Mastodawn

schwa Jul 2, 2023

✧✦Catherine✦✧

PSA: if Google Meet doesn't have working screen-sharing for you in Chromium on Debian, change your user agent (in DevTools -> Network Conditions) to Microsoft Edge (Chromium) and it works.

this happens due to an anticompetitive measure by Google, namely the forced use of the Google-specific Hangouts extension by Meet screensharing on non-Edge-branded Chromium

✧✦Catherine✦✧Jun 29, 2023

note: this doesn't affect Chromium in general, only Chromium that was built without the Hangouts extension (which is enabled by default), e.g. the one in Debian: https://sources.debian.org/src/chromium/112.0.5615.138-1~deb11u1/debian/rules/#L79

File: rules | Debian Sources

✧✦Catherine✦✧Jun 29, 2023

correction: as pointed out by @duckie in [1], the extension is actually BSD-licensed and lives in [2]

1: https://mastodon.social/@duckie@infosec.exchange/110629587447860514
2: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/chrome/browser/resources/hangout_services

chromium/chrome/browser/resources/hangout_services at main · chromium/chromium

The official GitHub mirror of the Chromium source. Contribute to chromium/chromium development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

✧✦Catherine✦✧Jun 29, 2023

note: personally I don't care about the telemetry and whatnot, I'm just pissed that Google broke their software that I have to use since it's the standard in the company I work for on a browser that is otherwise perfectly fine

Haelwenn /элвэн/

@whitequark Shouldn't debian then add a site-specific quirk? (Would be surprising if chromium didn't have existing code for this, firefox and webkit-gtk do)

✧✦Catherine✦✧Jun 29, 2023

@lanodan depends on which "Should" that is

- would it improve experience for Debian users? yep, that would be nice
- is it Debian's responsibility to track this? nope, Google's to blame here

Peter Bindels Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark Wow. Google is trash.

They're the Microsoft of the 2020s.

>>>>>>>Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark is this new? we've been screensharing from chromium in meet just fine for the past year

✧✦Catherine✦✧Jun 29, 2023

@artemis it's specifically the Debian Chromium that's broken here due to this line: https://sources.debian.org/src/chromium/112.0.5615.138-1~deb11u1/debian/rules/#L79

File: rules | Debian Sources

>>>>>>>Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark ah yeah. checking my USE flags

+ + hangouts : Enable support for Google Hangouts features such as
screen sharing

there it is

duck Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark tbf I don’t think the last point is true; the source code is at https://github.com/chromium/chromium/tree/main/chrome/browser/resources/hangout_services

chromium/chrome/browser/resources/hangout_services at main · chromium/chromium

The official GitHub mirror of the Chromium source. Contribute to chromium/chromium development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

FCLC Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark @sri

systemd-jaded.timer Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark uhhhmm i don't believe it's proprietary at least, it's there in the chromium source tree. i think Debian is somewhat baseless in removing it based on the mailing list discussion i found, since at most it allows some more telemetry of call quality and possibly some consequent fingerprinting (but like, browsers are one giant fingerprinting problem)

✧✦Catherine✦✧Jun 29, 2023

@leftpaddotpy it's not yeah, see the update

however it is still anticompetitive to expect a browser to have a you-specific vendor extension and break if it doesn't exist

systemd-jaded.timer Jun 29, 2023

@whitequark yeah for sure, it's pretty ridiculous to integrate you-only functionality into the browser. won't be the first time though, see for example the fido2 forwarding in chromium, exclusively available for Google-internal Chrome remote desktop

Kevin Granade has moved Jun 30, 2023

@whitequark meet also works just fine in Firefox, but detects Firefox and shuts itself down.

mirabilos Jun 30, 2023

@whitequark fuck Google