Fix the problem, not my computer

I can’t reach apps on my own local network anymore — apps I built with my own time and effort — because somebody at Google made a decision, and the answer to that decision is that I use a different web browser.

That’s where I am. An application I downloaded off the internet, running in a Docker container on another computer in my house, doesn’t load in my browser. I don’t even use Chrome. I use ungoogled Chromium, and it’s still Google’s engine underneath, so their decision came along with it. To use my own app I have to fire up Safari in a second window. Somebody at Google decided I need to change my code to make it work for their software — software I installed on my computer. I can’t get around it without hacking my own machine.

That is ridiculous, and it is wrong. And it’s not a Mac problem. It’s a Google problem.

If it’s a security problem, fix the security problem

The reasoning, as far as I can tell, is security: a public website shouldn’t be able to use your browser to poke at the router and the boxes on your home network. Fine. That’s a real problem. Google’s fix is called Local Network Access, on by default as of Chrome 142, and it came with a quieter experiment that blocks typing a private IP address straight into the address bar and reports it as a generic network error. I’m not the only one it caught.

But look at the shape of the fix. Nothing about the actual problem got solved. Instead, a rule got pushed down onto my computer, onto software I wrote, on a network I own, and the burden of making it work again landed on me. Not on the people who made the decision. On me.

That’s not fixing a security issue. That’s making unilateral decisions about my computing infrastructure.

It’s the same move every time

Their motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Now they break things on purpose.

This isn’t the first time. It’s the pattern. First they locked out third-party Android apps and developers: every app on a certified Android phone has to come from a developer who has registered with Google, even if it never goes near their store. Now this.

Nobody can host their own email anymore except Google and a handful of others. I didn’t ask for that.

Search used to work. You could type a dentist’s name and his address and get the answer right at the top. Now it’s on the fifth page.

And on top of all of that, your software doesn’t work unless you make the changes they are forcing you to make. I didn’t ask them to build this twenty years ago, and I didn’t ask them to take the internet apart with it. Every time the answer is the same: instead of fixing the core problem, make a dumb unilateral decision and let everyone else absorb the cost.

It’s just more control. That’s the opposite of what made the internet good. It’s just more garbage.

Small complaint, big problem

I know this is a small complaint. One app, one browser, one extra window.

But I have a brain injury. Finding out one day that something stopped working, with no warning, and that I have to change everything around it, is not small for me. It’s a big problem.

You can’t trust Google Chrome as an application. The entire outfit can’t be trusted. That’s why I use ungoogled Chromium, and it still isn’t far enough away from them. Nobody is trying to stop this, and somebody should.