Email is a pretty insecure protocol as it is. From what I am aware, you can only get a certain level of security/privacy when sending cross domain emails, so we cannot get the same level of privacy as we would with Matrix or Signal. It's getting the best security you can with a medium we and the world are unfortunately dependent on.
I'm very security minded and email is a really tricky one. I've moved search and browser easy. I moved from Android to GrapheneOS. Email I am more reluctant because I have had it a very long time. I have been trailing Proton Mail for about 8 months now and have been very happy with this. I'm now at the place to migrate most of my activity towards it. The only hesitation I have is probably banking, which may lag behind, but it is always about taking steps on this journey. I am in a weening process ;).
It's a big and stressful transition and people will go at whatever pace they are comfortable. As long as we all work together and support each other through this journey, awesome.
I don't know enough about Proton alternatives so I am more reluctant. Proton is a combination of credible yet trustworthy that works for me, but as I say, everyone has different levels of comfort.
Most countries have anti-monopoly agencies. Whether they are of a mind to take action or not is another question entirely. Sometimes they are absolutely toothless. I miss the days when they used to do stuff like when MS was prevented from forcing browser/search engine (I cannot remember which) by default etc.
We absolutely should try to lobby as much as we can to nudge them to act, but I don't think we can rely on government agencies alone. MS recent acquisition shows that agencies are either not motivated, or not competent enough to oppose tech giants.
I think most of what you have said is reasonable.
I think the concern I have is in what they said they will do. That is quite disturbing, and unless they are lying, that is where their intention is. Combined with web manifest v3, it's clear they are quite motivated and they have a long term plan here. They're dropping it piece by piece perhaps to remove opposition to it. Rather than stab someone to death, it'll be death by papercuts. My view is we should take the paper off them now based on what we know, rather than waiting until they kill someone.
My concerns is beyond extensions, it's when it goes towards browsers, and operating systems. My concerns is with the focus on attestation, is this is going to have the potential to tie in to TPM and could be potentially used for fingerprinting based on hardware regardless of what you try to do. There is a number of things in motion that independently seem benign but when combined together, are absolutely disturbing. Giving google control over what is and isn't approved is dangerous. They simply cannot be trusted.
I don't think MS implemented it. It's chromium, they just took the code base. Some browsers actively removed it, but when you're based on chromium, you start with the code that google gives you.
MS taking a codebase and doing nothing with it logically makes no sense to imply that Firefox will purposely resource and write code contrary to web freedoms.
Whether they implement in web search is speculation, they'd be purposefully downranking companies in search for not implementing something that cost them revenue excluding their customers. It would be google vs companies, and it wouldn't be pretty.
Either way, state your position. Are you suggesting people should roll over and take it, or move to Firefox, because all this side debate is doing nothing useful.
So your suggestion is hopefully later, google will allow extensions even though their proposals are against it. This is the company that rolled out web manifest v3, a proposal to limit and remove extensions. Their past actions have demonstrated motives opposite to what you are implying could happen. It's entirely wishful thinking.
Google may want to place themselves judge and jury of what software is allowed on a computer, but anyone of sane mind should not be considering allowing them.
HTTPS already prevents man in the middle attacks and changes to the website content to protect users. This is to protect companies from users. It's horrific and an attack on the web freedoms that have so long been held.
Right now they make money from google for default search because they pay the most. Previously they went Yahoo and could go bing. They did not implement web manifest v3, so you're insinuation isn't based in fact. Plus, this has nothing to do with search, it is to do with after search when on a website.
I think Authy is worth checking out if you want to get away from Google, but there are FOSS alternatives that hopefully someone else can mention as my knowledge ain't great in this area.
They have already opposed it, and your speculation based on your dislike of their CEO probably isn't helpful. It's against the open web and Mozilla has no incentive to implement this. It's something only an ad company would be keen on.
I'm not from the states, but yeah, definitely worth doing for US residents, we need to take every front possible in this battle.
No government has the balls to act. More accurately, the lobbyists seem to be quite effective and the politicians often spineless and self-serving.
We'll hit them where it hurts. Market share. Google, you're no longer trusted to dictate web standards anymore. Websites must support Firefox as well as chrome. We need Firefox to have enough market share that companies wouldn't risk losing x% of their userbase and therefore revenues.
I don't think Firefox's position is unreasonable here. Ultimately, the old way of distributing copy-write content wasn't going to work. Companies that had right to something, couldn't easily distribute it without a large risk of piracy and a tanking of revenues. Having a sandbox around proprietary shite made sense and protected users privacy while also enabling the content providers to maintain their asset.
Removing ad blocks is a wholly different ball game. Google obviously has a stake in it because YT is funded by ads. Maybe some ad driven content providers also, but subscription driven services don't have the same need for that. It does seem an unholy alliance between content providers and big tech has been formed and it could be something at play again.