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Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

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Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#31

Post by skybrian »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #22
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…

Google didn't follow all of Safari's decisions, and eventually they forked WebKit. Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals?

They'd likely remain mostly compatible because all browser vendors do try to follow web standards nowadays. But maybe not more than Safari and Chrome are compatible. And it helps maintain Microsoft's veto on web standards (like Firefox has vetoed previous Chrome proposals).

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#32

Post by AlexandrB »

robocat wrote: post #20
snek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much all the paid media on the internet . Spotify, Hulu, netflix, cable providers, amazon, etc. I guess if you literally only watch free YouTube videos it's not a problem? Totally not an anti-trust issue...

I guess the questions are whether: 1. copyright owners forced Google to implement DRM 2. Or, Google welcomed DRM (with the intention of lock-in) 3. Or, Google should have kept Chrome DRM free and fought the copyright owners...

I don’t think those questions matter at all. Regardless of how the current situation arose, it enables strong lock-in to Chrome vs. Chromium.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#33

Post by CharlesColeman »

skybrian wrote: post #31
CharlesColeman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Google didn't follow all of Safari's decisions, and eventually they forked WebKit. Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals? They'd likely remain mostly compatible because all browser vendors do try to follow web standards nowadays. But maybe not more than Safari and Chrome are compatible. And it helps maintain Microsoft's veto on web standards (like Firefox has vetoed previous Chro…

> Google didn't follow all of Safari's decisions, and eventually they forked WebKit. Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals?

Didn't Microsoft recently throw in the towel with Edge, and switch to Chromium, because they thought it was too much trouble to maintain their own engine?

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#34

Post by pwinnski »

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 not be weird at all for a mustache-twirling villain to pretend not to be a villain, right? Perhaps to loudly tout one's open-source credentials while moving more and more core android functionality into proprietary licensed code, or even just to have a plausible defense in the event of anti-trust activity.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#35

Post by nostrademons »

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.

That's what Brave did...

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#36

Post by Barrin92 »

Havoc wrote: post #23

>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…

Amazon's anti-trust paradox by Lina Khan hit the nail on the head a few years ago. When anti-trust moved towards the chicago school logic of judging merely based on price rather than taking market structure and power into account, we really screwed ourselves over.

We've really only got ourselves to blame for elevating consumer satisfaction above all else and losing sight of the long term.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#37

Post by vageli »

stingraycharles wrote: post #24
43920 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Would you characterize Mozilla as behaving in ways that favor Google?

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#38

Post by pcwalton »

skybrian wrote: post #31
CharlesColeman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Google didn't follow all of Safari's decisions, and eventually they forked WebKit. Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals? They'd likely remain mostly compatible because all browser vendors do try to follow web standards nowadays. But maybe not more than Safari and Chrome are compatible. And it helps maintain Microsoft's veto on web standards (like Firefox has vetoed previous Chro…

> Why shouldn't Microsoft do something similar when they have different goals?

They explicitly said they wouldn't fork Chromium.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#39

Post by vatueil »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #10
writepub wrote: post #7

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 workflow 2. Brave, Edge, Opera are just some of the WideVine licensed Chromium based browsers On the contrary, iOS has banned almost every tenet of common sen…

> Brave, Edge, Opera are just some of the WideVine licensed Chromium based browsers Today I learned: the new Edge has both WideVine and PlayReady. I figured they'd just go with PlayReady and be done with it - does WideVine have any real advantages? https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/chromium-mic... https://www.ghacks.net/2019/04/03/chromium-based-microsoft-e...

Microsoft PlayReady DRM still the only way to play Netflix in 4K on a PC, correct?

I guess there's no reason not to include Widevine as well, but it's funny how this means the new Microsoft Edge supports features no other Chromium-based browser is allowed to use, including Google Chrome.

Getting rid of DRM in general is fine with me, but I don't understand why the focus on Widevine in particular given that its availability is relatively less restricted.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#40

Post by iamnothere »

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.

Becoming a separate for-profit company (as opposed to a nonprofit like Mozilla) could result in some really bad things. Chrome-the-company would have to find new sources of revenue; in the process, it would likely increase its tracking, and it might end up selling info to companies other than Google, which at least tends to hoard user data internally. It may also develop even more industry partnerships around things like DRM that aren't in the interest of users.

If Chrome could somehow be forcefully split off into a decently funded nonprofit, I'd be all for it. I'm not sure that anyone but Google could make that happen, though.

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