I think we can all think of potential futures. I don't see why this one is particularly likely. Google has open sourced the guts of its browser so others can make non-Google controlled browsers, and they fund one of the two only real competitors to their browser.
> you can't open the link with your non-chromium browser of choice - it's been built on tech provided by google, and google says: You can only use chrome to view this site.
That part is particularly likely because that's literally what Web Environment Integrity does.
Can you speak plainly? I don't think that is literally what it is. That might be a side-effect, but I'd need to see some evidence of that being the case.
WEI is a way to cryptographically prove to a remote website that you're really browsing it with an unmodified build of Chrome. Google hasn't said out loud yet that it's going to be used to block other browsers, but what else is there to use it for?
The use it to validate if the browser you are using is one of their signed binaries.
Of course the original intention was to detect fraudulent ad clicks, but the reality will that you will be met by captchas every step of the way if you dare to compile your own binary.
> It would provide websites with an API telling them whether the browser and the platform it is running on that is currently in use is trusted by an authoritative third party (called an attester).
> The proposal threatens the free and open internet in a number of ways, but one of the biggest revolves around the fact that should there be a central server that attests to whether a browser can be trusted or not, it means that anything non-standard will not be trusted. In other words, new browsers would not be trusted, and legacy software would no longer be able to access much of the internet after a certain length of time. Given that it verifies the integrity of the browser, it could also technically block certain extensions (such as Adblock) if Google were to go down that route.
I understand what it could be used for - DNS and PKI as centralised structures could also be used to block things. Parler was kicked off all cloud platforms for political reasons.
But that doesn't mean that its sole purpose is to verify that you're using an official Chrome build.
It's being used to be able to tell bots from humans. A human will be required to run a browser with proper attestation that they're a human. It can be used for good (prevent bots from accessing the site) and bad (prevent humans from using anything but chrome).
> WEI is a way to cryptographically prove to a remote website that you're really browsing it with an unmodified build of Chrome
What you're saying (and what I read) appears much more general than that. It could be used to block anything but official builds of Chrome, but that doesn't mean that's what it's for.
The thread makes this clear. I'm arguing that "You can only use chrome to view this site." is not the only use. You seem to be agreeing, but adversarially.
People can fork Google Chrome, yet none has done this so far. Not counting pretty GUI or some integrated extensions as a fork really. Google Chromium is genius marketing idea, hats off to the people who invented it, they convinced even programmers that there is some mythical "independent" Chromium project and anyone can fork it. Well, theoretically it is possible, but practically - not so much. The strategy is so successful that not even anti-monopoly departments aren't that interested in it.
Easy check - does Chromium project makes independent decisions and diverges from the decisions Chrome makes? Meaning, is it a true fork (disregarding who was first/original for a second) or not? So far it seems that everything Google pushes happens both in Chrome and Chromium. I mean significant decisions, like protocol support, rendering, etc. Sure, they cut out their spyware from it, just to please anti-monopoly organizations, but that's about all. Chromium is a puppet entity, existing only for Google's sake.
