Google’s Plan To DRM The Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

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Google’s Plan To DRM The Web Goes Against Everything Google Once Stood For

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/02/googles-plan-to-drm-the-web-goes-against-everything-google-once-stood-for/

@technology #technoloy #google #wei

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I've been on Firefox for years. Was never much of a problem, but lately there's more and more sites that require a Chromium-based browser. Some of them quite crucial. A list from experience:

  1. My bank's mortgage page
  2. Microsoft Teams - only supports Chrome, safari and edge on MacOs.
  3. Microsoft Office - has weird quirks on MacOs
  4. The new Adobe Express, requires Chrome or Edge
  5. Google Meet - after years google still only supports Chromium-based browsers if you wish to use video effects
  6. Microsoft's new video editing thing

It's not uncommon for such sites to work fine in Firefox if you just add a user agent switcher addon, so that is worth trying (can be limited to specific sites so you advertise Firefox usage for others).

AFAIK Netflix limits resolution on every browser but Edge

See this kind of shit is why I pirate, not because I can't afford to pay $10 a month. When the $10 for a lot of content becomes $10 per month per piece of media you like, and you can't watch it on your platform of choice, and you can't watch it on a flight without paying more or not at all, this makes the $5 per month I pay for a VPN sound like a far better service.

is that true? and why would it be?

It's true. Edge is the only browser with 4K support. They claim it's due to improved HTML5 support, but who knows really. I suspect their content delivery network uses some kind of Microsoft proprietary compression or somesuch. I know old Netflix was Silverlight-based due to their DRM.

They use an Edge-exclusive DRM for 4K video on the web. You can just download the Netflix app from the Microsoft Store instead.

Installing an app also makes it able to collect much more information than constrained in a proper web browser.

Ok, I got it wrong guys

Chrome has won

Let's all go home, install a Chromium-based spyware-laced browser and bow down to our Google overlords.