Remember Ask Jeeves? It's still alive, kinda, and Google seems keen to show it the door once and for all Google wants to eradicate Chrome extensions it believes mislead and misdirect users toward competing search engine Ask.com, though is wary of doing so because of how it may look to antitrust investigators, according to a report on Sunday. That’s the upshot of a spat between the online ad giant and content company IAC, which …
There are a number of issues here. Strangely, to me, it seems like Chrome managed to achieve what Microsoft failed to do with IE during the browser wars. In some cases, actually in reverse. IE is failling by the way side, and now to get at some of the older appliances which have out of date and no firmware upgrades, the only major browsers left are Firefox and Chrome, as IE is seemingly being killed (I think Java updates have an issue) and Edge just didn't work properly... (and is now basically Chrome.) - Given Google's corporate pedigree over Mozillas, it's easy to see why corporates are moving to Chrome.
I do have problems with Firefox on some things, including rendering some pages for the printer. Mozilla seem to have a hard time keeping up with Chrome's development. Some external web sites, including some government web sites, just won't work under Firefox, in particular when some features and add ons, like security card readers are concerned.
So Microsoft dropped the ball, and Mozilla's creds, can't keep up with Chrome in my personal experience. On Linux at home I use a tightened Firefox with security add ons and only paste the URL into Chrome when it fails under Firefox. Unfortunately, that's becoming more the rule than the exception.
And I also have to fall back on Google when DuckDuckGO fails, which is also coming to be more the rule rather than the exception. And I also publish on YouTube, after Vimeo ripped the basic statistics out of its basic channel video list, in favour of a very large analytics engine which doesn't tell me what I want to know. So I stopped paying for the service. Yes... I was paying to put videos on the internet that I didn't earn a penny from. I'm not afraid of paying for my services. But, what do you do?
@msknight : "only paste the URL into Chrome when it fails under Firefox"
I do that too, but I use un-googled Chromium. I'm not completely sure how much it evades Google though. It is advertised as not phoning home, and everything Googly removed. Works with (most/all) Google services I have to use sometimes (Google Docs, Meet, Maps...)
Whoa, did I fall through a time-warp back to 2003 or something?
Alta Vista is still a thing, too. Well, sorta; it redirects to Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle.
Now if you'll pardon me, I have to add some more dancing baloneys, rotating text and sparkly cursor trails to my Geocities home page. It looks incredible at 800x600 in IE6!
BITNet, 1981. Usenet, 1980.
Christensen & Suess's Chicago CBBS went online in 1978.
According to Melinda's history, online VMSHARE started in 1977, running over TYMNET.
Wikipedia mentions Computer Memory in Berkeley, which was a pure computer bulletin board system (log on to a central system and read or post messages; no interactive chat, file downloads, etc) that started in 1973. (I don't recall hearing of Computer Memory before; it's an interesting case.)
Someone may well know of earlier examples of constructs that could reasonably be called (online) "social networks". It depends on your definition, of course. If a community of people of reasonable size, with no other obvious connection (e.g. same employer), could use the system to post and read messages that are public to the community (as opposed to the point-to-point nature of email), and the system is used for social interaction (and not just instrumental communication, e.g. for work), then I think it qualifies. VMSHARE would definitely meet that definition, and I suspect Computer Memory would have.
Fun fact from Wikipedia: Computer Memory was coin-op. You'd deposit a coin into a box attached to the terminal to get access. I'm taking the Wiki article's word for this, but I hope it's true; I love the Futurama feel of a coin-op social network.
Just here to nit-pick/update the info on "Community Memory" (not Computer Memory).
All this is IIRC, of course.
While the organizers were mainly Berkeley folks, and many terminals (originally TTYs, later "glass TTYs"), the actual computer was in San Francisco. Also IIRC, it was an XDS 940 (aka SDS 940) formerly owned by Transamerica. The 940 was a production version of the modified SDS 930 developed at U.C. Berkeley as "Genie" and was pretty popular back in the day (see also "Tymshare")
The "coin op" part was for posting. It was "Free to read. $.25 to write". Imagine how _that_ would be today. "You mean I have to _PAY_ to annoy every internet user?"
I don't know if the group always called themselves "Project One", but at one point they did. One member was Lee Felsenstein, later of the Homebrew Computer Club.
As a company operating on a predatory business of crapware and click fraud, Google's monopoly is the last thing propping them up. Their failure is entirely due to their own mistakes, and I think it probably began before Google was even a public search engine.
So if most of the other browsers have banned their crapware and kicked them off, along with the other precambrian horrors of the earlier net like BonzaiBuddy and that damn Puppy. Chrome should be allowed to do the same, and banish them for cause.
Hell I'll be generous though, lests let the users vote, with the caveat that you ask the people with Ask on their system even know how it got there, or what it is.
If the majority still want it to stay, great, but if not Ask should force uninstall it's crapware and pack it bags.
While normally I would agree with you, this seems like Pot meet Kettle or maybe it is just a case of déjà vu. I mean Google would never do that and redirect you to their browser.
Before Chrome became the dominate browser multiple times I would end up with Chrome as the default browser installed on my work PC along with the google bar on IE set to Google search. Because after being prompted to upgrade I updated Adobe PDF viewer to the latest version, and it would install them. You would flip through the installer and not notice it was going to install Chrome and Google Bar. I know you were given a choice, but the default was to install them as the checkboxes were ticked. I was caught out a few times as I am sure many others were.
So, while normally I would agree with you in this case turnabout is fair play. Ask is just following Google’s playbook.
I think that's the wrong way of going about it. If it's bad to do that kind of behavior, and both have done it, then there should be a penalty for both, not an acceptance of both. I might not care if each was making the other the victim and the fight was internal, but each is making money off installing adware onto computers of third parties who didn't agree to this. Both should have to pay for each time that happened. Even though that's never going to happen, a step which prevents it happening in future is a good step.
@doublelayer you may be right. I just can’t see it that way.
If Google had stopped because they had been forced to and or punished, I would agree and they would have every right to complain. But they stopped because they had achieved browser dominance they very thing those actions were meant to achieve whether or not they helped.
As I said you maybe right and I can't see it that way. But I will concede you are the better man :)
I remember Ask quite well. Useless wrappers and hijackers. How about just giving us an option in Chrome to block IAC? Put it in the expert settings so that it obviously not Chrome/Google pushing the idea that IAC are well-known leeches that probably help spread infections.
Regarding the sins of Google vs. Ask, they are qualitatively different in my opinion. Google does provide something useful. I never felt I received anything of value from Ask, and I've never felt I was fighting active infections from Google they way I felt I was battling to keep Ask off of machines I've been responsible for.
Secretly installing toolbars is like using a gun in a crime. That is a behavior that has crossed a line.
It does annoy me that every time I use a google provided site (Gmail etc) with another browser (eg Edge) then it tells me to install Chrome which they say is better...
Sounds like some of these plugins are crap but Google are right to worry about anti-trust. They are already treading a very thin line.
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