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Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

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Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#51

Post by taneq »

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…

I've been complaining about Google Play Services ever since they started pushing it over Android's native APIs. It was one of the big early shots fired in the war to redefine "privacy" from "nobody collects data about you" to "Your Friend $Datacorp doesn't let anyone else get the data they collect about you."

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#52

Post by dralley »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #47

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 discus…

>Facebook, Google Search and Chrome, the most discussed products in current antitrust discussions all have viable quality alternatives.

People need to stop thinking of Google and Facebook as if they offer consumer services. They don't. Their product is their ads, and their consumers are corporate marketing departments, and through this lens they are both thoroughly monopolists. Or at least "duopolists".

https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-ad-spending-update

See also: AMP, internet.org

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#53

Post by dragonwriter »

antisthenes wrote: post #50
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.

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.

> Why does a browser need a revenue model?

Because development isn't free.

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

Developing security patches for the dwindling user base such a browser would have isn't free, either.

But even if such a browser existed, the browsers people would actually be using would be the ones evolving with the things people want from the web.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#54

Post by clairity »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #47

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 discus…

> "...one quality that truly makes something a monopoply... hamper the ability to switch to another product."

substitutability isn't often discussed because it's a minor symptom of monopolies and wholly insufficient by itself to prove monopoly power, as every monopolist will have some competition and substitutes. it's unrealistic to expect a monopolist to own 100% of a market (have no competition). it's even more unrealistic to expect no substitutes on top of no competition (a substitute is using an adjacent-market product).

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#55

Post by taneq »

greiskul wrote: post #13
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...

Is Spotify, or Hulu, or Netflix, or any of the others you mentioned owned by Google? No. So... why would it cause any antitrust violation? Widevine was not the first DRM for videos, it was already common practice for the big paid video websites to require DRM before it was created.

Imagine we're 20 years into the future and Ford has just successfully managed to lobby (with quite some industry support, mind you) for mandatory Vehicle-to-Vehicle/Infrastructure comms, where every car has to be able to talk to every set of traffic lights, speed sign, and other vehicle.

Now imagine that the V2X standard which just got enshrined in law states that every vehicle has to be compatible with every other vehicle etc. And Ford sat down with GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai, and offered them a proprietary component which just so happens to do all this V2X stuff without any hassle. And they all agree to use it.

It only be legally built by Ford, but they're the V2X experts so that's OK, right, I mean they're doing a public service, right? Ford is pretty happy selling this component to GM, Toyota, Honda, etc. for a very reasonable fee, so how can there be an issue?

Now imagine some new car company wants to build cars which compete with Ford's cars, and Ford says 'nope, you can't buy our V2X component.' And booyah, Ford now controls who can and can't enter the market.

Hmm.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#58

Post by joshAg »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #47

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 discus…

> 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.

The article explains how Google through Chrome's dominance is doing and did exactly this via webstandards for DRM despite most of chrome being completely open-source via chromium.

Because Chrome has such a large footprint, it become much easier for google to make a non-standard feature become part of the standard. As long as there is a thoroughly unencumbered but still practically reasonable way to implement that standard everything is great.

But that falls apart for the DRM that enables browsers to play video files. Sure, google is willing to license that code to you, but that means you have to pay or play by their rules in order to keep being able to make a competing browser. And no, you can't just make your own version of the DRM: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....

That's bad enough for hampering the ability for people to switch products, because it means that people can't make a practical chrome competitor without becoming a google vassal, which defeats many of their reasons to making a competing browser. But it gets worse.

If google makes a change to chrome that people dislike, say hampering ad-blocking via some as-yet-unstandardized change or pushing through a standard that most people dislike, they can then tie the licensing of the unrelated feature to implementing this other thing that people dislike.

For example, Google could refuse to license the DRM code to any browser that interferes with or modifies the playback of the DRMed video stream. Then, they could define modification and interference to include removing ads from the stream.

Or google could just decline to license at all for no reason: https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/google-widevine-blocked...

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#59

Post by joshuamorton »

taneq wrote: post #55
greiskul wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Spotify, or Hulu, or Netflix, or any of the others you mentioned owned by Google? No. So... why would it cause any antitrust violation? Widevine was not the first DRM for videos, it was already common practice for the big paid video websites to require DRM before it was created.

Imagine we're 20 years into the future and Ford has just successfully managed to lobby (with quite some industry support, mind you) for mandatory Vehicle-to-Vehicle/Infrastructure comms, where every car has to be able to talk to every set of traffic lights, speed sign, and other vehicle. Now imagine that the V2X standard which just got enshrined in law states that every vehicle has to be compatible with every other v…

> Imagine we're 20 years into the future and Ford has just successfully managed to lobby (with quite some industry support, mind you) for mandatory Vehicle-to-Vehicle/Infrastructure comms, where every car has to be able to talk to every set of traffic lights, speed sign, and other vehicle.

Right, but this is where the analogy breaks down. Its more like "some municipalities decided that cars on their streets had to be specially registered or they wouldn't let you drive. Some people like those municipalities, but they aren't the majority, and you aren't, at all, forced to go near them.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#60

Post by JamesBarney »

InvisibleCities wrote: post #41
Barrin92 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it was the "Antitrust Paradox" by Bork who made a very compelling argument that at the time trust busting was too aggressive and we should focus not on the effect of monopolies on competitors but on consumers.

In the recent decide it might have swung too far in the other direction.

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