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Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

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Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#41

Post by InvisibleCities »

Barrin92 wrote: post #36
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.

Who is "we" in this scenario? Changes to antitrust legislation was largely foisted upon the public by financial oligarchs that used the new rules to cement their own wealth and power, and unfortunately for my great-grandchildren, I am not one of them.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#42

Post by whatshisface »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #28
whatshisface wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linux doesn't have a revenue model... Although, doesn't Linus work for Google? There's also Blender. I'm sure we could think of a long list of others.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#43

Post by skybrian »

pcwalton wrote: post #38
skybrian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, for now, and maybe for years. Chrome upstreamed patches to WebKit for a while.

But the point is, they can fork, so that means Chrome doesn't have full control.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#44

Post by skybrian »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #33
skybrian wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, it's a smart move that frees up the engineering effort that was previously devoted to catching up to Chrome, rather than improving on it. How they redeploy them isn't something we can tell from the outside.

There are occasional debates on Hacker News about when you should rewrite your codebase. Similar arguments apply here: when should you rewrite someone else's codebase?

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#45

Post by abdullahkhalids »

whatshisface wrote: post #42
CharlesColeman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linux doesn't have a revenue model... Although, doesn't Linus work for Google? There's also Blender. I'm sure we could think of a long list of others.

A good chunk of linux and related development is done by programmers being paid by some for-profit company in whose interest is it either to have those chunks developed or who want to keep their employees happy by letting them do open source contributions. Without this invisible injection of funds, linux development would slow down significantly and it might not remain competitive.

Browsers are a lot less modular than operating systems and they operate in a different market (eg. contributing to their development doesn't help the bottom line of any company particularly), so Firefox doesn't get a lot of paid for third-party developer time. Hence, Mozilla makes unfortunate compromises.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#46

Post by jiveturkey »

Sorry, but this is a very weak article.

First, not having competition does not make one a monopoly. It's anti-competitive (unfair) practices that make one a monopoly.

IE, now that had the form of a monopoly, in its day.

Then, he goes on to ignore WHATWG, which is the real authority, and is comprised of Apple, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft. I don't follow closely enough, but I'd be surprised to learn that Google has outsized power.

Lastly, to the extent that widevine is important, it isn't restricted to Chrome.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#47

Post by DubiousPusher »

The main problem I have with the predominant discussions around antitrust in contemporary internet software is that they largely ignore one quality that truly makes something a monopoply. That is, truly onerous monopolies don't just own a vast majority of some market share. They hamper the ability to switch to another product. Facebook, Google Search and Chrome, the most discussed products in current antitrust discussions all have viable quality alternatives.

Don't like Chrome? Pick up Firefox, it's quick and easy to change. And it's the best product it's probably ever been.

Don't like Google search? There's Bing, there's DuckDuckGo and more.

Don't like Facebook? Try any of the bajillion other social networks. Hell, quite social networks and call your grandma instead. It's better for ya.

Antitrust isn't supposed to be a bludgeon to knock whoever is on top off the top. It's supposed to be a tool to break open markets where companies have successfully closed off competition and made it impossible for opponents to succeed. I just don't see that in the web right now. There is no conceivable reason Facebook couldn't be replaced and there's ample research showing that young people are already making that transition to other platforms.

Meanwhile, industries like internet service, cellular and in some places water provision, leave consumers with essentially no alternative and no choice. I see this wave of anti-web 2.0 furvor as people championing a good cause, antitrust, in utterly the wrong place for our time.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#48

Post by clairity »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #21
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%

further, you can dominate and control a market with a minority share of that market (depending on market characteristics). google's many anti-consumer actions with chrome show that 70%+ market share is more than enough already.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#49

Post by throwaway2048 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #36
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.

Especially when said monopolies actively manipulate consumer's perceptions of what a fair price is to begin with.

Witness the premium Intel put on 4+ core CPUs for ages, then suddenly when AMD picked up pace, they could deliver them at half or a third of the price...

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#50

Post by antisthenes »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #28
whatshisface wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait, hold on.

Why does a browser need a revenue model? Why can't a browser just be a piece of software that's "finished", with the occasional security patch?

Chrome is incredibly overcomplex because it attempts to be more than just a browser, and it is part of Google's strategy.

A regular browser doesn't have to be an OS in itself.

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