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Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

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Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#21

Post by CharlesColeman »

joshuamorton wrote: post #3

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, wi…

> First, chrome isn't yet close to IEs peak dominance. Ie peaked at over 90% market share.

Waiting until it hits that to do something about it would be pretty ridiculous. Based on some random stats website, Chrome is currently at 70% share, and Chromium-based browsers are at 77%

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#22

Post by CharlesColeman »

skybrian wrote: post #17

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.

> 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.

No it wouldn't, if the mustache-twirling villain's indent was control. Those competitors are following most if not all of Chrome's implementation decisions, and economically they're highly incentivized follow whatever Google does.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#23

Post by Havoc »

>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.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#24

Post by stingraycharles »

43920 wrote: post #12
JoshTriplett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what possible way would Chrome make money as a standalone company without utterly alienating its userbase? Chrome is subsidized by the rest of Google.

Google (or another search engine) would pay Chrome to be included as the default search engine, the same way that Firefox exists now.

Would this not defeat the purpose of splitting them up? Are they then not equally likely to behave in a way that favors Google?

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#25

Post by snazz »

dnissley wrote: post #15
pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance, but could you elaborate? What is Amp, and why is it so scary?

Here's an amp page (although it will redirect to regular reddit if you're not on a mobile device): https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimf... Basically it's a way for google to promote web pages that are better formatted for mobile devices that use a limited subset of html and restrict use of javascript. The pages are hosted on google.com as additional assurance that they will load quickly. I do…

JavaScript disabled? Please stare at our Google-sponsored white screen for eight seconds.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#26

Post by whatshisface »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #18
cm2187 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle...

> By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle... However, a Chrome-with-Google-revenue would be far more independent of Google than Chrome-the-Google-Subsidiary. Mozilla/Firefox has shown that it's still possible to advance privacy even within such an arrangement. Also, its far from clear who w…

It only seems like Mozilla is independent because they are the most independent - a truly independent browser would probably do something shocking, like bundling adblock.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#27

Post by kyrra »

snek wrote: post #2

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

I'd think it's a bit more difficult. You have ChromeOS (which is based on Chromium OS)[0].

And ChromeOS is used in places that aren't just Chromebooks. For example, Google's Wifi points are based on ChromeOS[1].

[0] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromium-os-faq

[1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#28

Post by CharlesColeman »

whatshisface wrote: post #26
CharlesColeman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By doing like firefox, making money out of making google the default search engine. Which means their unique source of revenue (and client) would be google. Full circle... However, a Chrome-with-Google-revenue would be far more independent of Google than Chrome-the-Google-Subsidiary. Mozilla/Firefox has shown that it's still possible to advance privacy even within such an arrangement. Also, its far from clear who w…

It only seems like Mozilla is independent because they are the most independent - a truly independent browser would probably do something shocking, like bundling adblock.

Independence comes in degrees, and I'm not convinced a "truly independent" browser would by truly better for consumers. It'd need a revenue model, and its not clear to me what that would be besides bundling with a paid product or displaying banner and text ads.

Essentially Mozilla is selling ads, but only to one advertiser (Google) which is easy to disable.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#29

Post by vatueil »

dnissley wrote: post #15
pmoriarty wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance, but could you elaborate? What is Amp, and why is it so scary?

Here's an amp page (although it will redirect to regular reddit if you're not on a mobile device): https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimf... Basically it's a way for google to promote web pages that are better formatted for mobile devices that use a limited subset of html and restrict use of javascript. The pages are hosted on google.com as additional assurance that they will load quickly. I do…

More direct AMP link: https://amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d4x2h/e...

The original page is hosted on the original domain. What other hosts provide are AMP caches to display them faster. For example, Microsoft Bing:

- https://blogs.bing.com/search/September-2016/bing-app-joins-...

- https://blogs.bing.com/Webmaster-Blog/September-2018/Introdu...

- https://www.bing-amp.com/c/s/amp.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimf...

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#30

Post by ForHackernews »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #8
snek wrote: post #2

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

In what possible way would Chrome make money as a standalone company without utterly alienating its userbase? Chrome is subsidized by the rest of Google.

Charge money to any OEM that wants to ship with Chrome: i.e. every single non-Apple manufacturer of phones, tablets or computers.
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