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Calling for Antitrust Reform

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#191

Post by rvz »

mschuster91 wrote: post #175
rvz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There you go. Mozilla also knows it and the CEO has admitted it. [0] After 14 years of promising to live without Google's money, [0] they still cannot find a way to make money and are chronically reliant on Google bank-rolling them as over 80% of their revenues are from Google. Thunderbird, Firefox VPN, Firefox OS, all failures. They are essentially on life support. A joke to achieving their mission statement without…

What are the alternatives? How should Mozilla fund itself? It's the same problem that every piece of open source software has: developers cost serious money and relying on unpaid volunteers is unsustainable as well as dangerous (see https://xkcd.com/2347/ for the appropriate meme). Some projects have attempted to solve that problem by providing enterprise consulting (MySQL), SaaS hosting (Elasticsearch), getting fund…

> Some projects have attempted to solve that problem by providing enterprise consulting (MySQL), SaaS hosting (Elasticsearch), getting funded/acquired by a megacorp (Google, IBM, Oracle)... but for Mozilla and its various projects I can't see any way of monetization.

You see, they had a good chance with doing the exact same thing with Rust and creating a consultancy around it, but they threw it all away. Erlang and OCaml also still have consultancies around their languages as well and I already suggested something along the lines of that before, but for Rust [0].

Instead, they wasted it on the Rust Foundation and threw away their trademarks where it has been hijacked by the same companies competing against Mozilla. An opportunity wasted.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144350

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#192

Post by ocdtrekkie »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #176
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mike's own website: https://copia.is/ (scroll down to sponsorship logos) Copia has also been listed on Google's own public policy transparency website in the past, though it's absent at the moment. EDIT: This version of the disclosure is still up: https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/trade_association_... Note that the Google Public Policy Team's explicit purpose is to influence laws to be favorable to the compa…

They are listed as a 3rd party org. In the same list as the EFF, Public Knowledge, and the Democrat and Republican Attorneys General Associations.

That's pretty much a catchall term for groups on this list. But every organization on that list is paid by the Public Policy team, whose goal is to influence the law in a favorable direction for Google. That both includes funding politicians (like governors) and people who will write favorable statements for Google online (like Mike Masnick).

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#193

Post by HWR_14 »

greyface- wrote: post #172
HWR_14 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as an online platform, no. Or at least not as one owned by the Linux Foundation or Linus.

AICOA 2(a)(9): ONLINE PLATFORM.—The term “online platform” means a website, online or mobile application, operating system, digital assistant, or online service that— (A) enables a user to generate content that can be viewed by other users on the platform or to interact with other content on the platform; (B) facilitates the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, payment, or shipping of products or services, includin…

Right, Linux might count, but what is the "Linux Corporation" with the 50,000,000 MAU? It's not "is the program used by that many people" it's "does the company or individual have that many users". That's also why the company needs a market cap of more than 550 billion.

So I guess it would hit Android and maybe FireOS Linuxes.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#194

Post by tomtheelder »

threeseed wrote: post #61
tomtheelder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it's done to force competitors out of a market it's called predatory pricing [1], and it is not a legitimate business tactic. It is illegal in many jurisdictions, and generally considered unethical even where it's not specifically outlawed. It is also considered a strategy to achieve a monopoly or near-monopoly pricing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

You should read the link you posted. That only applies when one of the competitors is effectively a monopoly anyway.

That's incorrect, and accusing people of not having read something is against the site guidelines.

Predatory pricing just needs to be done from a dominant market position, which is absolutely a label that applies to the giant tech firms being discussed. You only need to be in a market position strong enough to wield the pressure needed to force competitors out of market. You absolutely do not need to be effectively a monopoly.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#195

Post by [deleted] »

greyface- wrote: post #172
HWR_14 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as an online platform, no. Or at least not as one owned by the Linux Foundation or Linus.

AICOA 2(a)(9): ONLINE PLATFORM.—The term “online platform” means a website, online or mobile application, operating system, digital assistant, or online service that— (A) enables a user to generate content that can be viewed by other users on the platform or to interact with other content on the platform; (B) facilitates the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, payment, or shipping of products or services, includin…

[deleted]

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#196

Post by judge2020 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #161
judge2020 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli#Daraprim_price-...

It seems like the system in fact pushed back on Martin's pricing

He only got reprimanded because of how braizen we was, accepting news interviews and showing no remorse for the insane price increase. Without the news focus he probably would've avoided jail time (he was just released last month serving over 4 years of his 7 year sentence).

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#197

Post by jupp0r »

bombcar wrote: post #114
jupp0r wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe privacy focussed users have just moved somewhere else or given up and installed Chrome after disasters like Firefox Focus, Firefox Suggest, Leanplum or the TV series Mr. Robot extension that was silently installed.

Privacy focused users who want to use the worst privacy OS in the history of the world have a hard time installing our privacy focused browser so they can use the default privacy suck search engine that is Google! I don’t know if anyone actually says that with a straight face.

> Firefox Focus, Firefox Suggest, Leanplum or the TV series Mr. Robot extension

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#199

Post by greyface- »

HWR_14 wrote: post #193
greyface- wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AICOA 2(a)(9): ONLINE PLATFORM.—The term “online platform” means a website, online or mobile application, operating system, digital assistant, or online service that— (A) enables a user to generate content that can be viewed by other users on the platform or to interact with other content on the platform; (B) facilitates the offering, advertising, sale, purchase, payment, or shipping of products or services, includin…

Right, Linux might count, but what is the "Linux Corporation" with the 50,000,000 MAU? It's not "is the program used by that many people" it's "does the company or individual have that many users". That's also why the company needs a market cap of more than 550 billion. So I guess it would hit Android and maybe FireOS Linuxes.

> It's not "is the program used by that many people" it's "does the company or individual have that many users".

I'm not sure where you're getting this from. The bill doesn't actually define "monthly active", so you should construe it as liberally as possible when wargaming possible ways it might be used in practice.

> That's also why the company needs a market cap of more than 550 billion.

Check the conjunction between (II)(aa) and (II)(bb). It's 'or'. If you have 1B global MAU (again, Linux), the $550B threshold is irrelevant.

Re: Calling for Antitrust Reform

#200

Post by jl2718 »

Selective enforcement and executive orders are replacing rule of law. This is impossible to decipher and interpret consistently. It goes the other way too, in that these platforms have a monopoly on de facto immunity from other regulatory action like illegal user content, hate speech, and accessibility. You are looking at the intractability and obsolescence of centralized governance in a digital world.
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