Recently,

extrait : "Google today announced a major new initiative around its Chrome browser that will, in the long run, introduce significant changes to how Chrome handles cookies and enhance its users’ privacy across the web. (...) “We’ve been thinking a lot about this topic for a while and think it’s really important that users have transparent choice and control over how they are tracked over the web,” Google’s web platform lead Ben Galbraith said in an interview ahead of the announcement. (...)"

I think what Google is doing is full BS. There is something special when it comes to Chrome. Indeed, with Chrome derives a lot of power by controlling both sides on every internet request, both the client side with Chrome and the server side with the Google index, maps and so on. This power is unheard of when you think that even convicted-monopolist Microsoft couldn't boast it : indeed Internet Explorer was purely a client-side thing.

And yet Microsoft is a good example of how you get and maintain power over what people can do with their computers. That's the defaults. That's whatever Microsoft or Google choose to be the default option. And it does not matter whether there is some UI that can actually change the default since we know almost no one is knowledgeable enough these days to make those changes knowingly.

So instead of setting defaults that go in favor of the immense wealth derived from this client+server control and providing whatever UI to let anyone make a change on their computer, any organisation that claims to defend the general interest should sue Google until they take defaults that are in the interest of the general interest, not to Google.

This would have a lot more impact to the general public, when you know that Europe's latest lawsuit claiming up to 4 billion dollars against Google, Google will get back any one of those dollars paid by their clients, by increasing prices, because prices can be freely set in Europe. So that's not hitting them in the slightest. You can even argue that Europe suits are Google's best friends, Google's chosen enemy if you will.