this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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At the moment WEI has been rejected by mozilla, so it wont be implemented into firefox. if google decides to add it into chrome and to their services, they will effectively lock out all firefox users. - A very anarchistic part of me actually would like to see how that would play out ... but at the moment i am unsure if google would actually dare doing this, but i guess, it will only be a matter of time and we'll find out.
Not sure if this move would actually damage the open web ... since basically google would single itself out as the enemy ... and i dont see many users appreciating such a move.
But if the worst happens and the whole web follows googles example, i guess we can just call this iteration of a "open web" a failure and start over with something much simpler ... maybe something like the gemini protocol as its base, which isnt polluted with clientside javascript garbage and bloated CSS/XHTML parsers and rendering engines .
I fully expect that without a change of current course, Google will ensure yt will just stop working on Firefox at some point.
I guarantee there will be a workaround. It's not magic it's just code. And once that code is on your machine there's not much they can do about it.
With streaming media they created this tiny DRM blob (you might have have heard of widevine.drm) which every browser needs to have to decode certain types of streaming media. Now imagine if something like that would be required ... the website would only be loaded and rendered if the module would "validate" that nothing has been tampered with (think: signing and checksum validations). - Suddenly no more content filtering/adblocking or maybe just enhancing websites with userscripts. That is the web google is trying to create. Totally under their control and static. The user will again just like with television be a receiver without any influence. I personally find this to be a very scary, degrading and sad thought so much ... that i would likely turn my back on this kind of web as much as possible and look for other networks (maybe something like i2p, gemini , ... )
I don't see the W3C or any of Google's competitors jumping on board to give Google the keys to the web.
With chromes marketshare, they basically already have one half of the keys. If they can get a significant amount the server/backend owners to adopt/use their "features" (maybe lie like they tried with MV3 that it's all about security and keeping bad actors out) ... it's game over.