Well yeah. Google is an advertising company.
I do hope this is shooting themselves in the foot though. Users largely would see no advantage to this, and there are several very immediate downsides.
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Weirdly, the number of people who still don't use adblockers of any kind is pretty high. A lot of folks probably won't even notice.
unfortunately, there is no need for endusers to see an advantage.
there will be an immediate disadvantage to not having it once content wont load without it.
i fear that the pressure of youtube utilizing it, would be enough to convince most users to use it.
also, most users probably wont even know they use it,
chrome alone has a ~~65%~~ 85% market share.
its the platform providers wholl have to weight excluding at most ~~35%~~ 15% of their users against the benefits of drm.
and with potential support from any chromium derivatives, that number gets lower.
not to mention, that some of these ~~35%~~ 15% may switch browsers in order to access the content.
EDIT: safari also uses it, so its about 85% not 65%
So I've got a couple feelings on this.
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This is a fools errand. It's like antivirus companies, no matter how well you make your product, the hackers are always going to be one step ahead. If they manage to obscure ads so well they can't be detected the way we do them now, ad blockers will find a new way to go about it. Especially when the way Google wants to do it involves pushing shitty web DRM that other browsers have actively said they won't play ball with.
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These tech megacorps seem to think they're invincible. Like people have always used their services, and will always use them. That just isn't true. Youtube, for example, is impossible for me to use without adblock these days. It's just a horrendous experience without it. And when your product is awful to use, that opens the door for someone to come in with something that isn't awful. Yes video hosting is difficult and costly, but it's not nearly as bad as it once was. I really feel like they're digging their own grave here. At least I hope they are.
The biggest obstacle to a YouTube competitor is that YouTube themselves can barely turn a profit. The operating costs are ginormous, beyond what most people realise.
Yeah, about youtube, it made me try piped and peertube.
Those fears mentioned in the article sound very reasonable, imo. The proposal reminds me of the various components shipped with Android to "verify integrity".
No thanks though, I'll verify my integrity myself.
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