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Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

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Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#131

Post by Krasnol »

chii wrote: post #94
Krasnol wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome "default" option. Don't forget their annoying bundling with freeware...

That's merely advertising. Google did not force chrome into any platform except android (which only happened after Chrome's dominance). Mozilla could've paid for more advertising (e.g, partner up with Yahoo or some other big web property). But even with a push like that, FF won't have won because it didn't the high performance that drove Chrome's retention rate.

Calling it "advertising" is a understatement here. You don't end up with the product just by consuming an ad.

My parents never wanted to install Chrome. They still ended up have it. It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox. All their friends use Chrome also because of this despicable trick.

When this wave of bundled malware behavior by Google started and I had to uninstall it all over the people and family where I installed Firefox before, I stopped using it as a second browser too.

I whish someone would finally sue them for this. At least to give it the attention it should have.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#132

Post by dalbasal »

icebraining wrote: post #110
dalbasal wrote: post #34

Antitrust law is, I suspect, hopelessly outdated... both the laws and the understanding of monopolies/trusts that are baked into them. These laws were based on 19th-century competition. The problems att were price fixing, predatory pricing (eg price low to kill competition then raise prices), supply chain bottlenecking (how you gonna sell your ore without my trains) ... industrial era trust stuff. The precedents and…

> Facebook was Facebook on that budget not long ago. Facebook was Facebook, but it wasn't Facebook+Whatsapp+Instagram, and "mergers and acquisitions that substantially reduce market competition" have been impermissible under the US anti-trust law for over 100 years, since the Clayton Act, and I'm not sure you need more than that.

Ok. Good example.

To deal with that, the legal system needs to define market & dominance. The "markets" FB is dominating are far squishier and unstable than the markets of 100 years ago. The market for coal or steel or intercontinental shipping are easy to define. Photo sharing? Social Networking?

How do you define competitiveness. What effect does FB's dominance of photo sharing have on consumer prices? Barriers to entry? Anyone can launch a chat or photo sharing app. Substitutes? Plenty. Those are the types of questions the old laws and precedents will try to deal with. It's like an alien biologist trying to prod orifices that we don't have.

How does this harm consumers or the economy? The economics underlying the legal framework are just as outdated. They're looking for prices and outputs and stuff that FB doesn't have.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#133

Post by bad_user »

kmlx wrote: post #120
bad_user wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software dev you probably don't remember, or haven't lived the days of Internet Explorer. Diversity and browser standards is what made the web a good platform to develop for. Just to give a recent example, if Google would dictate what gets implemented, instead of WebAssembly, the standard, you would have gotten PNaCl. > this also means that the possibility of disruption will be much higher in the future. so this…

IE was by far the worst browser. i was working as a front end dev durinh those days and got excited when google finally launched chrome, more-so than firefox. the hours and the energy spent on debugging IE is something we will never get back. on your second point, monopolies create the setting for massive disruption.

You're not remembering correctly.

IExplorer 5 was the best browser available, the Chrome of its time.

>> monopolies create the setting for massive disruption

I know that HN has a fetish with disruption, but no, it's not monopolies that create the opportunity for disruption, but the exact opposite of a monopoly, which is competition, often made possible by advances in technology. There's no inherent property of a monopoly that facilitates disruption, other than the monopoly just being on the scene nearby.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#134

Post by CaptainZapp »

dTal wrote: post #130
CaptainZapp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Summarized : They spent a ton of money on promoting Chrome But essentially defending them on that specific issue doesn't make it a nice, or admirable company in my book. Edit, to clarify some more: I was "defending" them on some accusations that they promoted Chrome with dirty tricks and dark patterns. Initially, I'd wager, they didn't. Does that clarify it?

Ah, I see. You were saying that because they marketed Chrome "legitimately", they probably didn't market Chrome with dirty tricks and dark patterns "at first", am I right? But I don't really think that's how it went - I think they used every trick in the book, as early and as often as possible. If that's not true, and some marketroid in Google woke up one day and thought "hey, we could get a lot more bang for our buc…

At any rate it's not much of a defense. Their "legitimate" marketing in no way absolves them for their "illegitimate" marketing.

I think we are in general agreement here.

Spending a lot of money on legitimate marketing certainly doesn't absolve scammy tacticts at all.

One of my more recent pet peevees is their fiddling with GMail in a way that a lot of mails from external sources are flagged as spam. Even though they're sure as shit and very obviously not. And not only that. They're constantly moving the goal posts on what is "legitimate" mail.

Having such a big slice of global email this is super scummy and I really hope that (probably European, if any) regulators crack down hard on them yet again.

But I'm digressing here, I'm afraid.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#135

Post by thrower123 »

noname120 wrote: post #52
bad_user wrote: post #5

In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. However the current situation is worrisome, because alternative implementations are dying and in the case of the web, diversity is important. Both Opera and Microsoft's Edge are now powered by Chromium. Chromium is a project controlled by Google. Its redeeming quality, in terms of its open source nature, is…

> competitors such as Microsoft proved that they no longer have the capacity to develop a modern browser This is incorrect. They absolutely can as demonstrated by the fact that former Edge works great, has better hardware acceleration than Chrome, and consumes less power. However, they are not willing to anymore, which is a huge concern for future innovations in that domain.

Edge working great is quite an exageration, in my experience. Barely workable, with it's own host of weird bugs, that Microsoft did their typical slow-rolling and prevarication on handling. Tying it to a specific operating system version was also a poor decision if they wanted adoption.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#136

Post by Slartie »

AznHisoka wrote: post #115
dalbasal wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk about wiped the floor, but it gets subjective. Immediately before chrome launched, FF was slowly eating into IE's market share. Chrome was good, but so was FF. I don't think chrome ever had a lead in FF anything like the lead FF had over IE. Mozilla always had to play with a disadvantage. Still do.

Was it Chrome that came up with tabs? i cant seem to remember if FF had it. If FF didnt have tabs, that is enough for me to say Chrome wiped out the competition.

Opera was the first browser with any significant market share that supported tabs. I vividly remember switching to Opera somewhere in the 2000s for that very reason.

It also had working bookmark syncing way earlier than the others - that was the second reason for me to use Opera in the 2000-2010 timeframe. I eventually switched to Chrome when it got too good to ignore, and lately to Firefox when it got good enough to compete head-to-head with Chrome.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#138

Post by emanreus »

stephenr wrote: post #76
collyw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your comment, as it sounds like hyperbole to me.

GAB is a social media site that is "friendly" and "a safe haven" for neo-nazis, white supremacists and "the alt-right". It was created because they were too extreme even for Twitter's ridiculously ineffective controls on hate speech. They apparently believe so strongly that they are "right", that they literally forked a browser to allow their extension to be used, so that like-minded nazis and white supremacists can…

> even for Twitter's ridiculously ineffective controls on hate speech

Twitter's controls are not that ineffective as much as they're selective. They were banning people for learn to code jab at journalists and doing nothing about blatant hard core misandry and racism directed at white men. If they're trying to radicalize more people, they're doing a great job.

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#139

Post by chii »

Krasnol wrote: post #131
chii wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's merely advertising. Google did not force chrome into any platform except android (which only happened after Chrome's dominance). Mozilla could've paid for more advertising (e.g, partner up with Yahoo or some other big web property). But even with a push like that, FF won't have won because it didn't the high performance that drove Chrome's retention rate.

Calling it "advertising" is a understatement here. You don't end up with the product just by consuming an ad. My parents never wanted to install Chrome. They still ended up have it. It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox. All their friends use Chrome also because of this despicable trick. When this wave of bundled malware behavior by Google started and I had to uninstall it all over the people and…

> It came with an update and they didn't uncheck a checkbox

what update? Windows update? Or did they download some software, and the installer came with chrome as well?

Re: Google’s Chrome Becomes Web ‘Gatekeeper’ and Rivals Complain

#140

Post by reitanqild »

dTal wrote: post #113
masswerk wrote: post #67

Anecdotal observation: A few years ago, I made a video game for an early 1960s computer, the PDP-1, running in an homegrown emulator in web technology. [1] Amazingly, the game runs at 60 frames per second (yes, you could do this with early 1960s tech), and, amazingly, browsers were able to render the emulation, including a rather complex simulation of the dual-phosphor screen, at 60 fps (you could do this in 2016). A…

Well that just cries out for some snarky user-agent-sniffing "upgrade your browser" overlay.

Would love that: some really funny message that would make people stop and think.
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