--- title: "Big Tech Is Winning the Web" categories: - blog abstract: Big Tech became the standarizing body for the web date: 2023-04-02T15:55:49+02:00 year: 2023 draft: false tags: - Internet - big-tech - W3 - Firefox - Google - Netflix - Youtube --- *on a train back to [Cracow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w)* This time the train is much more modern. {{}} In the meantime, Hacker News pointed me to an [article](https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/web/AvoidingHTTP3ForNow) by Chris Siebenmann: > If you can't reach us because of something in your ISP, we have a problem; if you can't reach GMail for the same reason, your ISP has a problem. I am also afraid of how much big tech has become the de facto standard body for the internet. Let's face it: whatever Google does, anyone will have to go along with it. Netflix and YouTube already broke any chance for a new modern rendering engine by mobbing for the introduction of DRM. We've already seen YT breaking Firefox by ignoring standards and going all-in with Chrome. We need a standardizing body that is entirely not backed by any existing player or government. W3 was like that, but nowadays, they are nothing but a husk of their former self. Firefox foundation no longer focuses on the browser but on [completely random initiatives](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/what-we-fund/). We are *this* close to losing the web. As end-users, we can do very little. [Not using Chrome](https://notochrome.org/) is a great start. Some of us working in the tech environment have a moral obligation always to convince people of power for open standards. And most importantly, if you publish on the web, you should have a webpage. Not a FB profile, but an actual, classic, good website. And since we're on the subject, [Indieweb](https://indieweb.org/) is a very cool initiative.