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Creator of Opera Says Google Deliberately Undermined His New Vivaldi Web Browser (wired.co.uk)
The latest allegation against Google? Jon von Tetzchner, creator of the web browser Opera, says the search giant deliberately undermined his new browser, Vivaldi. Rowland Manthorpe, writing for Wired: In a blogpost titled, "My friends at Google: it is time to return to not being evil," von Tetzchner accuses the US firm of blocking Vivaldi's access to Google AdWords, the advertisements that run alongside search results, without warning or proper explanation. According to Von Tetzchner, the problem started in late May. Speaking at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the Icelandic programmer criticised big tech companies' attitude toward personal data, calling for a ban on location tracking on Facebook and Google. Two days later, he suddenly found Vivaldi's Google AdWords campaigns had been suspended. "Was this just a coincidence?" he writes. "Or was it deliberate, a way of sending us a message?" He concludes: "Timing spoke volumes." Von Tetzchner got in touch with Google to try and resolve the issue. The result? What he calls "a clarification masqueraded in the form of vague terms and conditions." The particular issue was the end-user license agreement (EULA), the legal contract between a software manufacturer and a user. Google wanted Vivaldi to add one to its website. So it did. But Google had further complaints. According to emails shown to WIRED, Google wanted Vivaldi to add an EULA "within the frame of every download button." The addition was small -- a link below the button directing people to "terms" -- but on the web, where every pixel matters, this was a potential competitive disadvantage. Most gallingly, Chrome, Google's own web browser, didn't display a EULA on its landing pages. Google also asked Vivaldi to add detailed information to help people uninstall it, with another link, also under the button.
Just few years ago, my every comment against Google was getting modded down. I can bet there are many Google employees on Slashdot and these die hard people don't take negative comments on Google lightly.
Google has got too much power. With search monopoly, it can decide what sells and what does not. What websites user visits and what does not. What news user read and what does not. The only real competition is from Facebook and I am equally apprehensive about it.
I really like it so far. Snappy and stays out of the way. Tab grouping and tiling are really nice. Support alternative browsers, it's good for the health of the web.
This seems to be more about silencing criticism of Google than stopping Vivaldi. Stopping Vivaldi is the punishment, not the objective.
Gosh, if only you'd created a browser with its own rendering engine that you then didn't sell off to a company that immediately replaced it, and then go on to "revive" the old browser by... creating another browser based on the Chrome browser too.
As a Vivaldi user, I can confirm that it's nothing more than a Chrome clone, and a pretty boring one. All the interesting Opera features haven't made it in in all the years it's existed and been promised.
Guess what? When you make a Chrome-clone, you have to do what the people who make Chrome want you to do. Shocking, isn't it?
It would cost him all his money and years of appeals to get anything from Google, who has both the time and money to fight anything.
If he loses, he loses everything. If he wins, he gets some money, most of which will be taken by lawyers after years of fighting. Then what? He's basically right back where he started.
For the most part, suing a large company is completely broken. The only people winning are the lawyers.
In terms of UI and customization, Vivaldi is 100 times better than Chrome, and of course supports all the extensions and more (the one's Google doesn't like you having which improve its services more than they are capable of natively).
The only problem I could emphasize when I used Vivaldi is the page loading problem. Sometimes, clicking on a link or trying to load a webpage ends up in a hangup of a few seconds or so. Don't know if that's a problem still, but it was a BIG problem that hadn't been resolved for at least 2 months of my attempted usage. I hope they have resolved it these days.
Another thing I would love for the Vivaldi staff to do is to consider achieving what Chrome devs failed at and gave up in the very dedicated thread, while citing Chromium core as the problem: Tab Lazy Loading. Firefox has a great Session Manager that works with many tabs loading at once and never bricking or freezing any system (old or new) because it has this feature, but SessionBuddy on Chromium based browsers is malfunctioning because of the lack of this performance hack/cheat.
This company lostit's moral compass when it hired Eric Schmitt and it hasn't found it again. Eric as you know was the one who didn't recuse himself from apple's board even when he learned about the iPhone. Either he was trying to steal the iPhone or if you really beleive he wasn't and Google was already planning their own, then you have to ask why he didn't recuse himself. It's because he's morally bankrupt. it infected google and the company hasn't been the same ever since.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
There's lots of software around that doesn't show Google ads. Even web browsers!
You do realize that it's possible to sell software, or to get ads from other sources (or even sell advertising space yourself, heaven forfend!).
There's even something known as Free Software that has a whole ecosystem that's built up around the idea that software can be developed and distributed without requiring everyone to reach into his pocket and pull out a credit card.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Once upon a time, when Microsoft ruled the world, its Internet Explorer was undisputed King of browsers. But when upstart browsers started to make inroads, Microsoft baked its browser into the bowels of Windows, making it not only preinstalled, but impossible to remove. Believe it or not, Microsoft spun this borgian action as a Good Thing, making sure that the "user experience" was up to Microsoft's standards. Now, however, it seems to be Google that is swinging its hefty weight around, positioning its ever growing assimilation of the Internet as something it's doing for our own good.
He made a ton of money being the official browser of Wii and also other devices.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
IT could be the objective if its to keep other browsers from rising. They're starting to act like Microsoft in that department.
People keep saying Google isn't a monopoly, but if it can use tactics to make the market unattainable for everyone else. is that not what it is?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Browser customization doesn't matter to very many people. Nor does GUI customization. There is a case to be made for maintaining GUI commonality across users, especially users who will need to consult references or help each other in peer support online. If your browser doesn't look like the next person's, good luck event explaining what is going wrong in a way they can understand.
Bruce Perens.
Brave loads a lot faster than does Vivaldi and is more privacy-centric.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
One reason that it might not be classified as a monopoly is that WE can easily bring Google down.
I've stopped using Chrome. I use Brave exclusively and have been very happy with it.
I use DuckDuckGo and use the !G to get google results. As far as I know (and I'm willing to be corrected on this) Google doesn't receive any revenue from this DuckDuckGo search.
So, instead of saying Google it - say Duck it.
You don't have to stop using Google but if Google's market share drops from 88% to 50% and Chrome takes a huge hit (after all Brave is basically as good as Chrome) then you will have done your part in slapping Google upside the head.
Oh - and protonmail is an excellent privacy-centric email server. (although it's free version allows only 150 emails per day).
Still testing out zoho.com so I don't know how they compare to Google Docs.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
For the most part, suing a large company is completely broken. The only people winning are the lawyers.
You don't fight Google on Google's turf.
You spill Google's IP, databases, and confidential data, etc etc guts all over the 'net via hacks, leaks, etc until you destroy their market competitiveness and ability to operate, get them disqualified from government contracts, and ultimately crash their stock price.
Yes.
we've all got an adblock on anyway lol. fkn love vivaldi over here.
Google is doing what vendors have been doing for ages. There's only outrage because it's happening with everyone's favorite 'google' did you guys really expect something different? The only twist is that people use google to find things so there's not many equivalences out there; but vendors don't like advertising other competitors on their platform/storefront/street/location/whatever. IE used horizontal dominance to get IE where it was (you use windows, you use IE!). Google is using market dominance (Hey, be like the cool kids!). Rather than throwing tantrums, It's time to wise up on your options and stop drinking all the free kool-aid (gmail/google-drive/youtube/google-thing).
I don't read AC
BraveSetup-x64.exe is 112 Megabytes. The file name does not include the version number.
From the Brave web site: "Money
"Brave makes money by taking 5% of any donations and -- after it is fully implemented -- a small cut of advertising that is placed. Brave even shares some revenue with you -- at least as much as we receive."
There are plans for Brave that involve a lot of complexity:
"BAT: Coming Soon "Opt into the Basic Attention Token platform, a blockchain-based digital advertising system giving publishers a better deal and users a share of the revenue."
Vivaldi browser is 40.3 Megabytes. The file name includes the version number.
Why does the Brave browser (linked above) installation file require 112 Megabytes?
Vivaldi's story doesn't include any information about how the 38 people who work for Vivaldi make money.
You really undermined it yourself by switching engines. You ceded the last unique thing of value about your product for mediocrity.
I have a software project, and had my ads taken offline for exactly the same reasons he had. We don't compete with Google in any way. This isn't about them using their position against competitors, it is that they will error on the side of posting ads, and when they review them, if the landing pages don't meet their requirements, they will take them back offline. Noting unusual about their behavior here folks. They want several things, including a clear download link, EULA and install/uninstall instructions so if someone doesn't like it, they know how to get rid of it.
I've always wondered about a few ideas. These are half baked but I'm curious what the pitfalls might be.
First, a browser should randomly "click" on the ads and then just spew the resulting web page to /dev/null. This would start creating false clicks. False clicks would cause the advertisers to start paying more only to discover that the effectiveness of Google advertising is becoming less and less useful.
This would impact bandwidth and would clearly be something that users would want to customize and tailor as far as how much bandwidth to allow this activity to consume and during what time. Is there a reason not to let your browser randomly surf the ads late at night when everyone is asleep?
Ad blocking is fine but that doesn't create false data. To fight back against the web trackers and folks like Google, false data must be introduced into the system. And it can't be 1% or 10%. It would need to be a significant percentage; utopia is if there is more false data than valid data.
Second, create several servers that are giant cookie jars. Web browsers, instead of rejecting third party cookies, would soak them up only to dump them into the big cookie jars. Then they would suck out a random sample of cookies from the cookie jar and use them as if they were real.
I believe this would frustrate many of the tracking methods that are used today.
This idea clearly has some risks. Competent web designers never put critical data into a cookie but the day of anyone being competent at anything is long gone. So, the user would need to explicitly mark cookies as potential security risks and not send them to the giant cookie jars. Third party cookies (I would assume) would never be a security risk.
The point here is go on the offensive and find viable methods of producing false data. If the SNR becomes negative, I believe Google, FB, Yahoo, etc would start to have serious issues.
The other point is if there is more noise to signal in these types of things, it would seriously hamper any reason for Big Brother from just assuming the data and the implications that lead from the data is valid.
I'd love to see the next generations of ad blockers start producing false data rather than just passively blocking the ads.
Google don't need to follow the AdWords terms and conditions for their Chrome pages.
Not because they are AdWords, but because those pages have no advertising. None of the Chrome pages do. Infact, pretty much no Google pages apart from their ad platforms - YouTube, Gmail, Search - have anything remotely to do with AdWords.
What, like Netscape when it was first released?
Like Opera when it was first released?
Like Firebird when it was first released?
Like Chrome when it was first released?
Yeah, these niche browsers with their zero market share. They'll never make it.
Wait a minute... he's expecting Google to HELP him advertise a competing browser that's based off of Google's open source offerings?
LOL... good luck with that, buddy. Maybe he should give his ad money to Bing or Duck Duck Go instead.
First, a browser should randomly "click" on the ads and then just spew the resulting web page to /dev/null. This would start creating false clicks. False clicks would cause the advertisers to start paying more only to discover that the effectiveness of Google advertising is becoming less and less useful.
AdNauseam does this. Some think AdNauseam works a little too well. It was recently blocked by Pale Moon.
I remember having a paid copy of the Opera browser back when the installer exe fit on a single 3-1/2" diskette. The small size was one of the things they boasted about at thatvtime.
Nobody at Google will get the message. They are the 21st Century version of Madison Avenue admen. Those critters migrated over to Google early in the companie's history.
Umm, yes? When you have a monopoly position, different rules apply.
I keep Chrome installed for those very few times I can't get a web page to load with Seamonkey/noscript that I really want to see. It's the throwaway browser on my PC. Never, ever log onto Google services with it, though.
I was baffled that mobile Firefox did not show full functionality on Google search pages. Turned out that google is disabling the functionality by checking the user agent. Once I changed the user agent to a generic Nexus 5, the functionality was restored.
Google's predominance is the result of the original architecture of the Internet, together with the way we provide and charge for Internet access. And Google's predominance isn't just a problem because Google is misusing it more and more, it's also a problem because it gives governments easy access for privacy invasion and censorship. (Facebook and the current DNS system are secondary problems.)
This needs to change: we need distributed, decentralized name services, P2P web sites, and distributed and crytocurrency-based advertising and business models. And given that Google is increasingly using government to maintain its predominance, we probably need to increasingly use government to fight Google. Good strategies would be to start more anti-trust complaints against Google, as well as demanding something analogous to "common carrier status" for Google's search, hosting, and advertising.
Stop with the "best viewed in Chrome" notification bullshit.
I really don't give a hoot that you've optimised youtube and other sites for Chrome. The whole point of the web is to be cross platform.
I'm surprised at your reaction. I thought the issues were somewhat obvious.
Everyone involved in computer technology has had HUGE hassles with browsers. Microsoft supplied IE version 6 that attempted to create its own language, instead of using standard HTML. Microsoft was doing what everyone calls Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, but that time the world reacted effectively to abuse.
Now Mozilla Foundation is badly managed. The latest 64-bit version of Firefox has marked ALL of the 22 add-ons I use as "Legacy". When a lot of windows and tabs are open, Firefox begins gobbling memory and CPU power, and becomes unstable. (I first reported that more than 10 years ago.)
Vivaldi employs 38 people. If the cost of employing them is an average of 50,000 U.S. dollars per year, that is $1,900,000 per year, just in salaries. What is Vivaldi doing that allows spending that amount of money???
Why does the Brave browser (linked above) installation file require 112 Megabytes, 50 or 60 more megabytes than Google Chrome or Vivaldi or Firefox? What do the people who make the Brave browser want user's computers to do that takes so much more code?
I think we have a right to know what is being run on our computers.
A serious issue: Because you disagreed or didn't understand, you engaged in a personal attack. It would have been better to just ask a question, and avoid hostility.
Pray to a 10.000.000.000 â fine for Google, from EU
Rich, very good. But seriously, what’s up with Google these days?
Why do something original when a big company can steal your idea and beat you in court?
Pardon if I am mistaken but isn’t Chrome itself a fork off Apple’s WebKit project?
The "or else" means you either disappear off the Internet, or any browser with any association with them lists you as a malware site.
Fuck Google.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Because Google sure does love silencing free speech and abusing its monopoly power.
Break up Google! Antitrust action now!
Wow, that's super lame. I wasn't going to use Pale Moon anyways - but now I'm definitely not interested.
Chrome is a proprietary version of Chromium. Chromium uses Blink. Blink is a fork of WebKit, which is also used by Apple's Safari. WebKit is a fork of KHTML. Nothing is original!
the only reason vivaldi matters vs. other chromekits is only because of the opera fame.
I find the whole browser quite unnecessary to be honest as is opera now in it's current guise.
another layout/render engine would be nice.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Bullshit. When it's a handful of people affected, feel free to preach your personal responsibility / public irresponsibility hokum.
When tens or hundreds of millions of people are impacted, it becomes perforce a matter of public policy.
Quiet in the cheap seats! How dare you stop a perfectly good /. bum fight with your flawless logic. I want to see the show.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Nothing is original!
Not quite fair. V8 is original.
It's called antitrust law, genius.
the real way how those spam companies track, and how some even pay out, is by tracking purchases/conversion. no conversion = it is as if it didn't exist.
anyways, you can create false clicks but they wouldn't matter to anybody.
this same thing happens naturally as well, the price of the ads being determined by the value they give for the advertisers, the ads will just be cheaper to run per click in the same proportion there are fake clicks. it doesn't solve the problem that people are stupid enough to sign up to something, install something or to buy something advertised in such a way.
the real wonder is sites that have ACTUAL content but still put on so much ads that nobody comes back again or that are impossible(really) to browse without adblock as the ads forward the page to some stupid ad in 5 secs.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Another AC that doesn't know what a monopoly is. There sure are a lot of you.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Oh look, it doesn't have the bizarre formatting so it definitely can't be APK. It's just a random AC, popping up to defend him. Perfectly plausible.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
V8 has been largely rewritten now, but a lot of the original code was from Anamorphic Smalltalk, which was bought and BSD licensed by Sun.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So it has the same origins as HotSpot? Curious.
A lot of former Self and StrongTalk people went to work on v8 (and later Dart and WebAssembly) at Google. If you look at Dart, you can see that it's very much StrongTalk-with-braces. If you look at the name of the project lead, you'll understand why.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Serious question. If what you're getting is their AdWords, why should they care what or how you're set up wrt landing pages, etc? It doesn't impact their ad business. Which is to serve up your advertisements to people they've identified as potential buyers and/or interested parties. Those extra requirements are well outside any immediate considerations when it comes to serving up advertisements to the correct audience. And while Google can have requirements they want to be part of their ad program, none of those seem either germane or necessary to the basics of advertisement. You know, the service they're supposedly offering with AdWords.
They do hold the majority of the search advertising market, so they're not entirely insane. "Dominant market position" might be a better label.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
I imagine that going up against Google in court is something like crawling out of a structure fire with an air conditioning unit fallen on your back, while lawyers and board members stand near the door, lighting their cigars on the flames and taunting you
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Vivaldi is a great browser. Fast, and with innovative features. What I think is missing is functionality that would recreate "Tab Groups" from Firefox.
My only gripe with Vivaldi is that it uses WebKit, contributing to making the Web a monoculture. Apart from that it is a great piece of software. And works on Linux, too!
That question is "Where did the monopolistic swine go after they left Microsoft?" Because, let's face it, Microsoft is a creampuff compared to their good old days. The consent decree certainly seemed to affect their market behavior, and that meant there were a lot of hyper-competitive cheating dirtbags who couldn't work to their full potential at ol' MS.
The question has been answered. "Google hired them."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
another layout/render engine would be nice.
This is true, but Vivaldi has some unique features (tab tiling; tab stacks are poor man's tab groups) and is quite usable if you give it a chance. And it has tabs on the side, not on top!
But there's WebKit/Blink underneath and that's no good.
This.
It's important to keep an eye on the ball. It's the little round thing.
In this case, the ball's name is AdWords.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Technically it should be illegal as their own products don't have the same requirements. but the deck is stacked. Google actually makes it a bit inconvenient to remove their stuff. And the "update server" was nuts. Nobody needs an update server. With Firefox you can remove the update service but not with Google, at least not without remove other google software packages. Consequently I don't use Google in MS Windows. "This smells funny, and I'm not eating".
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
You've perhaps missed that they just lost an antitrust lawsuit in Europe (with respect to advertising their shopping site), to the tune of billions of dollars, two other antitrust investigations ongoing?
Why is the #1 search engine with the #1 web browser also allowed to own a leading ad company? Break them up so they can't collude.
Because freedom. You don't have to get permission from the government just to open a business, which is apparently what you're suggesting.
Because their ad business is their business. The search engine and browser are just loss leaders.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Vivaldi is based on Chromium, but it certainly is not just another skin job. Vivaldi actually makes huge improvements to the base Chromium to the point that it nearly rivals the feature set of old Opera.
You should try it out if you haven't or haven't recently. It's become my default browser under Windows.
Or maybe I'm just pointing out that the CEO of Vivaldi is blaming others for failure instead of accepting responsibility for understanding the market?
Apk, your mom just called, she said to fuck off with your spam. Go write a program that blocks apk spam ads. Hosts blocking makes sense for people like you with no friends, family, or extra computers. For every one else, using something like pi-hole is a much better solution with stats and white listing. No need to fuck around with many separate hosts files. Why even use your app? Why not use one of the half dozen open source with white listing support that doesn't require installation? Face it, hosts file has its benefits, but you're misrepresenting the benefits like a piece of shit con man.
...they do not alter it further
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!