For a company that ’s stare down three separateantitrust casesfromseveral 12 statesand theDepartment of Justice , Google for certain seems pretty comfortable issuingupdateafterupdatethat is nothing less than dictatorial . The latest example come good manners of a Google Docs pinch that on one helping hand make the political platform rapid and smoother , but comes at the price of an accessible , open internet .
Midas Nouwens , a Denmark - based professor who specializes infinding flawsin data protective cover Torah like Europe’sGDPR , first flag the Docs update in aTwitter threadThursday daybreak . As he repoint out , theactual updatelooks , well , reasonably wearisome : Over the next few months , Google said it plans to swap out the static hypertext mark-up language moxie presently supporting its Docs product for one that ’s build using a code calledcanvas .
Googlesaysthe move is imply to “ meliorate body in how content appears across different platform , ” and by all account , it should . Compared to its clunky static HTML counterpart , canvass - ground Google Docs will be able to render complicated shape and squiggle with more speeding and precision . The update should also make these render more consistent , meaning those squiggle will appear the same for any person on any gadget .
Photo: Robyn Beck (Getty Images)
Of course , these buffs follow with a jolly large catch that Google — to its credit — really alludes to in its blog post . “ We do n’t carry this modification to bear on the functionality of the features in Docs , ” the company wrote . “ However , this may affect some Chrome extensions , where they may no longer work as stand for . ”
Google ’s web log did n’t clear up exactly what “ shock ” or “ some ” or “ body of work ” mean in this linguistic context , but Nouwens ’s thread did .
If you ’ve ever used an extension service likeGrammarlyorBeeline Reader , then you cognize how smoothly a Google Chrome telephone extension can interact with a yield Doc . The agency these platform operate is bymanipulatingwhat ’s known as a Document Object Model , or DOM , which basically constitute a structured skeleton of a given web page . By tweaking unlike function of that skeletal frame , these extensions are able to change what you ’re reckon in your document , all in actual - time .
And as Nouwens pointed out , the DOM not only prosperous for extensions to access , but really anyone . It literally takestwo or three clicks . The fact that these bones are such a breeze to entree does n’t only mean that developers can easy whip upcountless extensionsto poke at them , but it also give non - programmer the freedom to deviseelaborate pranks , ringway paywalls , and do … whateverthis is .
This standardisation , availability , and nakedness intend that anyone can do control over their WWW experience through code.https://t.co/Yz194Q2lkpis a beautiful model of how originative people get to visually alter their unremarkable browsing experience 4/7
— @email protectedMay 13 , 2021
Swapping out this arrangement for a canvas version means leaving these Doc - tweaking prolongation without the roadmap they ’ve been relying on to actually do that Doc - tweaking . This could have dire consequences for Chrome extensions because , unlike the DOM , canvass hit the computer code tweaks untouchable . “ It will unilaterally kill many extensions people use today , ” Nouwenswrote .
As a surrogate , Google ’s blog suggest that affected developers download a series ofGoogle - owned toolsthat accomplish ( most ) of the same role . In other words , Google ’s offering developers a sleeker , loyal system , but at the price of the little mastery they have provide . ( We ’ve strain out to Google for comment and will update when we learn back . )
“ In the context of the larger power battle around who gets to set our everyday digital experience — hashtag interoperability , digital contest , program power — this is a concrete example of technical enclosure , ” Nouwenswrote . Rather than an open system , he depart on , “ you now have to employ a Google maintained one to negotiate the design of the software . Interoperability and inspectability substitute with centralisation and obfuscation . ” In other words , Googlejust being Google .
Alphabet Inc. Cloud applicationsComputingGoogleGoogle ChromeGoogle Docssoftware
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