Top all-time · #5524
Samuel Maddock
Personal blog · blog.samuelmaddock.comprogrammingwebbusiness
Samuel Maddock's personal blog at blog.samuelmaddock.com covers programming, web and business. Since 2019, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Samuel Maddock's posts on Google's Widevine DRM, including his account of being refused a license for his browser, as evidence of Google gatekeeping browsers and streaming apps.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me10 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2019-04-02
- The End of Indie Web Browsers: You Can (Not) Compete2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-01-08
- /widevine/gmail-thread.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-10-21
What Hacker News says?
> smaller players to come together and form an open-source working group based on a chromium fork Google can and does use DRM to block even this from happening: https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked... Even Mozilla needed to license Widevine from Google to support modern video: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm Based on the policy evidenced in Maddock's post, it seems impossible…
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users”Submitted I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me as a story · 1920 points
HN discussionI don't think so. See "I tried creating a web browser, and Google blocked me" [0] and the related HN discussion [1]. [0] https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849800
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time”Submitted I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019) as a story · 479 points
HN discussionoh man. I need to find some time to write about how bad it is. The gnarliness spans the whole stack. From weird java-applet like API escalation behavior if chrome is detected (e.g. Google properties feature gate a ton around this) to how there is not even a clear way to get a DRM license for a custom browser without waiting for Google indefinitely [1]. Here's a challenge: fire up a chromium fork and get it to run a…
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony”Submitted The End of Indie Web Browsers: You Can (Not) Compete as a story · 47 points
HN discussionAt the time of the article, Chromium Edge hadn't been released yet with PlayReady CDM integrated. The followup article I wrote elaborates on these options further. https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-br...
Comment linking /posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/
on “I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)”Submitted I lost 50k Chrome extension users after adding required permissions as a story · 5 points
HN discussionBlog post author here. Since this post, there's now an option available for DRM-enabled Electron. However, it's only available through a single vendor, castLabs [0]. This is a closed source, downstream effort which means no modifications can be made to Electron itself. All changes must make it upstream to show up in this fork. When asked whether they would eventually merge it upstream, they didn't provide a clear an…
Comment linking /posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/
on “I tried creating a web browser and Google blocked me (2019)”Submitted The End of Indie Web Browsers: You Can (Not) Compete (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> What would it take? All the developers in the world combined can not solve a legal problem. You can't implement technologies like Widevine without a license, and if they simply won't give you one [0], you're dead in the water. [0]: https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked...
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Introducing a new HTML element – welcome <clippy>”The issue I ran into was in acquiring the necessary licenses that you mentioned. Verified Media Path (VMP) can be used to verify the authenticity of the browser platform. I believe it uses public key cryptography for identification by Widevine's license servers. It seems like it would be trivial for Widevine to revoke access if there were ever abuse. I have more details in a blog post I wrote last month. https://blo…
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain”>Google bought widevine last year. Google bought widewine in 2010 >Google didn't invent that particular DRM, but now that it's widespread, they have bought it outright. It invented most of it, in the last 10 years it owned widevine. As for how open widevine is: >I'm sorry but we're not supporting an open source solution like this https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/widevine/gmail-thread.html Or as Brian Bondy, of Brave,…
Comment linking /widevine/gmail-thread.html
on “FLoC Away from Chrome”With measures like this, Google is actively preventing new, independent browsers from ever scaling on their own. Want to sign in to Google? Use one of the selected browsers with a significant, existing market share. But first though, are you actually human? Let's see if your browser is compatible with our reCAPTCHA service. [0] Oh, you wanted to watch something on Netflix? I hope your browser is approved by Google f…
Comment linking /posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/
on “Starting January 4 Google will block sign-ins from embedded browser frameworks”Much good that "open source" will do you if you can't get a Widevine license from Google. https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked... And this bullshit even before "Pax Chromana". Imagine the things to come. It's like we've learned nothing.
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Google Antitrust Notes”Try making a web browser that supports Widevine (Google's DRM for web browsers) and see how far you get. Back in 2019, someone tried exactly this and was blocked by Google as they didn't want another web browser on the market: https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked...
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Lawsuit aiming to break up Facebook group Meta can go ahead, US court rules”> That is, truly onerous monopolies don't just own a vast majority of some market share. They hamper the ability to switch to another product. The article explains how Google through Chrome's dominance is doing and did exactly this via webstandards for DRM despite most of chrome being completely open-source via chromium. Because Chrome has such a large footprint, it become much easier for google to make a non-standa…
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?”> and meets certain baseline requirements I also wonder what those certain baseline requirements are going to be? Weird that they're left ambiguous. It's probably nothing to worry about. We have a ton of precedent with Widevine that "it's okay, we'll license to anyone who meets requirements" wouldn't ever be abused[0]. It's fine, you just meet the baseline requirements that aren't spelled out yet and that might be s…
Comment linking /posts/google-widevine-blocked-my-browser/
on “Web Environment Integrity API”i get the idea that google wants to keep widevine away from open source. This fellow developing a streaming app attempts to gain license for widevine usage, and google says sorry we are not doing that right now. https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/widevine/gmail-thread.html
Comment linking /widevine/gmail-thread.html
on “Disney+ Currently Won't Work on Linux Systems Due to Tightened DRM”
