure payment network like Brave or patreon.
People register for Netflix, but not for a blog they visit one time in their
life. It's very likely that a webpage and a visitor use different payment
options, thus payment is not possible. As a consequence, everything is paid
with adverts, like the article states. With a standard, that would shift and
the default option would be a clean article without ads.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24177888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24177888)

~~~
cheph
> Wasn't it that the creators of

I don't know? Was it?

> With a standard, those fights would be over and users could start paying for
> everything.

What prevents anyone from making a standard? Why do we see standards for
everything else but this? What would the standard entail?

I think the real issue here is that payment is a hard problem, open payment
systems like bitcoin is horrible to use, and closed payment systems like visa
is closed due to trust and security concerns.

To me it seems like the author is just dismissing the inherent complexity and
accusing the people who put in the time to standardize the protocols we have
of being incompetent. This is not worthy of hackernews.

~~~
mvn9
>Why do we see standards for everything else but this? What would the standard
entail?

Good question. hakfoo's answer seems to be a good start.

I would include something for automated micro-pre-payment. If you are just
browsing news sites, it would be inconvenient to constantly confirm payment.
Likewise, confirming payment for every played song is annoying. But that would
also require some form of trust-network to take care of spam and fakes.

Like html, I wouldn't worry about getting it right the first time. It just
needs to be usable and can be refined from there.

>What prevents anyone from making a standard?

Nothing. But where's the benefit for anybody to push it? If it is a standard,
then all competitors can reap the profits without any investment.

This could have been Mozilla territory: Join Brave and make micro-payment a
valid option for content creators.

------
grumbel
I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a "Publish"
function. You can consume on the open web just fine, but for publishing you
need to own a server, not just a client. That in turn gave growth to Youtube,
Facebook and Co., as they allowed people to publish content with just a web
client.

Search and payment are important as well, but only really become relevant when
the content is on the web.

~~~
adamnew123456
> I think the biggest failure of the open web is simply the lack of a
> "Publish" function.

The simplest approach to something like this is Apache homedirs or finger plan
files [0]: you write some text in a file in your home directory and a service
makes it accessible to anyone who connects to your machine. Apparently plan
files were somewhat popular thing at one point; you could finger the machines
at id Software and read what John Carmack was doing on any given week [1].

The problem with this approach is that the internet (not just the web) is not
end-to-end. Assuming your ISP isn't using CGNAT, I have to:

\- Punch a hole in my firewall or setup up a DMZ host. Unless my workstation
is the only thing on my network and hooked directly into my modem, but nobody
does that. Everybody has a LAN with private addressing.

\- Setup dynamic DNS, since there's no guarantee that my ISP has given me a
static address. In practice this isn't that bad, but if I lose power in a
thunderstorm you need to have the same name you had before.

\- Harden and update whatever service I run. It'll get probed regularly, and
is a high value target since it presumably runs on the same machine where I
run my password manager or buy things using I credit card.

A VPS is just a convenience and security measure here. You get a public IP
address without any additional management (default-deny firewall, NAT) and can
isolate your private data from the VPS which is more likely to be compromised.

The alternative would be to make a new network which gets rid of all the extra
layers of management - just your machine, with a publicly accessible name that
you can point people to. No smart network appliances in-between imposing NAT,
DHCP, or firewalls beyond the one on your machine. I think there are P2P
networks which work like this, or Tor if you give your machine a name in the
.onion namespace. I don't know of any which are better on the security aspect
though.

[0] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/plan-
file.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/P/plan-file.html)

[1] [https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-
archive](https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive)

~~~
the_other
I think this is where DAT and siblings come in.

If the network hosted “just your machine”, then your website (or whatever
published content you have) would disappear when your machine shut down for
the night.

------
lol768
> And let’s not forget that most people now access the web via mobile devices,
> 75% of which run Google’s Android.

Which is a good thing, because these devices can actually run different
browser rendering engines.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that devices ship with Chrome pre-installed
instead of asking the user at device set-up time what browser they want to
use.

I imagine if you told the user they could have a browser with extensions, ad-
blocking, background playback etc they might be a bit more inclined to
consider using Firefox.

~~~
izacus
Majority of Android devices in western world actually ship with Samsung
Browser as default browser, not Chrome. The rest of the market ships with
Safari as unchangeable default and rather small part of mobile market is the
one with Chrome

~~~
d3nj4l
Samsung only has ~50% market share of Android phones in the US
([https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-
sh...](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/)), and
~40% in Europe ([https://www.counterpointresearch.com/covid-19-weighs-
europea...](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/covid-19-weighs-european-
smartphone-market-q1-2020/)). Chrome isn't a "rather small" part of the mobile
maker in the West.

~~~
izacus
Yeah, so half of Android market which has about half of mobile market in US.

~~~
d3nj4l
The other half isn't a "rather small" part in _the West_.

------
1vuio0pswjnm7
"Looking at Mozilla's finances, it's reasonable to conclude that Google is
keeping them on life support to keep the anti-trust hounds at bay."

There seems to be an implicit assumption by those commenting on Mozilla's
downsizing that the antitrust case against Google is going to take the same
path as the case against Microsoft.

Google's anti-competitive conduct under examination will not be focused on
Chrome, it will be focused on the markets for search and advertising.

Mozilla does not provide any potential competition in those markets.

The case against Microsoft focused on the software industry. Today, the focus
is on the onlilne advertising industry.

Netscape was a software company, like Microsoft. Mozilla however is not an
online advertising services company like Google.

~~~
Dotnaught
Mozilla serves as a counter balance to Google in web standards discussions.
Without enough Firefox market share, Mozilla will be less able to shape the
web’s technical development.

------
bambax
The real mystery is why nobody has ever been able to do better search than
Google, or at least just as good.

Of course search is really hard, but how is it possible that huge companies
with nearly infinite money and talent (MS / Apple / Amazon) were never able to
do it? MS actually tried; it's unclear if the others even gave it a thought.

The rest of Google is different. I use Gmail but could easily switch. I've not
used Chrome for over a year now and really don't miss it (either on desktop or
mobile). Google maps are the best but others would be good enough if need be.

But search? Every time I try to use Duck Duck Go I'm extremely disappointed.
Google search is something I don't think I could live without.

~~~
mjburgess
I suspect people optimising _for_ google over the last, c. 20 years has made
the difference.

ie., people have spent years writing their sites explicitly with google SEO
in-mind... add-in all the data google has via adwords...

~~~
why_only_15
Why can't other search engines just hook into those same signals though?

~~~
dmitriid
Because they don't have the traffic/market share to do that. And it's not just
search. Every single Google property ultimately feeds into Google's search
engine.

~~~
why_only_15
The traffic and market share shouldn't matter if these are SEO signals inside
the application itself, like in the HTML. Those are independent from traffic.

------
eiWit7oo
> Google’s capture of the Web is a fait accompli. Only legislation will keep
> the World Wide Web from finally becoming Web by Google (TM).

I really hope it's not the case, because then Google will cancel it. /s

Search is probably something where there could be creative use of the p2p
decentralized technologies. If when performing a search I could ask my
contacts to look in their history if they have something matching, and then
they ask their contact to do the same, who ask their contact to do the same, I
think we could have fast and massively parallelized trust based searches. Then
you can rank the results based on how many times they appeared.

~~~
alfonsodev
>Search is probably something where there could be creative use of the p2p
decentralized technologies.

Has this been attempted before? does it have a name?

~~~
teddyh
YaCy calls it “P2P Mode”: [https://yacy.net/](https://yacy.net/)

------
cheph
> Two deficiencies have determined the course the Web has taken: lack of
> native search and lack of native payments.

What exactly is the expectation here, that there is one integrated protocols
stack that covers all of this? I don't see why.

Nothing is stopping someone from building P2P distributed search engines, and
nothing is stopping someone from building "safe and easy way of exchanging
funds".

Given that we still don't have good solutions to either of these problems it
seems the right answer according to this person would be to just skip the
internet.

This feels like a gripe without substance, yes we know these are hard
problems, saying that Google's dominance is a consequence of the IETF not
integrating these into HTTP is absurd and baseless.

~~~
mjburgess
Just read it as an interesting counter-factual: if the web had had
search/payments via some native protocol, then it would have developed without
google.

There is also a reasonable argument to saying that search/payments are so
fundamental to what the web became that a solution at the protocol-layer would
be appropriate.

~~~
cheph
Well I would agree if those things were easy to solve universally, and were
solved universally, it would be nice, but nothing in the development of the
web has been easily solved universally, and there is no central committee
choosing to solve these problems or to not solve them. IETF has an open
process, open to everyone.

If the author wants to integrate it into HTTP, well they can actually try and
make that case through the open standards process.

The questions of what does native suppoert imply and in what protocol should
it be integrated are still unanswered. It seems very low effort to me, at
least give a high level rundown of what that practically means and what he
expects to see.

Bitcoin runs on open standard protocols, why is it not native? Is it because
it is not ratfied by the IETF? Same question goes for existing P2P search
engines. And even with protocols, you still need infrastructure. HTTP being an
open protocol does not give me free HTTP hosting, and search indexing and
lookup similarly won't be free.

I think if it was easy to solve these problems and integrate them into HTTP it
would be easy to solve them outside HTTP and it is not clear why the solutions
must be integrated into some existing protocol like TCP, IP or HTTP.

~~~
mjburgess
I don't think the author wants to do anything. It's a counter-factual to
illuminate how central google is, not a proposal.

~~~
cheph
I still expect them to make a more coherent case, I still don't know what
native means here, still don't know why existing solutions are different from
what native means.

It is not stated as a counterfactual either, it is stated as direct criticism,
e.g.

> The Web’s orignal architects were off base on hyperlinks; it turns out
> people just want to skip right to the answer they’re looking for.

Who are the original architects? Should we remove hyperlinks? Who suggested
hyperlinks as an alternative to search, or even "native search".

I expect substance, this article has none.

~~~
alangibson
Author here. The article is making a case that Google has in fact captured the
Web, and secondarily that there are some clear reasons for it. I had no
intention of writing a dissertation on the history of the Internet. Also,
filling in the missing technical gaps would be several RFCs.

As for what would native payments look like:

1\. I put the element <pay-me>$1.00</pay-me> in my HTML 2\. User clicks on Pay
Me button in any browser and I get $1.00

Something like that. Anything more complicated and for most people it might as
well not exist. Grandma isn't loading up a Bitcoin wallet.

~~~
cheph
> 1\. I put the element <pay-me>$1.00</pay-me> in my HTML 2. User clicks on
> Pay Me button in any browser and I get $1.00

And then what? If all that is needed is a tag support then why is the problem
not yet solved? I mean if it is so simple to add support in HTML, why not just
add it outside HTML?

I'm not asking for the actual final RFCs, but just some idea of what everyone
except you is missing which makes this an easy problem to solve for you. Just
broad strokes will be awesome. At the moment all you are saying is that the
architects did not know what they were doing, but can't explain what they
missed.

------
krm01
> Looking at Mozilla’s finances, it’s reasonable to conclude that Google is
> keeping them on life support to keep the anti-trust hounds at bay.

This insight seems highly plausible and sad at the same time.

------
cs702
With our implicit mass approval, the 'Constitution' of the modern Web is being
authored by a few giant tech companies.

This 'Constitution' will give us _the Web of a few giant tech companies, for
those few giant tech companies, by those few giant tech companies._

Many here on HN, including me, wish we could have a Web of the people, for the
people, by the people.

~~~
err4nt
The individual (and so also teams of individuals) have never had more powerful
technology available to build websites and web apps, and access to be able to
put amazing things online than right now. We _should_ be able to do all kinds
of things previously unimaginable. When people start caring about competition
and a healthier ecosystem more, I don't think it will take long for good
competition to arise, the issue right now is that some people don't care
because they don't understand why they should care (these people can be
educated) and some people just don't care (not sure what we can do about these
people except give them time).

~~~
erichocean
> * The individual (and so also teams of individuals) have never had more
> powerful technology*

The issue, as always, is _relative_ power—which absolutely skews heavily in
Google's favor. Individuals accessing the web today have far less relative
power than 25 years ago, even if they can accomplish "more" with less effort.

------
tomschwiha
You can blame Google for a lot - however I believe if it wasn't about Google
someone else would dictate the game.

In the past it was Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, XFire, .. I mean those companys were so
big (e. g. XFire for gaming streaming) but they failed to stay ahead of time -
lets see whats up with Google or Facebook or Amazon in 15 years.

~~~
mrweasel
It’s also not 100% Google fault. Chrome was needed to move the web forward
when it was launched. And are they now suppose to make a less good browser to
help competitors emerge?

I’m not happy with the current situation and would hate to see Mozilla fail,
but I can’t fault Google for the current situation.

~~~
reaperducer
That's like saying it's OK for someone to invade Poland because they got the
trains to run on time.

~~~
mrweasel
What... No that is not same. Mozilla failing isn’t Googles fault, the opposite
in fact, the’ve kept Mozilla alive for years.

Google misusing their position to dictate web standards, that’s Googles fault.
But Google-centric standards didn’t cause Mozillas current problems. Poor
management did.

------
biophysboy
As a non-programmar, what are some web standards dictated by google that make
it worse for me, the uninformed user? Im sure they exist, but I don’t know
them.

~~~
doublerabbit
Google Amp.

Whenever you see the amp symbol, avoid visiting that site.

~~~
ceras
As an end-user, AMP sites load faster and with less clutter. The only downside
is a clunky URL, but I rarely care about that. AMP improved my mobile search
experience.

The main AMP concerns seem philosophical, which I don't think OP was asking
about.

~~~
doublerabbit
And this is the problem for anyone outside of the CompSci field. To those it
looks like URL non-sense but it's rooted far deeper then that. This isn't
philosophical.

By choosing to use AMP, you are ultimately choosing to destroy the internet.
You're granting the power of one company to run and control what you visit,
do, use. Your surrendering your data for them to make money off to use and
abuse.

Your supporting the downfall of innovation. Your eliminating development of
opportunities and innovation. Denying fairness. Nothing there is
philosophical, that's all real all because you choose to use Google Amp.

\---

The internet is made up from many devices connected somehow Without a search
engine how would you locate information? You can't unless you knew Computer X
has the information on what you need. Just as an encyclopedia has an index
telling you to look which volume and page to open.

A search engine crawls from computers to computers in hunt for information and
then records it in a catalog. So when you search "dogs" this is then retrieved
within the catalog for any computers that hold information on dogs.

This costs money, so what's a way of making money? Sell search results. My
information on dogs is not that useful but I do like users visiting my webpage
because I may sell pet related items. So I pay google £100 to list my website
at the top when someone searches "dog". Great, I am now top of the list.
Others do the same and get their search results on the top too.

However, my friend who is a vet has a information piece on if a dog is sick,
and the remedy on what to do. Unfortunately they don't have the money to boost
their page to the top, so it gets buried. Some pseudo science website makes a
page about dog cures and pays for it's rank. The information I need on how to
cure a dogs cold is now buried further but that's okay, I now have a fake
remedy on how to cure a dogs cold.

Next up is Google Amp.

Amp is disguised to load the pages faster, but all it's really doing is
collecting information about the user who visits, and redirects them to a
branded copy-paste version of the original website and sells the users
information.

I'm really a company who sells placebo medicine for dogs, my medicine has
killed a few dogs in the past but no worries, it's trusted because I'm with
Google Amp.

At the same time google implements a new policy "You must use AMP to be part
of google search engine pages 1 to 6" \-- This in return costs money to
implement. So now the vet piece on how to cure a dog's cold is now on page 7.

Who goes to page seven on google? The average user normally stops around page
three.

Well, now you've got to pay money to get a listing and now that anybody can
cram an illegitimate idea into a web page and in which so long as it's encoded
as AMP content – it'll look like it's from a legit new organization endorsed
by Google.

On top you are at Google’s mercy when it comes to how (and even if) your
content is actually displayed. If google doesn't like your page, swipe, there
goes your listing.

Your a vet, you don't have money to implement AMP, nor do you have the money
to get your page to the top which you now can't because your not using AMP. So
the vet isn't getting any visitors, your vet practice is unknown in the world
apart from local town folk. So not only are you crippling businesses from
thriving because of Amp, your supporting a dominated chosen google market.

Google wants you all within googles walled garden. Above is a jist of it. But
AMP is bad, there is NO good coming from AMP. By supporting amp, your support
death of freedom.

~~~
joshuamorton
This is an amusing bit of sci-fi. But it's just that, and it's got nothing to
do, specifically, with amp.

The rhetorical strategy used here was to make up a dystopian example of search
being bad, and then say amp.

Amp isn't more expensive, WordPress templates handle it automatically today.
And the whole tangent about misinformation is interesting, but it's not how
things really work. While speed is a signal, reliability is also one, which
means that it would be cheaper to advertise you're vet article and it would be
more likely to appear near the top anyway.

~~~
doublerabbit
No, that was an explanation of my understanding of how google operates.

And now your introducing a sack of rubbish called WordPress. What if the site
is not using WordPress, may do.

You work for google, so explain it to me, how do things really work?

------
bsanr2
I posted a while ago about how chilling it was to me how dysfunctional Google
Search (and really, every search engine) is these days. It is still your best-
bet "front door to the web," and it's been fundamentally broken by the pivot
towards ML-based natural language search (e.g., dropping of whole search terms
to fit the model of what it "thinks" you're searching for), its bias towards
recency and "brands," and its inability to properly index the content on
platforms like Facebook.

The result is that large swaths of the web are essentially inaccessible. It's
contracting. I feel it as acutely as amnesia.

~~~
alangibson
The recency bias and a bias towards 'N things to X in YYYY' lists kills me.
It's so bad.

------
markosaric
Completely agree! Google also plays a part in majority of websites. Pretty
much every website has to call at least one if not two or more domains owned
by Google. Analytics, DoubleClick, fonts... it's not looking healthy.

~~~
mulcahey
Not to mention Google owning one of the leading front end frameworks -
Angular!

------
mnd999
I think we’re in a real low point right now. Gmail, AMP, Chrome, Android. So
many peoples internet experience is from one place.

With Amazon dominating retail, and Facebook under its various brands
dominating social media, there isn’t much scope for other players.

I don’t see another option than breaking theses companies up at this point.

~~~
mattacular
Don't forget that Amazon dominates a lot more than just retail on the
internet. With AWS they effectively run large portions of it as well.

~~~
andai
Isn't that kinda like saying that the electric companies do the same thing,
though?

~~~
mrweasel
True, that’s why in some markets the electric companies have been split into
transmission companies and delivery companies. You buy power from the delivery
company and the transmission companies are paid to maintain power lines.

~~~
jefftk
That's effectively how it already is though: there's one market for
connectivity, and a separate market for cloud computing. If you don't want to
build on Amazon's cloud, you can build on Azure, GCP, or one of the smaller
competitors.

------
bshanks
Anti-monopoly legislation is important, but it is also important to create a
mechanism for funding public goods. Browsers are necessary to keep the web
open, and there should be a mechanism for society to fund that, even if it
does cost $400 million a year. Current funding mechanisms for this sort of
thing are focused on the creation of new scientific knowledge, but we also
need funding focused on widely used open software.

------
cloudking
Surprised the article doesn't mention Microsoft Edge built off Chromium, that
was the nail in the coffin.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/08/03/micr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2020/08/03/microsoft-
edge-overtakes-firefox-to-become-number-1-chrome-alternative/)

~~~
The_rationalist
Microsoft is shipping huge improvements to chromium for the benefit of
everybody. They prove that with enough non-google human resources, chromium
can be just fine. Mozilla will die before realizing they were the most needed
chromium contributors.

------
walrus01
I would be very interested in seeing HN commenters' theories on the following
scenarios:

A) what happens if Google decides to stop funneling money to Mozilla? What
becomes of Firefox?

B) at what point do you think the $350+ million/year cash flow to Firefox will
get cut off?

C) do you think Mozilla has a reasonable chance of success of replacing that
amount of money with a deal with Microsoft/bing?

~~~
konaraddi
> B) at what point do you think the $350+ million/year cash flow to Firefox
> will get cut off?

I think there's at least 3 reasons why Google wants to continue funding
Firefox:

1\. To get access to 200M+ users for their search ads

2\. To have a competitor that helps Google make money and so Firefox can serve
as evidence, that Chrome has competition and Google isn't trying to stomp out
competition, in anti-trust cases.

3\. To stop other search engines (e.g. Bing) from partnering with Mozilla.

If Google were to not renew the contract next time, then they take two risks:

1\. What if a lot of former Firefox users switch to something other than
Chrome?

2\. What if someone continues funding Firefox so Google loses out on the
additional reach for their search ads?

The benefit of cutting off the funding could be quickening Firefox's downfall
and, perhaps, the bulk of Firefox users switching to Chrome.

I think Google will cut off the deal when the number of Firefox users drops
enough for the risks to be negligible. Until then, Firefox will continue to
slowly lose users and the bulk of those will switch to Chrome/Edge/Safari. I
wonder what the breakdown is. I'd suspect the platform default largely
dictates which browser a former Firefox user switches to.

------
pilinia
I hate Safari, but Apple here have really good opportunity to step up. With
opening Safari for PC and Android and at the same time improving Safari along,
they could cut quite a share from Chrome and stop this nonsence.

But they seemed to dithched focus on web platform as it is still such mess for
both users and developers, so meh.

Chrome for me is done, using it only for PWA.

~~~
hu3
Some of the market share that Safari would gain would be taken from Firefox.

That could be the last blow to any meaningful Firefox market share.

------
fencepost
Relevant here is a discussion of Google's big shift from sending you to sites
into keeping you on Google controlled sites. Worth a listen:
[https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2020/08/what-
went-w...](https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next-tbd/2020/08/what-went-wrong-
with-google-search) (transcript available on the same page, but auto-generated
and not great)

And from the same journalist, words to not use if you work at Google and are
talking about your employer or its offerings. [https://themarkup.org/google-
the-giant/2020/08/07/google-doc...](https://themarkup.org/google-the-
giant/2020/08/07/google-documents-show-taboo-words-antitrust)

------
acdha
The point on video is missing the real problem: relying on ads as the default
funding model. It’s never been easier to serve high-quality video but many
places use YouTube or Facebook instead because they don’t want to get an
unexpected bill for bandwidth and search remains a problem in some
applications.

------
jacquesm
This article hits the nail squarely on the head in a number of important ways.

There is one small silver lining: when and if Google manages to successfully
turn the rest of the web into ca. 1992 style information providers for their
updated version of videotext there might be just enough breathing room to
create something even better.

After all the web killed AOL, with Google going after the AOL playbook they
set themselves up for a similar debacle. When it isn't 'the internet' anymore
a service will quickly lose value.

------
jhoechtl
The internet economy is a winner takes it all economy. With the US being so
weak in market regulations, the development of natural monopolies is just a
natural effect of that.

------
kqvamxurcagg
A bit late to the party here but Google's monopolistic tendencies are only
increasing. When you login to any Google service, Chrome automatically
recognises your login and keeps you logged in. The only way to disable this is
in advanced settings. These kinds of practices should not be allowed.

We need anti-monopoly action to avoid complete dominance by these tech
companies. Google services need to be split up and run independently.

------
mawise
Why is there so little interest in helping people self-host their own content?
I know it wouldn't be a panacea, but it feels like at least a step in the
right direction. This is a big part of the motivation for my side-project to
help people run their own private blogs -
[https://simpleblogs.org/](https://simpleblogs.org/)

~~~
Lammy
Hard to get paid for altruism. Who’s going to pay my rent for me if I want to
help humanity?

------
LockAndLol
And what are we doing about it? The majority (even webdevs) use Chrome, we
don't use Firefox or other alternatives out of principle, we just pick what's
easiest. A lot of us could be participating either in Firefox or a web-engine
that's easier to integrate, but we aren't? What are we doing instead?

It doesn't seem as if most of us care.

------
lxe
The original 'classic' web is still there. It's just harder to find,
ironically, thanks to Google.

------
emptyparadise
Chromium should be taken away from Google and put in the hands of some truly
neutral non-profit entity.

~~~
flowerlad
Use Edge instead of Chrome. If Edge's market share increases at the expense of
Chrome then eventually Microsoft will have equal control over Chromium.

Microsoft is not a better company in any way, but two companies controlling
the most widely used browsing platform is better than one company controlling
it.

~~~
emptyparadise
Good point. It's not an ideal situation, but it beats Google alone holding the
keys and could even lead to the outcome I mentioned in my first comment if
non-profit free software advocates play their cards well.

------
notjustanymike
Well this is all horribly depressing.

------
Maha-pudma
What happens to people like me, no Google search, no Facebook, no amp, etc if
this came about?

------
doliveira
Didn't we do this to ourselves, though? The tech community did decide that
vendor lock-in is okay, walled gardens are okay and also that a browser
monopoly is okay.

My impression is that this is what's different this time: it was chosen by
developers themselves

~~~
reaperducer
_Didn 't we do this to ourselves, though?_

Does it matter?

We still give cancer treatment to smokers. We still give dialysis to
alcoholics. We still pull the plastic out of our own oceans.

~~~
searchableguy
Not for free where I live. They have to pay for the treatment.

------
barrenko
Wasn't it that the creators of Netscape wanted to put some kind of payment
protocol similar to crypto in the original browser but ran into trouble with
the government, can't remember anymore. 402 error was famously reserved for
money trouble.

------
sbierwagen
> Lacking native distributed search allowed Google to grab a monopoly position
> as the entry point to the web.

I am curious to hear what the author would propose instead. I’m not sure
keeping a local cache of all web text would work very well.

------
barrenko
Maybe the search itself will die to this monopolization. You go to Wikipedia
for basic stuff, Hacker News for drama and shame you don't know Lisp, Khan
Academy for math, Facebook/IG, Twitter, et cetera...

------
arkanciscan
The original web didn't even have images, but you think they should have just
invented the most advanced neural net ever built instead of urls? Monday
morning quarterbacks...

------
ramon
I myself only build websites with Google Authentication I don't see any other
competitor in this space everyone has a Google account and I don't have to
deal with Infosec. Who doesn't have a Google account? Yes Google rules the web
and there's not much we can do but live with it, I also like the fact that
Google gives us a bunch of things for free and many people don't take this
into account. Think about all the free things Google is giving you at this
moment? Do you use Gmail? Do you search in Google? Do you want a paid
alternative to Gmail or to searching? Come on let us not be children.

~~~
andrewkdinh
I hate when websites do this. I don’t use anything Google unless I’m forced to
(work email, Google Drive for my school, etc.). And unless I absolutely need
to use your site, I will avoid it like the plague.

It’s not just limited to Google; it’s for any site providing only third-party
OAuth login. I can never remember which one I signed in with, and if that
service ever shuts down, it’ll be a pain to figure which of the hundreds of
services I’ve signed up for using that OAuth login. It’s much easier to change
an email.

And yes, I do use a paid alternative to Gmail (ProtonMail)

~~~
ramon
I just don't understand where all this hate is coming from I don't hate Google
for giving me free stuff and collecting my information I'm not doing anything
wrong so I don't care. I understand that people might feel bad about being
monitored and all but what can we do we live in a society full of internet
connected stuff we're going to be monitored no matter what anyways I don't
hate companies for it at all. Imagine this the majority of the Global phones
are Android that means that the majority of the world has a Google account
just because of the Android phone registration. Google is the world's largest
source of information hub and I don't have anything against them or any other
huge IT company if they're doing stuff good for us let it be, I'm a Gmail user
and I use Google and I host my stuff in Google too so I'm all in for Google,
Microsoft, Linux you name it! No hates here.

~~~
andrewkdinh
> I'm not doing anything wrong so I don't care

I’m not going to try too hard to convince you of digital privacy, but would
you really be fine with me just browsing through your browsing and search
history, INCLUDING whatever you do in incognito? I’m sure you’ve made at least
one anonymous account before. Why’s that? And what’s right today may not be so
right in the future. Are you ok with everybody from your boss to your children
knowing everything you’ve ever posted? Shouldn’t we have a right to be
forgotten?

> what can we do we live in a society full of internet connected stuff we're
> going to be monitored no matter what anyways

We live in a democracy, well I assume you do too. Just because it’s the way
how things are today doesn’t mean it can’t be changed in the future.

> I don't have anything against them or any other huge IT company if they're
> doing stuff good for us let it be

I’m not saying they’re not doing great things for the world, but it all comes
at a price.

------
mehdix
IMHO if Firefox could support publishers and creators with a kind of micro-
payment, that would solve a fundamental problem that is basically killing the
open web.

~~~
andrewkdinh
You may be interested in Firefox Better Web, in which Firefox partnered with
Scroll to support publishers

[https://firstlook.firefox.com/betterweb/](https://firstlook.firefox.com/betterweb/)

------
tambourine_man
> AMP, a technology no one asked for

I love that. Quoting for emphasis.

------
gego
Well, the EU should just fork or support existing open source Mozilla projects
and pay developers... but looking at the budget there seem to be a lot of...
unnecessary... money sinks. 80 Mil for management... 200 for dev... but the
security team had to be downsized... yeah right.
[https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-
fdn-201...](https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2018/mozilla-
fdn-2018-short-form-final-0926.pdf)

~~~
hu3
I don't get why someone would downvote your proposal funding Firefox directly.

Mozilla never provided a way of donating directly to Firefox.

------
matthewfelgate
I will care about Chrome being the top browser when people care about Windows
being on 90%+ of consumer computers.

~~~
kapp
Actually, since 2017 most _consumer computers_ run Android. Windows is second.

------
jhoechtl
I thought hell will freeze first but ... can we please have Safari on Windows?
Just to have one real alternative?

~~~
makecheck
Safari did exist on Windows, up to version 5 or so; was discontinued a couple
years ago.

~~~
pjmlp
Yep, my last project using it on Windows was around 2011.

------
monkeydust
Well I am fully of chrome onto ms Edge. Better performance and features,
really hope ms keep investing in it.

------
Eiskugel
and?

I'm using the internet to buy things, research things, share memories, call
people, pay, get payed etc.

Just because 20 years ago people build small websites (including me) doesn't
mean the internet should be a bunch of private niche websites.

Not many people ever found my websites. No one cared.

------
z3t4
If Google kills the web it will be suicide as Google depends on the web for
search.

------
perryizgr8
I love Google. Because the alternative is Apple which is literally an abusive
relationship. Apple has the final say on what you run on your device. Apple
blocks devs from developing for their devices unless you pay them thousands of
dollars for inferior hardware. In comparison, Google is like an open utopia.

~~~
jacquesm
Google is anything but open and anything but a utopia, I can't see how they
could be called 'an open utopia' by any stretch of the imagination.

Also, Apple isn't the 'alternative to Google'. The open web is an alternative
to Google and Google is doing what it can to strangle it.

------
dewijones92
A good idea would be to state fund Mozilla.

~~~
person_of_color
Fund Mozilla by mining crypto (with permission)

~~~
zelly
CPU mining is notoriously unprofitable. If you got every single Firefox-
running desktop to mine Monero or some other coin that can be CPU mined, you'd
be lucky to break a couple thousand dollars a year. This would be at the
expense of wrecking batteries, wrecking SSDs, and annoying all users.

------
parasubvert
This article’s core premises are somewhat nonsensical.

1\. Lack of native distributed search led to Google’s monopoly.

“The Web’s orignal architects were off base on hyperlinks; it turns out people
just want to skip right to the answer they’re looking for.”

This doesn’t make any sense. Google’s entire early innovation was to use
hyperlinks as an indicator of popularity and thus a proxy metric for veracity,
and PageRank was born.

Original attempts at distributed search based on other metrics like text
analysis were tried (Webcrawler, AltaVista which was used by Yahoo, Inktomi
which was used by Lycos, HotBot, etc) but didn’t produce better results, and
Google eventually grew to #1 by 2004 (6 years after intro).

Google could not have existed without the hyperlink. The reason it has a
monopoly today is largely due to investment cycles and intellectual property
law: after the dot com bust, there wasn’t exactly an appetite to build new
search engines given PageRank was patented and would need to be licensed (it
expired in 2019).

This monopoly doesn’t matter as much: generic search engine use has been
declining for years in favour of other approaches to finding content (social
media, syndication, domain specific aggregators, etc).

Decentralized Index/search (not just distributed but truly decentralized)
remains an open research problem. it may be possible to improve and deploy
with the right incentives and investment, but it’s ludicrous to think this was
possible in 1992-1998.

2\. Lack of native payments led to advertising to take off.

This has no factual basis: CGI-bin scripts to purchase things with HTTP POST
calls existed as early as 1993. Amazon and eBay launched in 1995. PayPal
started when Google did, in 1998.

More importantly, most viewed the web as another visual media like Television,
which was ad-driven. People generally didn’t like paying for things that felt
free, like information, or music, or movies.

But again, the Ad Words monopoly remains tenuous. Facebook has been
steamrolling it in growth and will eventually eclipse it. We are also seeing a
lot more willingness for people to pay for content to avoid ads.

3\. “poor native video support (it is hyper_text_ after all)”

It was called hypermedia widely by around 1995 when images and audio (Real
Networks in particular) took off, there just wasn’t the processing power,
bandwidth, or compression algorithms available to make this real until 1998
when MP4 came out.

Google’s early attempt at video, Google Videos, was a market failure. They had
to buy YouTube which (most importantly) made it easy to publish videos
compared to others, but it took many years for it to reach #1.

And that position too is threatened between Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, etc.

In summary, Google is #1 in a number of markets due to a combination of smart
business moves, smart technology, being an early player, and the
business/investment climate at key inflection points of the industry. There
are a large number of competitive pressures against Google that make this lead
tenuous. Google is as vulnerable as AOL or Microsoft were in the late 90s,
when they were thought to be unassailable.

As for the health of the web, let’s remember that regardless of all the claims
of the death of the web, whether native mobile, or WebSockets, or walled
gardens, GraphQL, or single page apps or accelerators like Amp (which had to
change offer direct hyperlink access due to complaints), the web remains
entrenched, omnipresent, and has no clear replacement.

This matters because the core architecture of the web: URLs, HTTP, MIME, and
(to a somewhat shrinking extent) HTML remains the foundational glue that holds
all this mess of media and technology together, and is fundamentally about
enabling decentralization. URLs still are the main way that native mobile apps
integrate with the network. HTML is still the default fallback UI. HTTP is
still the primary application protocol by far.

All of this was the design intent of the architecture of the Web: to last
decades, regardless of how the origin servers or user agents evolved. It’s an
architecture ripe for innovation to make decentralized alternatives to today’s
incumbents.

To paraphrase John Lennon, centralization is over, if you want it.

But this requires the experience to be actually better for users, and not just
in an “eat your vegetables / don’t give your privacy away” manner. Starting a
new venture to take this on requires a combination of investment, insight, and
commitment that’s not easy to assemble. But it can and probably will happen,
relative to legislation or very possible social catastrophes that entrench the
current players longer than needed.

------
saos
> AMP, a technology no one asked for

!!!

------
cmrdporcupine
A lot of talk in this article about Google capturing the whole web, all valid
points, but I find the Facebook walled garden even more terrifying. I see
people now, often in online school parent groups I'm a part of, etc. who
cannot even use email anymore, who don't use web pages at all, they get all
their information through Facebook groups and Facebook, and only talk through
Facebook messenger or sometimes SMS. E-mail is seen as arcane and tricky, lots
of these people do no searching, and rarely leave Facebook. If they can't find
it through Facebook (or a Twitter feed sometimes) they act bewildered. This
may sound like exaggeration, but there really are people like this. I think
this is even more problematic.

~~~
onion2k
Something we (people who work in tech) should be acutely aware of is causing
unnecessary distractions from important issues. When there's a discussion
about the Google _very often_ the first few comments are about how some other
tech company also does something unsavory. This is a thread about how Google's
engineers are actively working to take over the web as we know it and become
the gatekeepers to all the benefit (not to mention profit) the web has to
offer, and now the top comment isn't about what Google are doing.

While your point is valid and reasonable in it's own right, posting it in a
discussion about Google isn't really the right place.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Worth noting that all sorts of entities employ people to do PR on internet
forums, and redirecting and deflecting is a crucial part of their tactics.

Not saying that this is happening here, but forums need to be resilent and
really focus hard on the issue at hand or be completely played by the
professionals.

~~~
neves
They don't need to be so Machiavellian. This forum is filled with Google and
Facebook engineers. Some of them sincerely don't see anything bad in their
companies. Others probably want to protect their stock options.

~~~
prox
I am always amazed that being negative about Amazon is stomped out quickly in
general. Just my experience where I wonder if this is by a team or they just
have a lot fans.

~~~
true_religion
Probably fans. It’s not easy to get support against Amazon when they are still
delivering the majority of people‘a packages.

~~~
Taek
I don't think we need to be that charitable. Seems well in line with the
Amazon ethos to proactively control the narrative around them in online
discussions.

------
dvduval
302 Redirect: Just an observation that whenever there is something critical of
Google here, the leading comments always are talking about something besides
Google. There is sort of a redirection at work.

------
staticelf
This is depressing, we as developers have to take the bull by its horns.
Simply stop using their services, advocate against AMP etc.

But in the end, the US government will most likely have to split the company
in order for stuff to really change.

~~~
NateEag
I'm posting this from Firefox Mobile. Works just fine for my day-to-day
surfing.

DuckDuckGo is my default search engine, and it's not perfect or a panacea, but
it works well enough (and there's "!g" for when it doesn't).

What we really need to do is be willing to pay for our tools, though.

Wikipedia estimates there are 21 million developers in the world, so if one
out of twenty developers donated $1 / month to Mozilla, they'd be getting $1
million / month. You could sustain a few small dev teams on that. Not tons,
but it's something.

If you took it to $5 / month, now you're looking at a lot more manpower.

If donations are given to specific software projects rather than the
foundation as a whole, and bookkeeping is in the open, you can have decent
confidence your money is actually going where you'd like it to go, too.

Just some half-baked thoughts.

~~~
avasthe
Yeah I believe many programmers don't like their donations going to a non
technical overpaid CEO's salary or activism instead of browser or technical
projects like rust.

