eh78ssxv2f
Joined 10 years ago
Joined 10 years ago
Besides privacy and obvious web-centralization issues, there are bunch of security issues associated with proxying the traffic. Apple and Mozilla brought these issues to the attention of Google during SxG spec discussions. At that time, Google's rebuttal was that SxG is a opt-in feature for sites.
Quoting from [1] (Mozilla's official position on SxG): "Sites opt-in to using this mechanism, and in doing so need to be aware that this comes with some risks, but in doing so they enable a new feature".
This time, Google really did not handle any of the previously discussed security/privacy concerns. Instead, they just went ahead and started proxying the user's traffic without the opt-in from the users or the sites.
[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5s...
Apple/Cloudflare are working on privacy-friendly protocols that reduce the amount of information exposed to them [1].
At exactly the same time, Google here is working on proxying non-Google browser traffic through them without consents from either the user or the publisher.
Apple/Cloudflare are working on privacy-friendly protocols that reduce the amount of information exposed to them.
At exactly the same time, Google is working on proxying browser traffic through them without any consents [1].
In this case, the telcos are just using the same device management policy. They can do so because they own the phone (have physical access to it and their legal contacts allow them to do it). I don't think Google did something specific here to enable this feature for telcos.
Note that the iPhones also has similar feature. So, switching is not going to help.
Currently, Apple actually gets money from Google for selecting the latter as its default search engine. Not only Apple will lose that money but would also need to dump money in developing + maintaining the search engine.
May be their goal is to just provide a more privacy-sensitive search but I'm a bit cynical about that motivation. So, the economic model is still unclear to me.
What specific laws of the US land are they not subject to?
Recent examples: Google tracking users per Chrome installation ID [1], Chrome exempting Google sites from user site data setting [2], Chrome experimenting with silently proxying user traffic through their servers [3].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24817304 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25337995