zlacker

This is a clear sign of Google's weakness. They are losing their monopoly and are desperately trying to hold on to the net. In the last few weeks, they have announced that they will try to block navigation if you have an ad blocker installed (for example, when watching a video on Youtube). Take a look at Fuchsia for another example ... they are losing the control on Android, so they started this new project ... it is another sign. My recipe: AdGuard Home, Brave browser (phone, tablet, desktop), Bromite (phone), Firefox (desktop) + uBlock origin plugin ... and FreeTube on desktop. Just using Brave on the phone is enough to kill all ads and trackers. In the open source community, there will always be someone smarter than they think who will find a way around their gates... Few days ago Kevin Mitnick passed away, sadly, but there will be always another Kevin Mitnick ... Google will lose all respect from the community and will collapse sooner or later.

>>Daril+(OP)
> They are losing their monopoly and are desperately trying to hold on to the net

> they are losing the control on Android

What do you mean by this and what does Android have to do with trying to hold on to the net?

>>andsoi+F1
A huge number of people only use the internet with their phones, and Google is doing their best to tie the entire system to Google services and the Chrome browser.

>>andsoi+F1
I mean, there are now many other open source projects based on Android (LineageOS and e/OS/ for example) that are free from Google. If they can't control the operating system on your phone because it's free from their services, they can't control your device, track you and send you their ads... I've been using e/OS/ for 3 years now on a phone made in Germany (Gigaset). There is always an alternative...

>>Daril+b3
LineageOS isn’t entirely free from Google. It relies on AOSP, which is maintained by Google, and it suffers from the decisions that Google makes. For example, Google made a change in AOSP to require location services to be installed as a system package instead of a user package, something few users know how to do. The result is that users are less likely to use something privacy-protecting like Mozilla’s location services. Moreover, Google has reimplemented a lot of AOSP functionality in its Play Services and the industry now uses those Google APIs instead of the old AOSP ones, so loads of apps won’t even run on LineageOS.

>>Daril+(OP)
> Take a look at Fuchsia for another example ... they are losing the control on Android, so they started this new project

I work on fuchsia and can honestly say I have no idea what you're talking about. Fuchsia and android are more complimentary than they are competitive. I've noticed that when there is a lack of information, people tend to invent things that fit their narrative, but that's a really dangerous habit.

>>Daril+(OP)
If you are this paranoid about someone showing ads or collecting your information, maybe Brave isn't the best choice, with their history of getting caught with both hands in the cookie jar. Especially since you already use Firefox elsewhere. Mozilla also collects information btw.

>>surajr+D7
Taken from Wikipedia : Fuchsia is an open-source capability-based operating system developed by Google. In contrast to Google's Linux-based operating systems such as ChromeOS and Android, Fuchsia is based on a custom kernel named Zircon. It publicly debuted as a self-hosted git repository in August 2016 without any official corporate announcement. After years of development, its official product launch was on the first-generation Google Nest Hub, replacing its original Linux-based Cast OS.

And from 9to5google.com Work on this Fuchsia project within Android — dubbed “device/google/fuchsia” — stalled in February 2021, with no public indication of how things were progressing. This week, all of the code for “device/google/fuchsia” was removed from Android, formally signaling the end of this particular avenue.

In its place, we have a lone “TODO” message, suggesting that Google may be building up something new in its place. The developer responsible for the change primarily works on Fuchsia’s “Starnix” project.

First shared in early 2021 as a proposal, Starnix is designed to make it possible for Fuchsia to “natively” run apps and libraries that were built for Linux or Android. To do this, Starnix would act to translate the low-level kernel instructions from what Linux expects to what Fuchsia’s Zircon kernel expects.

So ... custom kernel and a custom OS that will support Android applications as far as I understand ...

>>Daril+(OP)
>Google will lose all respect from the community and will collapse sooner or later.

I love this little bubble all of HN (or at least a vocal majority) seems to live in. Google is most definitely not collapsing anytime soon, and their products are loved by millions, if not billions, of users all over the world.

>They are losing their monopoly

No, they most definitely aren't. Brave Browser runs on top of Google's Chromium. Firefox runs on top of Google's money. Their lead in search does not seem to be going away anytime soon - there is a reason literally everyone on earth uses Google as a search engine. There is a reason literally everyone on earth uses YouTube to watch any video they want. There is a reason 70% of all phone users use Google's operating system. There is a reason Gmail is by far and away the clear leader in the personal email space.

>They have announced that they will try to block navigation if you have an ad blocker installed (for example when watching a video on YouTube).

As they rightly can. You are under no obligation to use YouTube - and if you do use it, you must pay for it, either by watching ads, or by paying for YouTube Premium.

HN can keep complaining about Google all they want, but Google is one of the few companies that has truly made the Internet the Internet. Their impact on humanity has a whole has so far most definitely been net positive, and you are under no obligation whatsoever to use their products. There is a reason they are the clear leader in the products they offer, and that is because they offer, say, a free tier (as in Gmail), or openness (as in Android).

>>Daril+b3
LineageOS is a great illustration of how Google is winning. Years ago I could use LineageOS or Cyanogenmod as my primary phone just fine. Now it's very hard to do that if I want to be able to use an increasing number of apps (banking comes to mind). And now I won't be able to bank with Firefox, either.

>>xNeil+R9
"the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had." - Isaac Asimov, Foundation

>>xNeil+R9
> you are under no obligation whatsoever to use their products

Well ... with this new proposal they are trying to change this, don't you think ? Yes, it is not mandatory to watch Youtube, but it should be also mandatory that Google don't collect and sell the personal data without the owner permission or scan all the emails in every Gmail account (free o paid) ... The history of Google is full of these practices and, after discovered, every time they respond "will never do it again" ...

>>CalRob+S9
Try e/OS/ indeed ... it works for me and many others.

>>urda+rc
While that's a very nice saying, and I appreciate you applying in this context, what you're basically saying is we can never ever assess any organization as strong whatsoever, since every organization that breaks up seems strong at some point.

>>xNeil+R9
> Their impact on humanity has a whole has so far most definitely been net positive, and you are under no obligation whatsoever to use their products.

The strategy over the years has always been the same:

1. create a necessary product and give it away "for free"

2. wait until people are used to it and consider it essential and difficult to migrate

3. close the gate and make it no longer free.

For example : Gmail for organisations (at launch free up to 100 users, then 50, then 10, then 0), Maps for websites (lower free tier now), Google Drive (lower free tier now), Youtube is next ... That these are the "best" products in the world is a subjective affirmation. They are pre-installed on devices and difficult to remove ...

They can do whatever they want with their products, of course, but trying to control the openess of the web as we know now, it is a different thing ...

>>xNeil+Nf
That's not what was said at all in context, and I do not appreciate you putting words in my valid comment. You dismissed the original argument with your own personal truths.

>>surajr+D7
Perhaps you mean Flutter ?

>>Dah00n+w9
I have another level of blocking : AdGuard Home. I know that there is no optimal solution. I do the best I can with what I have.

>>Dah00n+w9
I almost never see meaningful detail regarding what is collected and what it’s used for. Is Google’s collection equivalent to Brave’s, or to Firefox’s? I’d be very surprised if there were not significant differences between what is collected here. Comments like this draw a false equivalence between the three.

>>Daril+aj
Hiroshi Lockheimer once confirmed that Fuchsia at this stage (to be exact, 4 years ago) is more of testbed for OS technologies that cannot be readily integrated into Android. It is quite absurd to say that Fuchsia is a competitor against Android. It is more close to Midori with a slightly clearer path to productization.

>>gkbrk+p2
Exactly. And why the phones are sold with preinstalled with all the Google software and services and it is difficult to remove them if not via adb cli ? If they are the best in the World as someone else has stated, the people will flock to install them on a "vanilla" phone, right ? All your SMS, contacts, emails, location positions, photos ... One time my mother was at a funeral at a cemetry, nearby is a cafè. 20 minutes later she got a notification from Google : "How was your experience at the cafè ?" What have this to do with their own products, their free tier levels, the freedom to not watch Youtube or use Gmail ?

>>summer+0s
And in the meantime it landed to the Nest Hubs ... I think Google will try to abandon Android.

>>urda+0h
You didn't really make a comment -- you just dropped in an Asimov quote. And xNeil's interpretation of the relevance of that comment matched my intuition. If you had some other intent with that comment, maybe you should clarify?

>>Daril+(OP)
Bromite is not maintained for a year. It is a bad idea to use it unless you're using the unofficial build.

>>urda+0h
I guess I can see why you feel that way - you intended to say a company that seems strong may be at risk of failing just like any other company (in this case, just because Google seems large does not mean they are not failing) - which is something I (sort of) agree with!

But doesn't it logically follow that the same truth holds for any other 'strong' company, thereby rendering our perception of it (or any other company) worthless? I'm sorry you're disappointed, but I just made a logical continuation, that's all.

>>everdr+8k
That's a bit of a strawman since I don't compare the three. I only compare Firefox and Brave. Of course Google is collecting the most data out of those and the tracking is worse, especially since they have other data points to compare it with.

However, according to my logic using Brave + Firefox simply must cause more data to be collected than using only one of the two, no?

>>Daril+Zj
It wasn't meant as criticism. Doing something is better than nothing. Of course the irony is that the more you do the easier it gets to fingerprint and track you with cookieless technology. I've been there and given up. The best solution in my opinion is to blend in and hide in the masses while blocking the worst offenders. I use Firefox with uBlock and DNS blocking in my firewall (OPNsense).

I participated in an experiment that tried to fingerprint without cookies over time. All browsers failed but Firefox did best (for me). So that's what I use.

>>Dah00n+Ep3
I use different browsers for different websites / web applications. For bank or accounting, for example I use Firefox in a container. I configured Firefox to clear everything on closing : cache, cookies, history.

I don't save the passwords in the browser. I keep them in Vaultwarden, installed locally on a miniserver.

>>Daril+Nt
Yeah, I think that's the ambitious moonshot at least for Fuchsia team, and Google might hope it to be realized. But it probably also acknowledges that it's a very unrealistic goal. More likely scenario is to gradually replace some important core systems (including its kernel?) with Fuchsia while keeping the overall Android ecosystem.

>>summer+s85
I agree. I don't think they can abandon the Android ecosystem at all, I mean all the apps and the store, that's the real value. They could design a migration path for the apps and make them work seamlessly on Fuchsia in the meantime, gradually replacing the ecosystem with the promise of new "shiny" features for developers. Building an OS from scratch is very expensive in terms of resources and money. I cannot see a valid technical reason for this move. My view is that many projects are now using AOSP to build their own operating system and trying to get rid of Google services, which is a threat to Google and its business based on bombarding the user with ads. The biggest obstacle at the moment is getting the applications that rely on Google services to work. e/OS/ uses MicroG and in my personal experience everything works seamlessly, including banking applications. The other crucial aspect is the availability of stores for the apps. Aurora is just an alternative front-end client to Google PlayStore, but it is a huge step forward in removing direct dependency. e/OS/ has AppLounge which does the same thing. I'd certainly prefer to download and install my bank's app directly from a protected area of the bank's website rather than from a generic store. Implementing a custom authentication mechanism (e.g. signed with GPG) and an auto-update feature is certainly doable.

>>Dah00n+Ep3
I'm currently trying out LibreWolf. It is based on Firefox, but with extra privacy and security features. I also installed Vivaldi, also if I am not a big fan of all these extra features integrated : mail, calendar and notes.