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Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

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Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#71

Post by joshAg »

ajross wrote: post #68
joshAg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 efficie…

The unfair barrier to entry is that in order to compete at making a browser the competitor has to build much, much more than just a browser. The fact that it was apple that was successful in building an also-ran competitor isn't helpful for google, because Apple's size allows other companies to argue that unless they are as large as google or apple, they cannot compete at all, which means new or smaller players can't fairly compete.

If the goal is to build a browser, then everything else (the alternative ecosystem, the alternative OS, the alternative hardware, the custom chips for the hardware, etc.) not required for the actual browser is waste. That's the exact opposite of efficiency.

The issue isn't chrome's ecosystem. The issue is that Chrome is being used to create unfair barriers of entry for Chrome competitors which then allows Google to use Chrome to harm consumers because there are limited competitors for consumers to switch to.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#72

Post by dralley »

ajross wrote: post #68
joshAg wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 efficie…

Absurd. Apple is the #2 biggest company in the world, the fact that they are build their own parallel system is in no way proof that it isn't an unfair barrier to entry to "new and smaller players".

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#73

Post by snek »

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…

If you want to make a browser and show any content encrypted with Widevine (which is the majority of DRM content), you need a Widevine license, and they straight up refuse to issue those. How are you supposed to compete with Chrome when Google prevents you from playing Netflix and Spotify?

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#74

Post by euyyn »

joshAg wrote: post #71
ajross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 efficie…

The unfair barrier to entry is that in order to compete at making a browser the competitor has to build much, much more than just a browser. The fact that it was apple that was successful in building an also-ran competitor isn't helpful for google, because Apple's size allows other companies to argue that unless they are as large as google or apple, they cannot compete at all, which means new or smaller players can't…

Can people use or license Apple's version of DRM instead?

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#75

Post by soraminazuki »

writepub wrote: post #7

I don't faintly see the logic in this! The proof is in the pudding on Chrome's tangible open source impact: 1. V8 is used in a multitude of projects, node being the most impact-ful. And node has changed desktop (with electron and CLI apps), server and developer workflow 2. Brave, Edge, Opera are just some of the WideVine licensed Chromium based browsers On the contrary, iOS has banned almost every tenet of common sen…

No need for whataboutism here, as no one is here to argue that Google’s competitors don’t engage in anti-competitive behavior. This is about how Google uses its open source products to shape web standards to their sole benefit, while using its “openness” to pretend otherwise. The author explicitly singles out Chrome, because it has a huge influence on the entire web despite the little attention it receives from consumers.

> The proof is in the pudding on Chrome's tangible open source impact

Yes, the more influence Chrome has, the better it is for Google.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#76

Post by euyyn »

vkou wrote: post #70
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.

My understanding is all kids moved to Instagram / Snapchat as soon as parents started using Facebook too, and now parents are on Instagram too so I expect kids are already using something else.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#77

Post by joshAg »

euyyn wrote: post #74
joshAg wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfair barrier to entry is that in order to compete at making a browser the competitor has to build much, much more than just a browser. The fact that it was apple that was successful in building an also-ran competitor isn't helpful for google, because Apple's size allows other companies to argue that unless they are as large as google or apple, they cannot compete at all, which means new or smaller players can't…

Can people use or license Apple's version of DRM instead?

Kinda? There's other patent issue with HLS that keeps it mostly Apple only since Apple foots the costs on apple products, which can be similarly argued creates/continues an unfair barrier of entry: http://www.overdigital.com/2012/04/17/the-hidden-licensing-c...

But being required to license anything in order to implement what is a supposed to be an open standard is already a problem for a standard that's supposed to be open, even if it's not an antitrust issue.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#78

Post by antidesitter »

vkou wrote: post #70
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.

> Mastodon is a cesspit

Explain what you mean.

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#79

Post by Mikeb85 »

snek wrote: post #73
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…

If you want to make a browser and show any content encrypted with Widevine (which is the majority of DRM content), you need a Widevine license, and they straight up refuse to issue those. How are you supposed to compete with Chrome when Google prevents you from playing Netflix and Spotify?

Spotify has native apps on all platforms (even Linux). Netflix works on Firefox (even on Linux). Not sure how Google is preventing anything...

Re: Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

#80

Post by ajross »

dralley wrote: post #72
ajross wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 efficie…

Absurd. Apple is the #2 biggest company in the world, the fact that they are build their own parallel system is in no way proof that it isn't an unfair barrier to entry to "new and smaller players".

You're hanging that "absurd" entirely on my use of the word "smaller" and ignoring the first clause of that sentence.

The simple truth is that an antitrust case needs to show some kind of harm to consumers, not to browser vendors. Again, I cite the fact that MS straight up murdered Netscape and got away with it (though it was scary for them for a bit).

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