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Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

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Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#61

Post by berbec »

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%

Just wait until Edge becomes ChroM$ium

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#62

Post by ajross »

joshAg wrote: post #58
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-standar…

> 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.

Yes, but it also fails to make much of an antitrust case about this. I mean, is Widevine licensing anticompetitive? Discriminatory? Surely it would be hard to make a competitor for it. But at the same time Apple and HBO seem to be streaming a ton of content without it.

The harm to open source media playback is real, but that's not an argument about market health. Frankly I'm pretty doubtful much antitrust hay can be made about this. We watch Microsoft choke Netscape to death in the 90's, and at the end of the day nothing happened. Maybe Google will be forced to spin off the Widevine IP to a separate company, I guess. No one is going to kill Chrome for you.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#63

Post by IshKebab »

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 think the Google Play Services ploy was pretty obvious very early on - it started about when they stopped updating the AOSP apps (alarm, keyboard, etc.) and moved the GPS/IMU sensor fusion stuff into Play Services.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#64

Post by dredmorbius »

JamesBarney wrote: post #60
InvisibleCities wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bork made the argument. But as with all ideologies, that was then embraced and, with the aid of monopoly-money billions (the real kind), reamplified throughout the "public" (monopoly-fed) discourse and corridors of policy definition (legislatures, regulators, academe). Jane Mayer's Dark Money tells much of that story.

Some who find themselves so embraced shun the contact. Bork reveled in it.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#65

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

Torvalds is employed by the Linux Foundation.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#66

Post by joshAg »

ajross wrote: post #62
joshAg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-standar…

> 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. Yes, but it also fails to make much of an antitrust case about this. I mean, is Widevine licensing anticompetitive? Discriminatory? Surely it would be hard to make a competitor for it. But at the same time Apple and HBO seem to be streami…

Come on, HBO is literally listed on widevine.com as a user of the product (this asset is like halfway down widevine.com: https://www.widevine.com/assets/img/logo-hbo.png), and there's an iOS sdk for widevine as well, so iOS apps are using widevine too, so no, neither is streaming a ton without it, unless you mean how Apple themselves went and made an entire competing ecosystem that depends not just on a competing DRM standard (Fairplay), but competing apps and playback devices. That's not a great argument for Google to make that they don't have a monopoly status for web streaming: "No, you honor, it's simple. You can't totally make a competing browser to stream media. You just have to make an entirely separate device with a custom OS using customized hardware and a customezed digital store for people to browse to using your code. Simple!"

I didn't argue widevine licensing was anticompetitive on its own. I said how Google grants licenses and the terms of the license is part of a larger strategy on Google's part to hamper the ability of consumers to switch away from Chrome.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#67

Post by tedivm »

jiveturkey wrote: post #46

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 outs…

You're literally redefining monopoly in a way that's different than every economist and most of society.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#68

Post by ajross »

joshAg wrote: post #66
ajross wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes, but it also fails to make much of an antitrust case about this. I mean, is Widevine licensing anticompetitive? Discriminatory? Surely it would be hard to make a competitor for it. But at the same time Apple and HBO seem to be streami…

Come on, HBO is literally listed on widevine.com as a user of the product (this asset is like halfway down widevine.com: https://www.widevine.com/assets/img/logo-hbo.png ), and there's an iOS sdk for widevine as well, so iOS apps are using widevine too, so no, neither is streaming a ton without it, unless you mean how Apple themselves went and made an entire competing ecosystem that depends not just on a competing DR…

> Apple themselves went and made an entire competing ecosystem that depends not just on a competing DRM standard (Fairplay), but competing apps and playback devices.

Yes! Exactly. And the fact that Apple was successful doing that is sort of a killer argument against an antitrust case.

Look, antitrust isn't about enforcing your personal idea of a perfect browser ecosystem. It's about protecting the competetive efficiency of the market by guaranteeing that new and smaller players (and new technologies) don't see an unfair barrier to entry.

Your argument is just that Chrome is an unhealthy monoculture ecosystem. I even agree. But that's not an antitrust case and you need to stop pretending that someone is going to come around and rule Chrome illegal for you. The arguments I've seen are all very narrow and will have very narrow remedies.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#70

Post by vkou »

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.

What is a quality alternative to Facebook? Diaspora was DOA, Mastodon is a cesspit, Twitter is nothing like Facebook, and G+ is long-dead.

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