Unpacking Google’s Web Environment Integrity specification

It's the insane power that companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple hold over the tech world. It's like they can just dictate everything to suit their own interests, and it's the users who end up losing out.

Remember when Apple killed Flash? I heard it was because they wanted people to use their app store more instead of us playing games in the browser, so they could make more money. And Microsoft installing IE and setting it as the default browser? And now, Google is making changes to how we browse the web and adding things like Manifest v3, to boost their ad business.

The most irritating part is it is always gets packaged as being for our safety. The sad thing is I've often seen people even drink this user safety kool-aid, especially with Apple (like restricting browser choices on mobile - not sure if it's changed now).

I really think there should be some laws in place to prevent this kind of behavior. It's not fair to us, the users and we can't just rely on the EU to do it all the time.

> Remember when Apple killed Flash? I heard it was because they wanted people to use their app store more instead of us playing games in the browser, so they could make more money.

Even without the incentive of “moar profit$” they never entertained Flash because fundamentally, it sucked. When it landed in Android, it was a bloated mess that sucked the battery dry and was slow as molasses. On every platform it existed on, it was a usability and security nightmare. No, Apple “killed” Flash by making a sane decision not to allow it in their fledgling platform because Flash outright sucked, informed largely by the abhorrent performance on all platforms.

> And Microsoft installing IE and setting it as the default browser?

SMH. There was never an issue with Microsoft providing IE as a default initially - that came later with the EU. The biggest issue was that if an OEM (a Dell or an HP) struck a deal with Netscape to provide that as default, Microsoft threatened to remove the OEMs license to distribute Windows. In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s that would have been the death knell of an OEM. And that is the anti-trust part. They abused the position as the number 1 desktop os ( by a significant margin) to take control of the then nascent browser market.