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Linux users are more likely than most to be familiar with Chromium, Google's the free and open source web project that serves as the basis for their wildly popular Chrome. Since the project's inception over a decade ago, users have been able to compile the BSD licensed code into a browser that's almost the same as the closed-source Chrome. As such, most distributions offer their own package for the browser and some even include it in the base install. Unfortunately, that may be changing soon.
[...] To the average Chromium user, this doesn't sound like much of a problem. In fact, you might even assume it doesn't apply to you. The language used in the post makes it sound like Google is referring to browsers which are spun off of the Chromium codebase, and at least in part, they are. But the search giant is also using this opportunity to codify their belief that the only official Chromium builds are the ones that they provide themselves. With that simple change, anyone using a distribution-specific build of Chromium just became persona non grata.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 27 2021, @06:04PM (3 children)
So, I feel like in all the talk of breaking up facebook, we haven't collectively come up with any plausible solutions to the perverse incentives created by the network effect.
How do you make a platform not automatically better "because that's where your friends are"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 27 2021, @06:11PM (1 child)
I have no idea. So far, I prefer to just bash people for being stupid, and say things like "if you hate it so much, then why are you still using it? How stupid."
Seriously, it's not like people can't change: go back to ~2000, and the dominant social network then was MySpace. Facebook was some upstart that only some college kids used. Well, that "that's where all my friends are" factor sure didn't save MySpace from becoming completely irrelevant while Facebook became the dominant network and one of the highest valued corporations in the world. So ultimately, this is due to the people: they give FB its power by continuing to use it, and refusing to use anything else. But as I said before, this may be temporary: from what I've read, the GenZers hate FB and only have (inactive) accounts on there because their grandparents insist on using it to keep tabs on them, and they use other things to communicate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 27 2021, @06:49PM
That's the hope, but the reality... well, it's grim [statista.com]
Especially since where the fleers fled to was instagram, a facebook app.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @03:02PM
I think the idea with Diaspora was to create a method for the networks to network. That is, basically make social networking like email.
Sure, everyone is using hotmail as it is the best, but if google wanted to make a competing service, they could try.
If they did, it would be able to communicate with users of hotmail because they share a common communication protocol underneath.