zlacker

“who generally I actually really do trust to be doing good”

These are mega corporations and you aren’t the client. They aren’t making Chrome “for you”. They are for optimizing for Advertisers.

>>prox+(OP)
I reject having only short, one dimensional views.

Generally I am pro Project Fugu & pro building bigger better web. Google spends an enormous amount of effort working on specs with w3c, wicg, and other browser implementers advancing incredibly good & useful causes. They spend huge effort enhancing DevTools so everyone can work the web.

Building a good & capable web is necessary for Google to survive. An open & capable web is the only sustainable viable alternative the world has seen to closed proprietary systems, which from history we can see have far more risks hazards & entailed pernicious or particular behaviors.

Generally Googles effort to make the web a good viable & healthy platform aligns with my vision. That they want to do good things & make a great connected world wide web because the web's thriving helps them run their advertising business typically does not create a big conflict for me. I'm usually happy with the patronage the web receives & I dread it ever drying up, and it saddens me people are so monofocused, so selective in focusing on only on bad, and I think that perception hurts us all.

>>jaunty+Zo
I agree to an extend that you shouldn’t focus on bad only, but as the old saying goes “so much is lost for the lack of a little more.”

What my experience has taught me is that you have these 80% things that are good, but there is the one person or thing that ruins it for everyone. One person, one manager or CEO who pushes something through because he wants some gain, or one selfish move that is born out of short term profit or thinking.

From climate change, to wars, to ill-willed software, history sometimes get bend by those bad decisions sometimes stemming from a comparatively small but powerful group who yield too much power. Google is for all purposes a monopoly which makes all their decisions at least suspect since they aren’t competing on the same level as a Mozilla, or name any other search engine. This is bad for any ecosystem.

I wish I was still seeing the early Google that was optimistic, people focused, approachable, but that time is at least some years in the past. There are probably good people working for Google still with that ethos, but it gets overshadowed by those nagging decisions that are suspect.

>>prox+nw
Agreed & uovoted. I do tend to think it's incredible what a massive impact small influences can have.

Thankfully the web still is a very multiparty system, with various w3c group reviews & various implementer signals all being registered well ahead of time. Comments on blink-dev were strong & fast. Unlike almost every other system on the planet I think the mediation here is real & strong!