151–160 of 164 posts
How about we raise some money and buy Chrome for the users? First order of business will be removing all privacy invading "features" and re-enabling Manifest V2. If somehow we'll have some cash left, we might even contract Igalia to build blocker right into browser.
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> You've twisted the argument to be about DRM. That's a completely separate issue. The only people to blame for DRM are the people who use it on their content, not the platforms that are forced to implement it. The people to blame for DRM are the legislators who created laws allowing DRM to be used for anti-competitive lock-in, which is its primary purpose. > The _cause_ of monopolies are successful businesses. That…
>The problem is that's basically not a thing for digital goods because dumping is selling below the marginal cost and the marginal cost for digital goods is zero. Gmail is free, Docs is free, Maps is free, lots of google apps are free. This makes it very difficult few a new player to enter the market. This is predatory pricing. Nothing else you said is really relevant to the forced sale of Chrome.
It isn't. Things with ~0 marginal cost end up being free or free-with-ads. Webmail was free before Gmail, OpenOffice was free before Google Docs, MapQuest was free before Google Maps, because that's the market price for those things.
> Nothing else you said is really relevant to the forced sale of Chrome.
Because we're talking about the forced sale of Android. The title of the article is:
> DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next
But exactly the same argument applies to Chrome anyway. Google puts DRM in Chrome, allowing third party sites to take a dependency on DRM, and then competing browsers/devices without Google's approval get locked out because users want a browser and device that works with the whole web.
Not to mention the obvious conflict of interest that DRM is used to prevent ad blocking.
IMHO, the real issue with Google isn't the control of the web browser, but the complete vertical integration of the ad space. Divest Google of its position as the ad broker (i.e., unwind its acquisition of DoubleClick), and prohibit any sort of privileged data flow from Google to ex-Google Ads, and you'd probably have a more viable solution than the poking DoJ is trying to do right now.
I believe that this will happen though, at some point in the next few years.
Now, with Google as the entrenched incumbent in so many different spaces, what's good for the web is not necessarily good for Google anymore.
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I don't understand how this worldview coexists with countries like Russia and China. If the feds kneecap US companies, it's not going to make the next generation of US companies stronger, just cede influence to worse jurisdictions.
> If the feds kneecap US companies, it's not going to make the next generation of US companies stronger Worked pretty well when they broke AT&T and not only got an extremely innovative lab full of small projects, but also kickstarted the internet era.
Can we go back to buying software? This free software subsidized by big ad money has fucked the whole market up.
Agreed. Would much rather pay $100-200/year for ad-free OS / productivity software that is patched and secure and doesn't sell my data. Alas, very people put that high a value on their privacy.
That said, even well intentioned distros that don't sell your data will have some privacy issues, inherited from upstreams.
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Smaller companies would be more nimble and efficient. Also, Google’s main dominant product (e.g. search & ads) would be forced to compete & innovate vs leveraging Chrome & Android to keep themselves dominant.
Smaller is less efficient. They don't get to benefit from economy of scale as much as larger.
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Yeah but it's also not great when Amazon can undercut their way into every market because AWS is a crazy cash cow, which hurt other US companies. Do you really need Amazon to be a "second government" who can decide what "you" buy, see and to some degree think. It "works" in China where the government just stomps their feet if companies misbehave too much and everyone complies instantly or get replaced. Edit: s/Amazon…
Some companies / services are just not viable as a standalone company, but still provide immense value to customers. What will end up happening is not that Amazon will have to compete with others on video game streaming for example, what will happen is that video game streaming will disappear because not viable. Browsers won't suddenly flourish when Google cannot finance browsers anymore, they'll just turn to shit. P…
Great! Let's go back to actual applications.