I once read that Chrome was created by former Firefox developers. Google is infamous for its code reuse.
Many web commentators continually sound the alarm on Google's increasing leverage and control over a variety of "components" or "intrastructure" essential to the www.
But controlling the browser is, I think, the ultimate control over the web as users know it. Browsers seem to fall outside the purview of www standards. Are there RFCs that tell people what browsers must or should do? More likely, there are standards that focus on servers and seek to accomodate whatever browsers are doing at the time.
The browser can override anything. It can easily modify user intent in subtle, "hidden" ways. It can rewrite "default behaviour" overnight.
To give an example, users probably think little of something like the feature known as "Omnibox", if they even know what that is, but this sort of browser "feature" is of enormous value to a company trying to gather information on what users are looking for.
Imagine the number of DNS queries this bypasses, redirecting what is typed by the user to a default search engine, conveniently preset to point to a Google server.
Many web commentators continually sound the alarm on Google's increasing leverage and control over a variety of "components" or "intrastructure" essential to the www.
But controlling the browser is, I think, the ultimate control over the web as users know it. Browsers seem to fall outside the purview of www standards. Are there RFCs that tell people what browsers must or should do? More likely, there are standards that focus on servers and seek to accomodate whatever browsers are doing at the time.
The browser can override anything. It can easily modify user intent in subtle, "hidden" ways. It can rewrite "default behaviour" overnight.
To give an example, users probably think little of something like the feature known as "Omnibox", if they even know what that is, but this sort of browser "feature" is of enormous value to a company trying to gather information on what users are looking for.
Imagine the number of DNS queries this bypasses, redirecting what is typed by the user to a default search engine, conveniently preset to point to a Google server.