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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

#41

Post by krageon »

bduerst wrote: post #28
ishan1121 wrote: post #2

Google is a clear monopoly, there's no doubt about it. It has a 70% browser market share, 70% market share in the search ecosystem. Even though their service is good and people are happy, I think they need to be broken down for the sake of keeping an open internet. Even Facebook for that matter. That's my opinion

Just having dominant marketshare, especially in the presence of easily-accessible competitors (e.g. Safari, Mozilla, Opera, etc.), is definitively not a monopoly.

Your argument would be easier to receive if you enlightened your reader with what you think a monopoly is, rather than just framing it as something it is not.

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

#42

Post by tikkabhuna »

kuu wrote: post #10
kmlx wrote: post #4

as a software dev, not having to deal with other browsers is a blessing. countless hours wasted on debugging various browsers gets massively reduced. second point, moving the conversation from " hasn't caught up" to "everyone's caught up" helps the web focus on technologies more so than before. discussions should now concentrate almost exclusively around the next web technologies, no more competition regarding web en…

The problem is if Chrome finally wins it all (we're almost there) and at some point they decide to remove a functionality that we all love, or they stop improving as there is no competition, or they decide to make you pay a little fee for developing a website with an extra functionality, or they decide that Chrome does not run on Mac anymore.... The problem with monopolies is that they control all the power, for the…

As Chromium is open source, wouldn't someone then fork it and re-add those features or maintain Mac support?

It seems like there is little motivation to maintain a separate browser at the moment, but one day Google may do something that motivates people to fork/create a new one. That could be a big bang moment or just a slow crawl that opens up a niche that a new browser could fill.

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

#43

Post by CaptainZapp »

dTal wrote: post #12
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…

>In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. Where "did some marketing" equals "unethically abused monopoly position to aggressively push through dark patterns", sure. I think I can still blame them for that.

Google invested a shit ton into marketing when they launched Chrome.

I have pictures from 2012 (I think) when they had the entire grand hall of Paris' Gare de Lyon hung with dozens of huge Chrome banners.

That alone must have cost them tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Euros.

That said I think the web's under Google's thumb screws (AMP, mail, DNS, browser-almost monopoly, etc) is in a bad place. But they did invest a hell of a lot in pushing Chrome.

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

#44

Post by tenpaiyomi »

dTal wrote: post #30
bad_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any. Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern". Or do you mean something else?

That, and they paid money to surreptitiously bundle it with other software. Chrome is notorious for suddenly being mysteriously installed on relatives' computers: https://imgur.com/NIZk9Pd And advertising something on your own property sure sounds reasonable, but I think it's a slightly different story when "your own property" is "the de facto homepage of the internet". That's what I meant by "abusing monopoly positi…

That's not a dark pattern though. Potentially poor behavior, sure, but dark pattern, no.

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

#45

Post by dalbasal »

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…

"They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular."

They did make a good browser. However, their market share is not down to better browser or "some advertising." They use their other assets (search, youtube, android, docs..) to make chrome the "default" option.

It's a dominance breeds dominance cycle... a hallmark of modern monopoly.

Chrome wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't a very good browser. It is good. But, I don't think it could have been that kind of wipeout without leveraging google's greater web dominance.

There was a time when IE was a good browser and the default one. They dominated. A few years later, Mozilla had the better browser. Firefox slowly climbed to the middle, by being very good. They never got to 50% of the market.

IMO, during the IE6_v_FF days the feature and quality gap between browsers was at its highest. Much bigger than Chrome_v_FF ever was. Still Chrome today is far more dominant than FF or anything ever was... except IE in its monopoly day.

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

#46

Post by ilaksh »

ishan1121 wrote: post #2

Google is a clear monopoly, there's no doubt about it. It has a 70% browser market share, 70% market share in the search ecosystem. Even though their service is good and people are happy, I think they need to be broken down for the sake of keeping an open internet. Even Facebook for that matter. That's my opinion

I don't know what you can do about browsers besides use Firefox.

But as far as other stuff, I hope people will give distributed p2p possibilities some consideration in terms of usage or development.

For example YaCy works pretty well as a p2p search engine. There are some others that I haven't tried.

Back to the browser stuff. The problem is the browser has a full operating system in it at this point. There are too many APIs to compete.

What could make competing browsers viable might be something like the following. Imagine a web browser that does not support JavaScript. Instead it emphasize fast rendering, has a state of the art web assembly implementation, and some kind of ABI/API for things like UI, UDP, etc. such as OpenGL (or a simpler UI system). It only allows a subset of CSS and HTML, maybe only Flexbox or something. It it could be just restricted to old-fashioned HTML rendering. But anyway it won't be able to have the scope of Firefox and Chrome.

I guess the biggest problem is if you don't support the whole ginourmous HTML5 featureset (starting with JavaScript) then most websites will not work at all. They either will not load or will be totally scrambled.

Maybe some kind of p2p content-centric web could become popular and have it's own streamlined and simplified browser.

Or maybe there could be a new browser tailored for augmented reality that could become popular and compete with Chrome.

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

#47

Post by adito »

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…

Well, even for Edge that use chromium, this situation can happen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/btz1lc/youtube_mat...

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

#48

Post by matthewmacleod »

bad_user wrote: post #18
dTal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. Where "did some marketing" equals "unethically abused monopoly position to aggressively push through dark patterns", sure. I think I can still blame them for that.

I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any. Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern". Or do you mean something else?

The most recent thing I've seen is where the boundaries of the browser and Google's web properties start to get blurred.

For example, signing into a Google site from Chrome also signs you into the browser; it's unclear how this happens, what personal information it compromises, and more than that it's an unexpected and unwelcome surprise when it happens.

Clearing Google cookies in Chrome also doesn't work, for related reasons. Try deleting all cookies in Chrome the immediately refreshing the list: Google cookies immediately re-appear.

It's not that these things are necessarily actually dangerous. But the blurring of the line between service and user agent scares me.

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

#49

Post by duiker101 »

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…

A lot of "third party browsers" like Opera, Vivaldi and Brave choose to go for Chromium as their engine, would they be able to use Firefox's engine the same way? If yes, why does it seem that no one actually does it? I personally don't particularly enjoy Firefox as a browser, but I don't have anything against their engine. If there was a version of Vivaldi that implemented that I would probably choose it over the Chromium version.

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

#50

Post by syshum »

bad_user wrote: post #18
dTal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the case of Chrome, you can't blame Google. They made a good browser, did some marketing and it got popular. Where "did some marketing" equals "unethically abused monopoly position to aggressively push through dark patterns", sure. I think I can still blame them for that.

I've seen dark patterns from Google, but in the case of Chrome I have a hard time remembering any. Do you mean that they advertised for Chrome on their properties? Advertising on your own property is legitimate in my book. And simple advertising isn't a "dark pattern". Or do you mean something else?

I know many many people that had chrome installed with out them activlity seeking it out, and had their default browser changed with out their permission

So much so that many many people I know that worked on helpdesk;s at the time where getting lots of complaints about "the internet is missing" meaning their Icons changed from the IE logo to the Chrome logo because chrome was changed to the default browser with out them understanding what happened.

Add to the fact that Chrome would also install in AppData to avoid having to have Admin rights to install so it could be install on corporate/enterprise systems by normal users...

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