Google has announced that it is cutting off access to the Sync and “other Google Exclusive” APIs from all builds except Google Chrome.

[…] They’re not closing a security hole, they’re just requiring that everyone use Chrome.

Or to put it bluntly, they do not want you to access their Google API functionality without using proprietary software (Google Chrome). There is no good reason for Google to do this, other than to force people to use Chrome.

More info (Google’s shitty explanation/justification): https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-packagers/c/SG6jnsP4pWM (Mirror)

  • poVoq@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 years ago

    Well, playing devils advocate here: how would you feel about this if this was an open-source password manager (which this functionality of Chrome basically is) and the main developer would say: “I don’t feel comfortable with 3rd parties advertising their own modified clients (which I have no way to know if they don’t leak all passwords) as drop in replacements of the official client using the same API”?

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      1·
      4 years ago

      Then I would tell them:

      1. that we all know there’s no warranty on open-source, much less so on some random fork.
      2. to release the server-side code, so that people can host their own servers.
      • tallship@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 years ago

        I think I might say:

        “Please go ahead and bump your version up a notch, we’re fine with just continuing to use it as is, and under the existing license and perhaps, at our option, even forking it”

        eww! That kinda smells like OOo and MySQL and ownCloud to me ;)

        • poVoq@lemmy.ml
          1·
          4 years ago

          Neither of you address the core issue I raised, which is that unsuspecting users utilizing 3rd party clients could be at risk of having their passwords exposed (from Google’s perspective and again playing devels advocate here).