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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.
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.
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.
There's lots of software around that doesn't show Google ads.
The software (the Vivaldi browser) doesn't show ads. Except when displaying a website that contains ads. (And those will not be shown if the user decides to use some extension that supresses ads.)
The problem here is that Vivaldi would like to advertise it's product using Google AdWords, and can't. And considering that AdWords has a pretty wide reach, that hurts.
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?
No, that's not the way open source software works. The Blink rendering engine is released under the BSD license, and placing instructions for uninstalling the software next to the download link is not a requirement of that licence. Vivaldi is required to fulfil the terms of the licences under which Chromium is released, no more and no less.
Besides, Google isn't even using the Chromium licence to manipulate Vivaldi. They're claiming that Vivaldi isn't meeting the terms of Google AdWords, and is using that to force Vivaldi to jump through hoops.
Google has been abusing its monopoly position with alarming regularity recently, and clearly intervention is necessary. Unfortunately, any intervention will likely be in the form of a fine, which helps nobody. In situations like this the only real solution is to split Google into multiple companies, each of which gets a copy of the search engine code and full data set. The companies can then compete against each other from the same initial starting point. When presented with real competition their ability to be evil is significantly limited.
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
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.
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.
Umm, yes? When you have a monopoly position, different rules apply.
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.