401–410 of 524 posts
Google is about to pull from its war chest to create a PR frenzy to make this a very bad thing for consumers/users. They'll appeal to conservative and neoliberal circles. Personally, as a former Google employee, I want them smashed to pieces.
So, no different than every company on any given day under capitalism?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see this succeeding. Not only is tech extremely hateable as a demographic, not everyone is a corporate bootlicker (outside of this forum)
> Not only is tech extremely hateable as a demographic Oh boy is this incorrect. Outside the Silicon Valley / well-educated upper middle class / tech worker bubble, tech companies are more trusted than most political parties and government and religious institutions, and this is true across the world as polls show. People who are not into tech have no idea about Google's business deals or App Store anti-steering prov…
The bar is that low huh?
I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't that Edge would survive without Chrome. I think it would be more fair to say that without Chrome, there will only be Safari, Firefox, Ladybird, and Verso. Yes, the latter two aren't ready yet, but I get they would gain fast traction in Chrome's absence.
An unfortunate additional consequence of this antitrust lawsuit is that it is likely it will end The Google payments to Mozilla every year. That's 80% of the revenue, so the odds of them being a viable business afterwards are low. So I think we can cross that off the list as well and conclude that in the short to medium term, if Chrome went away it would mean simple web hegemony for Apple.
I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…
> because people choose to use it. Incorrect. Google spent ungodly amounts of money to make sure that their search engine was the default in as many places as possible. People didn't "choose" to use it, they use the defaults. And in some cases, like my Android phone, google is the only option for integrated searches. I cannot use another search engine without opening a browser then opening up the search engine of cho…
I tired Kagi, it's good too, but I didn't feel like the cost was justified when Google is free. I will probably try Kagi again someday though, I did like it and I think their mission is pretty cool.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Microsoft has misused their market power plenty of times, such as when they bundled Microsoft Teams with their enterprise contract at zero cost, destroying Slack's market value overnight.
Or how about the fact that basically no one uses Windows by choice, they use it because they need to for some app, and because of that Microsoft makes the entire OS constantly harass everyone to try and trick them into signing up for Microsoft services. Regularly I get an OS update that walks me through "setting up" my "new" PC I've had for 3 years, and it involves dodging dark pattern UIs to not sign up for Office o…
Uhh not really, I use it by choice, because it provides functionality that other brands don't.
That operating system provides functionality, compatibility and services that other manufacturers don't.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's true that Windows is a monopoly anymore. You could always get a mac. Most people I know use macs, in fact. I still use Windows but I'm in the minority. I tried going to Linux earlier but I still feel Windows has smoother performance.
Windows is 60-70% of US PC usage. Mac is 20-25%. Globally, it's even more lopsided with Windows at about 75% and Mac at about 15%. Hard to say Windows isn't a monopoly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well. I agree with the parent commenter that its not exactly a monopoly in the traditional sense. It's not even the default browser on Mac or Windows.
> Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well And yet browser development costs money. If browsers cost money, you could make a better product and compete by selling it, but when an incumbent is giving theirs away for free?
I think we need a better term than monopoly, that separates it from what people usually mean which is 'the best product'. I literally cannot think of any sort of product or service with lower switching costs than internet search. Typing bing.com takes 0.8 seconds and costs $0. Hundreds of orders of magnitude easier than switching to a different railroad if only one goes through your town. Google is a big ass company…
Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, becau…
The antitrust legislation protects consumers, not businesses. If Linux provides for free what a proprietary software offered for money, it's a net win, even if that company goes out of business.
The problem with Chrome is not that it's free. The problem is that it develops more and more anti-customer traits, like making it hard to block ads, and uses its market share and compatibility issues to force these on customers.
The problem with google search is that Google integrates it with Chrome and Android, and buys the default search engine slots in other browsers, so that many customers are not even aware of other options. Sadly, Bing and DDG are not clearly superior, and, say, Kagi is paid. (Kagi is a good example of a paid product that's significantly better than the common free alternative.) Ironically the default search engine deals is how Firefox acquires most of its funding.
I don't see an easy way to find Google guilty of hurting customers through monopoly power in search or browsers: free products, a few alternatives, trivial cost of switching, no price gouging possible. Same with dumping: products start and remain free, most of Chrome is open-source and competitors reuse that same code, and customers are free to use these derivates, or adequate independent browsers and search engines.
It's a bit like coca-cola: alternatives abound, downsides are known, but people just seem to weirdly prefer it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now the main paying user of Chrome is Google as a tool to deliver product integrations and guarantee browser based ad delivery. It's just that all of that is seen as internal expense in developing Chrome instead of an external source of revenue from Chrome. If Chrome were split off the main paying user of Chrome would probably be large enterprises and educational institutions - that'd be a massive change. I'm n…
Can you explain what large enterprises and educational institutions would be paying Chrome for?