- a major way of embedding web fonts (Google Fonts)
- a hugely successful cloud document suite (Google Docs)
- a safe browsing service, making them effective gatekeepers of what can load in Chrome (Google Safe Browsing)
- an ever growing system for schools to manage assignments (Google Classroom) - this one particularly concerns me because paired with Chromebooks, it brings kids into an entirely closed Google ecosystem very young
"Each site you visit is checked against the Safe Browsing list on your system. If there's a match, your browser sends Google a hashed, partial copy of the site’s URL so that Google can send more information to your browser. Google cannot determine the real URL from this information." -- https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/privacy/#safe-browsing...
There's no way Firefox would be ok with sending all their user's visited URLs to Google.
Is there any alternative to reCaptcha? As I understand, it's the only system that works well against most spammers, is free to use and easy to integrate. I'd be happy to switch to another provider but haven't found anything remotely as easy and effective.
reCAPTCHA is a terrible thing for the web, in my experience. It is user hostile. It only gets used on websites because it is easy to set up. But really, the only reason someone would use it is because it is cheap and easy. There are much better options available that are less user hostile.
Akismet is a third party service that works really well. You send data there with a HTTP POST and it will reply with a yes or no, it is spam or not spam. It is not that hard to implement. You do have to be aware that you are sending user data to that service, which you have to mention in your privacy policy.
Stop Forum Spam is a similar third party service. You send it an ip address and an email address. It will reply on both items if it is spam, together with a confidence level. Quite interesting way to reply :) It is originally intended to fight registration spam, but you can use it for comment spam or contact forms as well.
JavaScript spamfilters can be very usefull. Most spambots do a HTTP GET for a page with a form. They fill in all the fields and submit it with a HTTP POST. They don't run any JavaScript on that page. You can have honeypot and timeout fields on a form that get manipulated by JavaScript, and spambots will not validate. Works really well, and all transparent to the user. The only "risk" is that in the future spammers might start using more sophisticated spambots, like using Electron or Chromium. I implemented spamfilters like this in a WordPress plugin and it works really well for me: https://wordpress.org/plugins/la-sentinelle-antispam/
Making your own works fine, even if it's a simple "type these words". On HN I see enough articles about breaking reCAPTCHAs with (claimed) 90% accuracy and I know spammers also employ humans. You can't make the perfect CAPTCHA, but anything custom will almost certainly do. For smaller sites it's also perfectly fine to just include a few "are you humans?" type questions to which people should reply "yes" or some other obvious answer. Having to spend development effort just to flood you with messages is probably not worth it. You will still get the one-off message when the CAPTCHA was solved by a poor worker anyway.
My knowledge is a year or two out of date (haven't hosted forms in popular websites anymore), but it doesn't seem like this could have changed that rapidly. Bots don't suddenly understand English, and neural nets aren't much better or worse at word CAPTCHAs than picture CAPTCHAs. It's just that Google didn't need books anymore.
I do still host a bug report form on a smaller site, and that just filters <a href, and more recently, http://. If someone enters that, the site gives the helpful message that http is not allowed for spam reasons and they should use hxxp:// instead and that I'll understand what they meant. Haven't gotten any spam since I started including that.
The cases where reCAPTCHA is a good idea are really rare. Logins can be solved with exponential back-off, forms can use spam filters similar to email and a simple CAPTCHA to catch the vast majority. With reCAPTCHA, I often spend minutes solving the because Google has no other markers to go on (deleting cookies, localstorage). I used to not mind them when other people were all complaining about those word CAPTCHAs (I found them easy) but now reCAPTCHA just take your time instead of your reading skills and they're absolutely awful. It rewards not using privacy technologies in your browser and so a lot of laymen don't experience the issues. Please don't use reCAPTCHA if at all possible...
News to me doesn't seem that popular of a news mechanism but the others are extremely widespread. With maps you have Apple Maps but that's a bing-tier competitor.
Would you argue they should be broken up? Asking honestly, I don't really have a strong opinion. On one hand, I don't like the idea of punishing companies for their success. On the other, the barrier to entry has become too high for anyone to make a dent, giving them alone effective control over whether or not your company succeeds.
Google wields too much control and is forcing the evolution of technology to further their grasp. They reach into every sector of technology, and every play they make deepens their moat.
Look at how fast they spin up new products to see if they can claw into a new space. They move mountains if they sense they can grapple something new, and if it doesn't work out they tear it down without considering the users. It isn't about the individual - they want total control.
Google is 90's Microsoft's Embrace/Extend/Extinguish executed to perfection.
(See my thread from yesterday [1] where I argue these points as they pertain to the app store.)
I'm going to talk with my local lawmakers. I don't know what leverage I have, but I'll be damned if I sit on the sidelines.
> On one hand, I don't like the idea of punishing companies for their success.
For better or worse, this is how it has to be for the market economy to function well in a society. A company can be successful up to a point - they cannot be allowed to win. The victory every for-profit entity seeks - permanent domination and monopolization of their market - is something potentially disastrous to society at large.
>The victory every for-profit entity seeks - permanent domination and monopolization of their market - is something potentially disastrous to society at large.
OTOH it's like a standard that you can build upon if it's foundational communication infrastructure (channels, touch points).
This means that stability on lower levels facilitates competition on higher levels. As long as nobody is excluded it's not problematic. It shouldn't be allowed to scrap services users depend on though, this would be a good organic regulator.
Standards like these may be proposed by a single entity, but they're not controlled by it.
The problem with amp4email isn't that it makes everyone part of Google (though I'm willing to bet it'll ultimately imply all MUAs will end up having to embed Chrome engine). The problem is with Google using its near-monopoly position to push a "standard" that makes e-mail serve its users less, and serve companies seeking to exploit those users more.
The problem with Google is not their success, the problem is that they both have and abuse monopoly power. If they don't want to get targeted they shouldn't abuse it.
I think there's a far more beneficial alternative that doesn't have the effect of, like you mentioned, punishing companies for success. Instead of trying to break up the biggest players which tends to ultimately just result in them reforming, officially or not, instead create rules specifically designed to make it vastly easier for smaller players to succeed. There are a countless number of ways to do this.
The network effect "free" user generated content platforms (YouTube, Facebook, etc) are the low hanging fruit here. The reason they have sustainable monopolies is because they have exclusive use of the user generated content on their platform. This is really easy to fix. Require that companies beyond a certain scale (1 million users perhaps?) that make user generated content freely available default to free use + attribution licenses for that content, unless users specifically opt-out on a per piece basis. And furthermore mandate that companies provide a means of easily accessing said free use content, such as through an API. Also require that users be able to 'remotely publish' content to the site again, through something such as an API. And finally prohibit companies from censoring discussion of competing sites except in obvious cases of abuse such as e.g. automated spam.
There - problem solved. Now you can create an e.g. Facebook competitor where people can keep their exact same friends (and even talk to the ones still on Facebook) except gain whatever benefits the new platform has to offer. Similarly for something such as a YouTube competitor where now you'd be able to seed yourself with what would likely be the vast majority of the user generated content from YouTube. You might also want to add a rule that sites cannot clone content from sites smaller than they are. Again the idea is to create unique incentives for users to try new sites. You'd get access to most of the content you already have from big site + whatever unique content the smaller site offers. And, just like that, you now have created massive competition with minimal direct 'punishment' of the existing behemoths.
> I don't like the idea of punishing companies for their success.
I don't hear many people talking about punishing companies for their success. I hear a lot of people talking about punishing people for their abuse, though.
Truly independent governance of separate projects within Google at the very least, but ideally totally separate legal entities that are carefully regulated and monitored to ensure they're not giving each other preferential treatment.
If there was a shortage of competition, I would start getting worried. They are just one actor among thousands.
With power comes responsibility. Google has earned our trust with every new product they develop. If they misstep, they will hear it. In fact, they have to keep listen to keep being at top.
- the largest browser people use to view pages (Chrome)
- the largest platform people use to run that browser (Android)
- the largest way people discover content online (Google Search)
- the largest way people advertise online (Google Ads)
- the largest way people share video online (YouTube)
- the largest email provider (Gmail)
This is way too much power over the internet in one corporate entity.
It’s way beyond what MS ever accomplished at their height, and it’s way beyond anything Apple ever accomplished either.
The power Google have over the internet at large and the content people consume at this point frankly terrifies me.