Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

244 pointsby rargulatialmost 6 years ago

16 comments

The main problem I have with the predominant discussions around antitrust in contemporary internet software is that they largely ignore one quality that truly makes something a monopoply. That is, truly onerous monopolies don't just own a vast majority of some market share. They hamper the ability to switch to another product. Facebook, Google Search and Chrome, the most discussed products in current antitrust discussions all have viable quality alternatives.Don't like Chrome? Pick up Firefox, it's quick and easy to change. And it's the best product it's probably ever been.Don't like Google search? There's Bing, there's DuckDuckGo and more.Don't like Facebook? Try any of the bajillion other social networks. Hell, quite social networks and call your grandma instead. It's better for ya.Antitrust isn't supposed to be a bludgeon to knock whoever is on top off the top. It's supposed to be a tool to break open markets where companies have successfully closed off competition and made it impossible for opponents to succeed. I just don't see that in the web right now. There is no conceivable reason Facebook couldn't be replaced and there's ample research showing that young people are already making that transition to other platforms.Meanwhile, industries like internet service, cellular and in some places water provision, leave consumers with essentially no alternative and no choice. I see this wave of anti-web 2.0 furvor as people championing a good cause, antitrust, in utterly the wrong place for our time.

评论 #20089641 未加载

评论 #20089421 未加载

评论 #20089468 未加载

评论 #20092475 未加载

评论 #20090274 未加载

评论 #20090407 未加载

评论 #20091585 未加载

评论 #20093279 未加载

评论 #20092474 未加载

评论 #20093520 未加载

Havocalmost 6 years ago

>without Google Services and the Google Play Store, it’s a brick. They’ve mastered separation of the strategic openness of Android with the accompanying strategic closed-ness of everything that runs on it and makes it actually worth something.It's scary how true this is. Especially how it's only obvious in hindsight (to me at least). Yet clearly this was orchestrated.In both Chrome & Androids case it's the non-free tie-in that's the catch. Either play store or DRM/codecs. hmm...who owns the biggest video site..ah right.

评论 #20088889 未加载

评论 #20089397 未加载

评论 #20089944 未加载

writepubalmost 6 years ago

I don't faintly see the logic in this!The proof is in the pudding on Chrome's tangible open source impact:1. V8 is used in a multitude of projects, node being the most impact-ful. And node has changed desktop (with electron and CLI apps), server and developer workflow2. Brave, Edge, Opera are just some of the WideVine licensed Chromium based browsersOn the contrary, iOS has banned almost every tenet of common sense general purpose computing:1. Safari for iOS is purposefully crippled to drive devs and users to it's app store2. App store has fluid, whimsical, retroactively applied approval laws, ahem whims.3. It's a general purpose computer that you can own the hardware of, but need the manufacturer's consent to run software on. You know, like needing your fridge maker's approval for the groceries you stock in it.4. They purposefully stymie competition:- Spotify, Google-Maps, etc. are denied APIs that give competing Apple offerings an edge.- 30% tax on external apps again gives Apple's competing offerings unfair edge- Complete ban on Just-In-Time compiled code and alternate browser engines is intentional - to stymie features and quality to a default of "below Apple's competing offerings"How one rationalizes Chrome to be more "anti-trust-y" is contrary to logic

评论 #20088225 未加载

评论 #20088368 未加载

评论 #20092340 未加载

评论 #20090426 未加载

cromwellianalmost 6 years ago

"But what’s completely correct here is that Chrome is, quite explicitly, blocking users’ freedom to use their web browser the way they would expect with a piece of open source software; "No, what you expect from Open Source software is to be able to fork it, modify it, recompile it, and use the modifications.Open Source isn't about end-user features, it's about development freedom. A completely open source piece of software could have a set of APIs and UX that keeps you on the rails and doesn't let the end user do what they want. What Open Source shouldn't do, is prevent you from modifying it to edit the app to do what you want after a recompile, and ship and share your modifications with others, that's the freedom open source provides.Arguably the DRM binary blob angle results in Tivoization, but the idea that this is some elaborate plot for Chrome lock-in by Google is ludicrous. Patent-encumbered compression codecs also created similar headaches and Google went out of their way to try break the MPEG-LA consortium monopoly. The DRM issue is basically forced on the industry by the content publishing industry. If you want to stop this particular issue from making open source browsers hard to develop, you need to talk Netflix, Hulu, Disney, and all of the other players.Or you just accept that you can't watch most Hollywood produced content in a web browser and leave it up to native apps. Or, we could just mandate everyone have to continue to support Adobe Flash players.DRM isn't going to magically go away if Chrome were a separate company.What no one has articulated in any of these conversations is any actual harm that's been done to them. There's a lot of catastrophizing about theoretical harms, but the Web and Mobile industries are far more vibrant than they were in the 90s, and launching some device that includes a browser, mobile OS, or embedded kernel is a fraction of the cost and effort it was in the 90s to do something similar.Things have gotten easier across the board. Someone launching a new IoT device these days forks chromium, webkit, or android for the UI. This would have cost you huge licensing fees a decade ago and a large engineering team.How many successful startups are running off node (v8) now? Or Electron (e.g. Discord, Slack, etc)?

评论 #20094172 未加载

snekalmost 6 years ago

Honestly it would be pretty incredible for Chrome to be split out of Google, and I for one would love to see that happen.

评论 #20089009 未加载

评论 #20088121 未加载

评论 #20088648 未加载

sonimanalmost 6 years ago

I had the same impression as the author. Google was tiptoeing up to the line of antitrust scrutiny with its search dominance (95%), the Google Play Store tax, and Youtube demonetizations, but when I saw it was banning ad blockers on Chrome, I said, that's it. This is such an obvious exploitation of market dominance that it really can't be ignored. You could explain the business logic to a ten year old. It's not an accident that Microsoft's antitrust problems started with browsers too. One of the funny things though is that ad blockers are becoming increasingly useless. Nearly every site now makes you deactivate the blocker so it's now more trouble than it's worth.

joshuamortonalmost 6 years ago

This is an interesting, and relatively fair, article. There are two big issues with it's reasoning though.First, chrome isn't yet close to IEs peak dominance. Ie peaked at over 90% market share.Second, DRM isn't necessary for watching video, it's needed for watching certain liscenced video. In practice, this means Netflix and streamed televison. You can still watch YouTube just fine, minus YouTube red originals, without widevine. Is a browser that keeps you off Netflix so bad for google?

评论 #20088545 未加载

评论 #20087879 未加载

评论 #20087873 未加载

_fh5nalmost 6 years ago

This whole antitrust debate around Google feels weird to me. People act like Google is not a for-profit company, but some sort of philanthropic association that is law-bound to provide good technology to the people.Google has only one goal, which is selling advertisements. To do so, it provides, FOR FREE, the best technology services of the planet, including what is basically the entrance door to the internet and a piece of software to make the experience of browsing pleasant. Nobody forces Google to do so. They could easily make people pay for the services, and nobody could say a thing. And yet they give this all for free, even allowing you to block the only stream of revenue that they get from you (ads).The antitrust controversy around Google is just a major case of wanting to have the cake and eating it too. It's like we've had somebody giving us free food for decades, and now we're suropriesd that the terms of a deal that is extremely advantageous for us are changing. We've become accustomed to the idea of fre Google, and we've forgot that Google could make us pay a fee for their services, and we would all shut up and pay.

评论 #20092823 未加载

评论 #20093486 未加载

评论 #20093442 未加载

评论 #20092735 未加载

akarki15almost 6 years ago

People here seem to assume all monopolies are illegal. THAT'S NOT TRUE!Source: <a href="https://www.classlawgroup.com/antitrust/unlawful-practices/monopoly/" rel="nofollow">https://www.classlawgroup.com/antitrust/unlawful-practices/m...</a>A monopoly is when a company has exclusive control over a good or service in a particular market. Not all monopolies are illegal. For example, businesses might legally corner their market if they produce a superior product or are well managed. Antitrust law doesn’t penalize successful companies just for being successful. Competitors may be at a legitimate disadvantage if their product or service is inferior to the monopolist’s.But monopolies are illegal if they are established or maintained through improper conduct, such as exclusionary or predatory acts. This is known as anticompetitive monopolization

jillesvangurpalmost 6 years ago

There are plenty of opinions on what is or isn't a monopoly. What matters is that the opinion that what the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, and others are doing amounts to being something that needs action from governments is both popular and becoming a talking point for a lot of politicians in both the EU and the US.So, what matters less is whether they are right or wrong and what matters more is what the before mentioned companies are doing about mitigating the risks of being confronted with excessive fines, rulings, and other forms of damage. The answer is, so far not a lot and that may become a problem as it seems pretty clear there is wide spread support for action against them.I'd say both Google and Apple are pretty far down the road where they will have multi billion euro or dollar fines at some point. They are both highly profitable as well so that in it self would not necessarily be that much of a problem. What would be a problem is governments interfering with their business models.IMHO, some action here would be good. These companies are getting a bit complacent about their position in the market and quite arrogant about casually snuffing out competition when it suits them. In general, it's time for a shake up in the mobile space. Google and Apple earned their position with the work they did last decade but nothing is forever and I remember a time when there were more credible options then just them.

headsoupalmost 6 years ago

Couple of simple but perhaps naive questions:Can Microsoft pay Google to have it recommend Edge on the Google search homepage?Should Chrome, rather than have Google.com as the default homepage, offer a list of Search engines for the user to choose from?Should Chrome be the default browser on Android or should the user choose from a list?

评论 #20094136 未加载

jiveturkeyalmost 6 years ago

Sorry, but this is a very weak article.First, not having competition does not make one a monopoly. It's anti-competitive (unfair) practices that make one a monopoly.IE, now that had the form of a monopoly, in its day.Then, he goes on to ignore WHATWG, which is the real authority, and is comprised of Apple, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft. I don't follow closely enough, but I'd be surprised to learn that Google has outsized power.Lastly, to the extent that widevine is important, it isn't restricted to Chrome.

评论 #20090105 未加载

评论 #20095549 未加载

skybrianalmost 6 years ago

It would be weird for a mustache-twirling villain to give most of their source code to their competitors, hence allowing them to start out compatible with nearly every website on the Internet.(With a bit of DRM needed for video, so those competitors can't be pure open source. But still, it's not going to stop Microsoft.)The article admits to this, then kind of ignores it.

评论 #20088860 未加载

评论 #20088560 未加载

评论 #20093516 未加载

jechamtalmost 6 years ago

E) All of the above.

daodedickinsonalmost 6 years ago

All the other browsers have been complaining more and more recently about patches and improvements they can't make because they can't get permission or explanation from Chromium's overseers.

dustfingeralmost 6 years ago

Let's not forget that Google has great influence over webRTC [1]. The source code is kept in their repositories [2].[1]<a href="https://webrtc.org/" rel="nofollow">https://webrtc.org/</a>[2]<a href="https://webrtc.googlesource.com/" rel="nofollow">https://webrtc.googlesource.com/</a>