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Judge Rules Google is an Illegal Monopoly

I am a FF user, but even if I wasn't - there is value in having completely different implementations of standards.
 
Mazzspeed said:
Due to the fact that my business involves third party IT and tech support, including repair of mobile devices, I can't advertise under Google Ads even if I want to. I used to advertise via Google Ads many years ago, but ironically enough as soon as Google contracted a particular repairer to take care of their Pixel devices, all of a sudden anyone involved in third party IT and tech support was banned from advertising under the service due to the apparent 'high number of scammers in my field'...

...But it's OK to advertise Asian brides, which is basically human trafficking. :rolleyes:
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OMG, are you Louis Rossmann?!
 
1_rick said:
OMG, are you Louis Rossmann?!
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Nope, but he does raise some pretty valid points at times.

The funny thing is: Before I let my payment method for Google Ad's lapse, at times Google would run my ad campaign with no interaction on my behalf, then after a few months I'd get an email stating that my ad goes against Google guidelines and has been banned - But I didn't enable the ad in the first place! A few months later, the cycle would repeat again...

Honestly, fuck Google.
 
1_rick said:
He's made literally the same complaint about computer repair ads being banned. I was 99% joking, but it was only partly a joke.
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He works in the same field I do, obviously he's also been hit with the same Google Ad's restrictions that do nothing to stop scammers.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Why would Brave be better than Firefox?
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Because Firefox is pro-censorship, user-monitoring, and data-mining for advertising. They are essentially Google but more open about it. At least with Chromium Brave devs can strip out some of the Chrome shens.

Also their password management and other stuff is peer-to-peer, it doesn't use cloud storage.
 
Axman said:
Because Firefox is pro-censorship, user-monitoring, and data-mining for advertising. They are essentially Google but more open about it. At least with Chromium Brave devs can strip out some of the Chrome shens.

Also their password management and other stuff is peer-to-peer, it doesn't use cloud storage.
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I'm going to need you to supply some citations with actual evidence.

Firefox:

1745219318086.png

1745219406159.png

All opt out.

Brave:

1745219341911.png


Turned on by default on Brave by the way.

All I can see with regards to Censorship in Firefox is this:
1745219466582.png


Which is meant as a prevention mechanism for Phishing per their own documentation:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/k...are-protection-work?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

They did get rid of Do Not Track but mostly because the preference actually becomes an easier way to track you anyway:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-turn-do-not-track-feature?as=u&utm_source=inproduct

And even if you didn't want to use Firefox there are plenty of customizable Firefox-based derivatives:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browsers_based_on_Firefox

Including Waterfox, Pale Moon, etc.

I think Brave is fine right now and I do use it for many things, including bill payment system sites that don't work due to uMatrix raising hell with all of the dependencies, but I still don't know how I feel about it using Chromium considering the lengths Google goes to to try to increase advertising revenue themselves and being probably the main dev of Chromium. Either way FF is very difficult to replace for me due to just how much freedom it allows extensions compared to Chrome.
 
Axman said:
Lunduke Journal.
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I still don't see anything on here that specifically supports the claims you're making about the browser itself. Either you're talking about the parent company, or need to be more specific. There's an article about dubious finances and how a lot of their funding comes from Google for default search engines, but considering you can change those at any time (I changed mine to Ecosia with no issues) that doesn't really say anything. There was the tidbit about "privacy preserving ads" or whatever, but those are turned off on my browsers to begin with.

Also this site seems to make it a point to be on Mozilla's case about every single thing. I'm just saying. They made a hit piece about how they were censoring some extensions in Russia due to fear of government retaliation, but then Mozilla went back on that anyway and uncensored them.

Brave also wants you to use their own search engine by default.
 
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Axman said:
Because Firefox is pro-censorship, user-monitoring, and data-mining for advertising. They are essentially Google but more open about it. At least with Chromium Brave devs can strip out some of the Chrome shens.
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For all intents and purposes, I see no evidence backing up such claims - From the perspective of Firefox as a product of questionable ethics; or from the perspective as a browser such as Brave, which is based on Chromium and mostly developed by Google, being stripped 100% of Chrome/Google shenanigans.

Axman said:
Also their password management and other stuff is peer-to-peer, it doesn't use cloud storage.
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Once again, I see evidence on the contrary stating that this definitely is not the case at all. My only complaint regarding Firefox sync is the fact that your password is your encryption key - Forget and change the password = Loose your stored passwords.

Honestly, people are quick to nit pick Firefox at every opportunity due to an insatiable addiction to Chromium, and therefore Google based browsers. Personally, I've been using solely Firefox for about the last ten years (possibly more, who's counting?), and I've encountered essentially no deal breaker issues - Browser opens, browser does what I expect it to do without ads. Furthermore, with every update Firefox just keeps improving.

If I have to pick between two evils, it's Mozilla and their Firefox browser hands down every time.
 
Google has used their advertising revenue to subsidize quite a few boondoggles over the years, and continues to do so which suppresses competition in the marketplace. I'm hoping that we might find out if YouTube has managed to be profitable yet or not, as Google has not been very forthcoming with sufficient separately stated financials.
 
I'm not sure I'm with this one. Yes Google is gianormous and in every part of everything you do BUT it's not really that hard to go thru life never using their services. I like their services and use a lot of them but I don't need Gmail, Chrome (I actually use Opera)....I prefer Android phones but could just as easily use an iPhone and Bing or Yahoo are perfectly fine search engines. About the only think I can think of that Google has a true "monopoly" on is Google Earth.

Generally I'm just not a fan of the government breaking up companies.
 
MacLeod said:
I'm not sure I'm with this one. Yes Google is gianormous and in every part of everything you do BUT it's not really that hard to go thru life never using their services. I like their services and use a lot of them but I don't need Gmail, Chrome (I actually use Opera)....I prefer Android phones but could just as easily use an iPhone and Bing or Yahoo are perfectly fine search engines. About the only think I can think of that Google has a true "monopoly" on is Google Earth.

Generally I'm just not a fan of the government breaking up companies.
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I don't think the monopoly is geared towards end users but rather anyone that is looking to advertise on the internet.

How is that experience? Does google treat those customers like shit? Probably. Do they have much for options? Not really.

But im not a fan of breaking up companies either.
 
Breaking up companies is fine to do, considering so much law already exists in every other direction. A bit more doesn't matter to me.
Bring out proper free-market libertarian capitalism, and sure. Maybe I would change my mind.

But we don't have that. We have a corrupt system where Nvidia is given 500 billion dollars and I'm not.
So that means all corporations are basically cheating by stealing from us, and their means of advertising and entrenching control doesn't grant me any desire to be kind to them.

If I had the power of government, I'd permanently end Alphabet Corporation, and physically destroy all of their data from all of their data centers immediately, and no, I don't care about the fake chaos that would cause.
 
Yeah, it's for the advertising. There are other ad companies, but they all go to google for their data, one way or another, directly or indirectly.
 
The blind trust people have in these companies, is mind blowing. Sure show us all of the visible options you can turn on/off. When does someone show all of the traffic going in/out of a PC and from where and what program.
 
mullet said:
The blind trust people have in these companies, is mind blowing. Sure show us all of the visible options you can turn on/off. When does someone show all of the traffic going in/out of a PC and from where and what program.
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iftop, wire shark, running your own opnsense appliances and if really needed a network tap.
 
1.1.2.3.5... said:
iftop, wire shark, running your own opnsense appliances and if really needed a network tap.
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Yeah I understand the programs needed to sniff traffic, but that is how you know what is really going on vs trusting on/off options.
 
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1.1.2.3.5... said:
I don't think the monopoly is geared towards end users but rather anyone that is looking to advertise on the internet.

How is that experience? Does google treat those customers like shit? Probably. Do they have much for options? Not really.

But im not a fan of breaking up companies either.
Click to expand...

I hadn't considered that. But I gotta think that it would still apply to the advertisers. They don't have to go thru Google if they don't want to. And the way I look at a monopoly, if I have other options then it's not a monopoly. Like when people says Walmart is. You can go your whole life without shopping at one so obviously, it's not.
 
Mazzspeed said:
For all intents and purposes, I see no evidence backing up such claims - From the perspective of Firefox as a product of questionable ethics; or from the perspective as a browser such as Brave, which is based on Chromium and mostly developed by Google, being stripped 100% of Chrome/Google shenanigans.
Click to expand...

Mozilla has straight-up said that they want to block access to "misinformation" websites. They also officially collect all user browsing data and monetize for their advertising business. They brag about it.
 
Axman said:
Mozilla has straight-up said that they want to block access to "misinformation" websites. They also officially collect all user browsing data and monetize for their advertising business. They brag about it.
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Oh, right.
So of the twoish choices, I guess we should trust Google, huh? lol
 
they have large share of the world ads market but not so long ago we thought that facebook and google would have all of it, without much intervention they are loosing ground:

ges%2Ff2b314a5-4306-4b17-92e9-7bdea8040cf8_928x377.png


And the amazon, tiktok, alibaba that compete with them are giants and who knows how much the new paradigm of using computer by simply talking to them and getting direct result instead of crawling manually the web will mean in that space
 
Phone (AI): "Today's schedule: buying a new Tesla"

Me: I don't need a new car.

Phone (AI): "It's a Tesla."

Me: I don't need to buy a Tesla.

Phone (AI): Incorrect. It's on your schedule.

Me: Ok. At least I'm no longer getting ads telling me what to do.
 
Axman said:
Mozilla has straight-up said that they want to block access to "misinformation" websites. They also officially collect all user browsing data and monetize for their advertising business. They brag about it.
Click to expand...

Again, do you have sources for this? Like something you can actually link that's not out of date? I do remember that they had a very questionable privacy policy/terms of service update a while ago, but they retracted that after saying that they didn't intend for it to be applied that broadly.

I'm genuinely curious because I could just switch to Waterfox or Pale Moon instead, which would almost completely cut out the parent company anyway, and unlike Google porting over an entire Firefox profile takes about 10 seconds of copying files since it's all contained locally. I don't use any of the dumb sync services.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Again, do you have sources for this? Like something you can actually link that's not out of date? I do remember that they had a very questionable privacy policy/terms of service update a while ago, but they retracted that after saying that they didn't intend for it to be applied that broadly.
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I already said the Lunduke Journal. He posts multiple times a week so I don't know how he's out of date.
 
Axman said:
I already said the Lunduke Journal. He posts multiple times a week so I don't know how he's out of date.
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You can't just give an entire journal as a source. Last time I tried to actually look up something from Lunduke Journal that supported what you said, I found nothing of the sort. At best, you took it in hyperbolic context. Please link specific articles that support your statements.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
You can't just give an entire journal as a source. Last time I tried to actually look up something from Lunduke Journal that supported what you said, I found nothing of the sort. At best, you took it in hyperbolic context. Please link specific articles that support your statements.
Click to expand...

If you want to be right on the Internet then go be right. If you want to be a victim and product continue to use Firefox. If you want a semblance of emancipation use Brave, and cross your fingers, Ladybird will come sooner than later as advertised.

You're not my charge and you can keep doing you if you want.

Nobody told you you haven't been warned.
 
Axman said:
I would take neutered Google over Firefox all coked up, yeah.
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Even 'apparently' neutered, it still not exactly a privacy safe harbor. If you're on the internet, there's a fair chance you're being tracked - Brave or not.

Axman said:
If you want to be right on the Internet then go be right. If you want to be a victim and product continue to use Firefox. If you want a semblance of emancipation use Brave, and cross your fingers, Ladybird will come sooner than later as advertised.
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This is nothing more than baseless whataboutism. I've been using Firefox along with uBlock Origin for years and at no stage have I ever felt like a product. Even Brave collects anonymized aggregated user data, and Firefox can be tweaked to be just as privacy focused as Brave.
 
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Axman said:
If you want to be right on the Internet then go be right. If you want to be a victim and product continue to use Firefox. If you want a semblance of emancipation use Brave, and cross your fingers, Ladybird will come sooner than later as advertised.

You're not my charge and you can keep doing you if you want.

Nobody told you you haven't been warned.
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This isn't about "being right", I'm literally just asking you to link the sources (ie individual articles) on your own subscribed journal that actually support the claims that you're making. If you can't even do that, I think it's foolish to be making these claims while saying that said source supports them when it does nothing of the sort and you have no evidence of any of it. Like if you actually found something, I don't mind switching browsers to Waterfox or Pale Moon or something. But thus far it seems like you're just making hyperbolic and baseless statements to try to opt everyone into Brave instead, which might not be any better and might in fact be worse. It's just misleading people, if you don't have anything supporting your statements. Worse, it's misleading yourself.

I don't understand what's so hard about this. If they said that Firefox does what you're saying they do, then it should be trivial to link where they say it, along with whatever citations they provide to that effect. Thus for what I've seen is that they dug up some things about the parent company that they find questionable (namely the finances), but almost everything else that you said that they said... was either not there, or something that was retracted very shortly afterwards due to backlash.
 
MavericK said:
Opera is Chromium-based.
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Not when it was sold to China years ago. It was still its own engine then. Maybe it has changed since then but I refuse to go anywhere near that browser since it was sold to China.

Vivaldi, the browser made by the people who originally made Opera, is chromium based.
 
SmokeRngs said:
Not when it was sold to China years ago. It was still its own engine then. Maybe it has changed since then but I refuse to go anywhere near that browser since it was sold to China.

Vivaldi, the browser made by the people who originally made Opera, is chromium based.
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yeah it used the presto engine when they were their own things but as soon as they were sold they were a chrome clone ever since and at first there really wasn't much difference other than their name.

but yeah i use Vivaldi now and love it. you can customize absolutely everything about it even the shortcuts so i can have ctrl+space take me to my home page that Opera presto got me hooked on all those years back. alt+home just doesn't do it for me, could never get use to it
 
The conversation on the first page reminds me of that Stephen Colbert video about Cingular. It's been taken down everywhere, but I uploaded it for 2 days here.

View: https://streamable.com/rqg244

Mods: If I'm allowed to attach it here to save it for posterity, let me know.
 
Axman said:
No it's not. Firefox and Mozilla have explicitly stated they want to censor the Internet and curb free speech.
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That still makes them the lesser evil than Google, who is trying to enable a panopticon. Mozilla, at least, is completely powerless to do so.
 
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