we had an intern ask AI what it could to to completely enshittify the browser. the AI simply responded, "put me in coach!"
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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You know how we thought " How could chrome get any worse?" well, we have an answer.
Are these fucks stupid? Chromium is open sourced. They can do it themselves
They don't want to buy the browser. They want to buy the brand and the users. Chrome makes up over half the browser market. Think of all the data they could extract from Chrome users. It would cost significantly more to fork chromium and grow the user base to a point where they could extract anything valuable from them, and that's assuming they'd be successful enough to make it happen.
There is no way Google would sell Chrome. But you can bet at least a thousand engineers are working on bolting Gemini onto it right now.
There's no way Google would voluntarily sell Chrome. Unfortunately for them, they might be forced to sell Chrome.
No, MS just wants to expand their monopoly, but "MS buying most common browser, after antitrust laws already forbid internet explorer" doesnt ring so well.
I suspect Altman has ambitions beyond being Microsoft's cat's paw, though it may be that that's all he really is once the shouting is over.
Existing userbase
I like to think if people want whatever it is OpenAI thinks browsers need AI for, the userbase will manifest itself.
Validating my years old decision to use Firefox
Great! Now not only can chrome eat all my system memory, it can use all my GPU memory at the same time! It's genius!
Likely it'll use the cloud for processing, you'll just get really hard-to-opt-out AI features, like "prompt by default" and "AI autocomplete", which you can only "snooze" as they'll automatically be turned back on the moment there's a "great new feature", like putting a filter on by default on image generators to fool the eye that it's made by real artists.
When a company considers buying Chrome because it could help them extend the reach of their product, they are fucking drunk and need to go home. This would be like buying the state of Nevada so you could put up billboards all over Las Vegas.
Isn't Google going to do it themselves?
WTF? Just download it for free.
This can't happen. Not because I think google is doing a wonderful job, but it's got serious market share now. Basically a monopoly. It needs to leave the hands of for profit companies and be transitioned to a foundation.
Well, killing off Chrome would probably be a good thing.
And if you thought there was some natural end point to enshittification, here's your evidence that there's no such thing.
Chome is already dead... it's just a zombie.
I’ve said this before and will say it again. The only tech companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are Canonical and its equivalents.
Isn't Canonical up to some crummy schemes, too?
Sure but not by at least an order of magnitude
Why connect to the Internet with it then. The browser could just make everything up on the fly.
Got questions about a medication?
Maybe you want to check up on some disease symptoms?
AI can make something that sounds vaguely plausible.
Why use head if you can use ChatGPT. Remove head and start working smarter.
Why connect to the Internet with it then
To check if your subscription to their models is still valid of course
And send back telemetry and training data.
AKA all of your personal data, you know, just in case we need it
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Sounds like the best thing that could happen to Firefox
Firefox, the software mainly driven by Mozilla, which is heavily investing in AI and ads ventures? That Firefox?
But, maybe "it will be different this time", I guess.
Unfortunately, Mozilla is investing a ton of money into AI, too.
Mozilla works mainly on LOCAL AI not this corporate trash like closedAI
Look into Waterfox instead.
That really doesn't solve the problem, like every other Firefox fork they're completely dependent on Firefox. You can't just make a new webbrowser just like that, and while third party developers can certainly disable some anti-features, there are limits to that and they can definitely not do the basic work that the Firefox devs do (or could do, if Mozilla had different priorities).
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Mozilla spinning off control of its development to an independent group the way they did with Thunderbird would be the best thing that could happen to Firefox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird :
Operated by MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, Thunderbird is an independent, community-driven project that is managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird community.
Chrome self-destructing because of stupidity like AI would only ever manage to be a close second, at best.
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OpenAI is like a zombie stumbling around trying to infect everything. We shove it away because it’s fuckin’ gross and we want nothing to do with it, while the bosses that reanimated it are like “well fuck, we made this thing, we have to use it for something.”
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