Honestly, if the app was open-source so we can check it does not leak data, I would probably have no issue with it.

Making it a separate app makes sense if google wants to allow other apps to re-use the code. No reason to have the same functionality bundled into each app separately.

And the feature, as long as it is configurable, seems useful.

The auto-install is bad but understandable. As far as I am aware, there is no easy way to mark an app as a dependency of another app so it gets automatically installed only when needed. This should be fixed, but auto-install for all is not terrible temporary solution. This does not apply when the app is closed source and may steal your data.

Again? Didn’t they try this once already?

Ah, right. Thanks.

Seems to me like names were censored in the released slack screenshots (except the CEO). Were there uncensored screenshots that I missed or that were deleted?

Anyone using a good proton drive alternative?

I run Synology NAS at home and I love it, but it was expensive to set up.

Other extreme is Syncthing for completely free device sync, but no backup beyond your devices and both devices must be online to sync.

I self-hosted Nextcloud on cloudamo with Cryptomator for e2ee but I can’t really recommend it. Nextcloud is pain to administer and tends to be buggy.

More accurately, it traps any web crawler

More accurately, it does not trap any competent crawlers, which have per domain limits on how many pages they crawl.

Right, so if you massively extend your proposal, it could maybe make sense to a nontechnical person. Congratulations. Your original idea of just blocking google is still stupid and counterproductive to your stated goal.

Anyway, the real issue isn’t lack of competitors. It is vendor lock-in and lack of independent data backups. It would take significant effort for most companies to migrate from one cloud provider to another, since different providers use slightly different, incompatible technologies. And of course, if a cloud provider went down suddenly, a lot of data would be lost.

There is 0% possibility the US gov could do it covertly.

Sure, they could force it overtly but the rest of the world would have forks of Browsers like 15 minutes after it went through.

Besides, there is no need to go after the browsers. If you want a fake cert for a few days, EU has trusted certificate authorities just like the US that can issue a cert for any website (CAs are usually not restricted to specific TLDs). The CA would just get removed from browsers within days, same as browsers being replaced.

PS: Btw, iTrusChina is also a trusted CA. If the US is not concerned about their main adversary, China, forging certificates, why should EU be worried about an ally doing so?

How do you not see, that banning one company would just increase the monopoly the remaining companies hold?

Google is not even the largest cloud provider. Amazon’s AWS has 30%, Microsoft’s Azure 20%, Google is third with 12%.

You can’t “bust monopolies” by reducing the number of options. You need to increase the number of competitiors.

How does pushing people from google to Amazon/Microsoft cloud achieve that? Or do you expect people and companies will magically not need cloud services anymore?

Ok, I disagree, but let’s say it wouldn’t. You admit yourself it would still be hard. What is the advantage of doing it? What is that mythical “progress” of yours, that would be achieved by blocking google cloud, as opposed to just search and whatever other problematic service?

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without either sparking a cyberwar or building something like the great firewall of China

You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. America does not have any more or less of an ability to forge certificates compared to Europe.

Not wanting to live in a surveillance state is not religious, it’s common fucking sense.

Progress towards what? People migrating to equally scummy Amazon and Microsoft? What possible progress could blocking google bring, that it would be worth people potentially going without paychecks because accounting sw was not working. Or being unable to access services because they register with gmail they can no longer access. Factories shutting down because their logistics tracked everything in a google spreadsheet they can no longer access and have no backup.

Not to mention people who could outright die if some hospital software somewhere relies on some google service.

So we come full circle. The government having the ability to impersonate a site is exactly what I believe must not happen.

If the EU wants to create search.eu or any other search site, more power to them. I certainly wouldn’t use it, but hey, if you want to trust them, you can.

If they want to block google search… Eeeeh… I guess that is fine?

But they shouldn’t be able to create a fake certificate for google.com or any site for that matter, not only allowing them to impersonate the site, but also intercept encrypted traffic between users and that site.

So no. Governments should not control the TLS infrastructure.

What does that have to do with TLS?

What “normal solutions” are actually in progress with any real potential of happening?

Fines.

Besides, your solution is in progress or “has better chance” of happening? Wake the fuck up.

Meanwhile what insane doomsday scenario do you think would happen if Google services were banned

Google runs 12% of all cloud services through google cloud. Yes, I expect a “doomsday scenario” if you just shut that down.

and people had the given period to find alternatives?

Sure, give people and companies 5-10 years to migrate and it will probably be fine in terms of chaos, though I would still be very interested to know how many billions of € would the migration cost.

Even more reason to have relatively neutral organizations transparently curate the list of trusted CAs. While I am sure governments also closely monitor the process and would step in if they deemed it a threat.

When looking at the relative difference between cost of your solution, it’s benefits and cost of normal solutions, yes. It is extremely similar.

But go ahead nitpicking my exact choice of comparison instead of addressing the glaring issue with your argument.