Technology @lemmy.world dantheclamman @lemmy.world 4 mo. ago

Google.com pages found to have access to hidden Chrome API allowing hardware info such as CPU usage to be viewed

simonwillison.net hangout_services/thunk.js

It turns out Google Chrome (via Chromium) includes a default extension which makes extra services available to code running on the `*.google.com` domains - tweeted about today [by Luca Casonato](https://twitter.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018), …

h/t @simon@simonwillison.net https://fedi.simonwillison.net/@simon/112757810519145581

33 comments

Google web services take advantage of an API that only Google knows about.

Completely unsurprising. Google should have been given the anti-trust treatment long ago. There's not a saving us because the ones to save us are completely complicit. And people who write independent browsers will be smacked back down by having places like YouTube throttle them.
- In the comments its not just chrome that is affected.
  
  Its apparently all Chromium browsers.
  
  Isn't chromium open source? How are the APIs a secret?
  
  including Vanadium?
  
  Kind of. Vivaldi let's you turn it off though. Privacy, disable meet extension.
- This is why we need to all back firefox...
  
  I dont care if the CEO sucks, or if they have some opt-out anti-features....
  
  Chrome monopoly is a far greater threat
- Google should have been given the anti-trust treatment long ago
  
  Lina Khan on the horizon looming ominously.
- People are conditioned by Windows to treat it as normal that they are using something developed by a hostile entity, but that entity is kinda benevolent and doesn't do ... what it can always do and no one will notice for a few months or years.
  
  I switched to Linux being 16, so - still sufficiently maximalist to just believe that it shouldn't be this way at all. (Still I have Chromium installed and sometimes use it, so same situation as everyone.)
  
  For sane adult people it's hard to just say no to unhygienic parts of tech, at least in their own mind, because IRL of course you can't get rid of everything bad.
Remember this thumb rule -> if it's not open-source, you are allowing the software to do whatever it wants to do.

No regulation, law, support group is going to help you. You are digging your own grave.
- I agree, but... This was in open source software. Chromium. Not just Google Chrome. https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/422c736b82e7ee763c67109cde700db81ca7b443
  
  hangout_services/thunk.js (via) It turns out Google Chrome (via Chromium) includes a default extension which makes extra services available to code running on the *.google.com domains - tweeted about today by Luca Casonato, but the code has been there in the public repo since October 2013 as far as I can tell.
  
  https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/
- This is included in the chromium source code which is public
  
  https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/128.0.6586.1/chrome/browser/resources/hangout_services/thunk.js
- If it's any software you didn't write yourself or audit every line of...
  
  For a typical Linux distro that's tens of thousands of packages...
  
  I am no expert on code-auditing. But I'm slightly at peace that there are 100s of experts looking at the code because it's open-source. But i also understand mistakes can still happen. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best solution so far.
Hopefully no one comes in here and tells me Firefox does shit like this as well... I just swapped back.
- Firefox doesn't have a huge number of pages like Google does. The problem is collusion between browser and websites run by the same company.
This is not new news lol

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