Google is working on making a premium internet based on their services that permeate the whole web which they plan to serve only to "trusted devices" running Chrome - I do not think this is going to work out well for them.
It's truly profound how split-second loading delays contribute to a negative impression about digital products. I guess we're all worn out from using our devices. Most of us just want "thing" ASAP, and we'll compulsively click 'agree' to anything that happens to stand in the way of it.
'Why don't you switch to Chrome, it works better/faster.' is not the sort of social pressure I can quickly respond to with my privacy concerns. And it's not like I'm not going to get an eye-roll or tin-foil-man comments from the mom-pop-type people in my life.
That's why you don't start with the nerd explanation of the privacy issues, you just tell them Firefox is way better. You install FF + uBlock (since presumably they don't even have an adblocker on Chrome if they're anything like my parents), and tell them "Look ma, no ads!". Not even people who don't care about ads that much and just ignore them will go back to seeing them if they see the option of no ads existing. And if you handle all their bookmark imports and account logins for them so they don't have to, they won't even feel the difference from a UI/UX point of view (sans a few microscopic differences that nobody notices).
As for these artificial speedbumps, I think that statistic about every 100ms of page load decreases visitor time is true to an extent, but at least if I look at the way my parents use websites, even 5kb plaintext ones take like 3s to load since they have unfathomably slow internet and ancient devices, so it doesn't really factor in for them if they click on a video on youtube they wanna watch.
Honestly, um, no. Like I get where you’re coming from and I used to consider it good advice. But my approach these days is to just keep my mouth shut.
Just like MS was always seen in Europe as well, outside (parts of) the tech-workers bubble. Governments in every single country at every level never had any problem mandating proprietary softwares and formats to their citizens for many, many years.
I’d never dream of changing browsers because some video site (mostly full of low-effort distracting silliness), didn’t work well in mine.
It’s an extremely delicate task for the EU, easy to sabotage.
Eventually users will realise this, and advertisers will see negative returns, and Google will lose money. But chances are they'll find another way to keep advertisers paying.
Ever talk to someone random about Google's privacy bullshit and why Chrome is not a great browser? Nobody cares, and they think you're an idiot.
So, Google will carry on until it's too late.
and i also don’t see how they can really do this at least in EU, at least not for long until the regulators catch wind.
Ensuring you only use the OEM's recommended browser looks like the endgame of the internet.
