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DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

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Re: DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

#41

Post by sangupta »

chomp wrote: post #30
sangupta wrote: post #22

Just thinking: So, Google makes life easier for users by creating Chrome and getting us respite from IE. When they moved the web really forward and way faster than others (Edge/Opera switched to Chromium too) - the DOJ wants them to give it away. It's like raising an exceptional child only to be asked to be adopted when they grow to be an adult.

Your analogy isn’t accurate because the child wasn’t exceptional, it only exists a vehicle for maintaining Google’s ad dominance. It’s like raising an exceptional child who is a criminal and having people come out of the woodwork saying “he was so good, he didn’t do anything wrong”

Agreed that it brings search dominance. But, it's like siblings helping each other out in life. A child excelled in a field where other failed. Now this child also helps promote his/her sibling's business.

Many Apple products only connect with other Apple products. Microsoft keeps poking/pushing to use Edge on Microsoft. Brave browser did eat into share and made a mark.

What is stopping from other kids in the field (FF, Edge, Opera etc) to be better, beat Chrome and also blocks ads?

Re: DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

#42

Post by hagbard_c »

frizlab wrote: post #26
jeffbee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how that would work. YouTube cannot exist without Google. It gets a free ride on Google infrastructure, software, and R&D including custom silicon. If it had to pay nondiscriminatory prices for network, compute, and storage then it simply would not exist. I can't see how that benefits the consumer.

Because that type of service should not come from a private entity. In an ideal world our taxes would pay for these services and the government would provide video hosting. Same goes for map business searching and co BTW. This must not be from a private entity. But it is, because the government is not competent to do it.

That ideal world you're referring to is called Utopia and its spectre has been haunting the world for more than a century.

> This must not be from a private entity

The way it stands this sentence does not make sense. Rephrase it slightly and it makes a lot of sense: this must not be from a single private entity. There should be several, preferably many private entities offering such services.

In a truly ideal world everyone would be able to host a video service because there would be essentially unlimited bandwidth, with several competing indexing services providing discoverability. In a slightly less ideal but more achievable world people would still get to run their own services, discoverability would still be provided through competing indexers and the lack of bandwidth would be solved through some sort peer to peer mechanism. The only way in which the government should be involved is in upholding the law of the land by prosecuting those who break said law. That's it, really.

Re: DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

#43

Post by hagbard_c »

frizlab wrote: post #40
jeffbee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government YouTube: easily the worst idea I've heard in years.

And the fact that it is a bad idea (I agree, it is!) says a lot about the trust we have in the government and their competency, sadly… That being said, it’s basically TV before the internet.

Not at all, commercial television has been a thing for a long time. Government gets involved when deciding who gets to use the limited radio frequency spectrum used to transmit television signals over the ether but it has been possible to offer a wide array of television channels over cable for a long time as well. Government gets involved when deciding who gets to run cables for cable television and tends (or tended) to mandate some specific channels which should be available but those were/are only a small fraction of the available choice.

Re: DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

#45

Post by pllbnk »

sangupta wrote: post #41
chomp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy isn’t accurate because the child wasn’t exceptional, it only exists a vehicle for maintaining Google’s ad dominance. It’s like raising an exceptional child who is a criminal and having people come out of the woodwork saying “he was so good, he didn’t do anything wrong”

Agreed that it brings search dominance. But, it's like siblings helping each other out in life. A child excelled in a field where other failed. Now this child also helps promote his/her sibling's business. Many Apple products only connect with other Apple products. Microsoft keeps poking/pushing to use Edge on Microsoft. Brave browser did eat into share and made a mark. What is stopping from other kids in the field (…

You are one comment too far with your analogy. Continuing comparing a browser with a child and a corporation with a family is not helping your case.

Analogies work fine for shallow understanding, but like comparing electricity with flow of water inside the pipes, they very quickly break down once you get a bit deeper into the subject.

To make my point clearer, building a browser is not like raising a child, because building a browser is just coding: need more features - hire more developers. They built Chrome not for the good of humanity but for the benefit of their commercial interests.

Re: DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

#47

Post by LightHugger »

jeffbee wrote: post #36
LightHugger wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube can buy those services from google as an independent entity, like everybody else. Not profitable enough? Good. I see a lot of people who don't understand that is not a side effect, but the point of antitrust action, to destroy business models that are only competitive as loss leaders for another arm of the monopoly business. Finally we'd get closer to fair competition between video platforms.

It's not a loss leader. It makes a huge amount of money, but only because of its tight integration with Google infrastructure. It is not an abuse of a monopoly any more than it would be for an oil refinery to sell both diesel fuel and petrol.

It makes that money because it gets that infrastructure at cost instead of having to pay for it.
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