<story><title>Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?</title><url>https://alexdanco.com/2019/05/30/google-chrome-the-perfect-antitrust-villain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DubiousPusher</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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 discussions all have viable quality alternatives.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t like Chrome? Pick up Firefox, it&amp;#x27;s quick and easy to change. And it&amp;#x27;s the best product it&amp;#x27;s probably ever been.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t like Google search? There&amp;#x27;s Bing, there&amp;#x27;s DuckDuckGo and more.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t like Facebook? Try any of the bajillion other social networks. Hell, quite social networks and call your grandma instead. It&amp;#x27;s better for ya.&lt;p&gt;Antitrust isn&amp;#x27;t supposed to be a bludgeon to knock whoever is on top off the top. It&amp;#x27;s supposed to be a tool to break open markets where companies have successfully closed off competition and made it impossible for opponents to succeed. I just don&amp;#x27;t see that in the web right now. There is no conceivable reason Facebook couldn&amp;#x27;t be replaced and there&amp;#x27;s ample research showing that young people are already making that transition to other platforms.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, industries like internet service, cellular and in some places water provision, leave consumers with essentially no alternative and no choice. I see this wave of anti-web 2.0 furvor as people championing a good cause, antitrust, in utterly the wrong place for our time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joshAg</author><text>&amp;gt; That is, truly onerous monopolies don&amp;#x27;t just own a vast majority of some market share. They hamper the ability to switch to another product.&lt;p&gt;The article explains how Google through Chrome&amp;#x27;s dominance is doing and did exactly this via webstandards for DRM despite most of chrome being completely open-source via chromium.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t just make your own version of the DRM: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;boingboing.net&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;hoarding-software-freedom.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;boingboing.net&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;29&amp;#x2F;hoarding-software-freedom....&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s bad enough for hampering the ability for people to switch products, because it means that people can&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Or google could just decline to license at all for no reason: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.samuelmaddock.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;google-widevine-blocked-my-browser&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.samuelmaddock.com&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;google-widevine-blocked...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?</title><url>https://alexdanco.com/2019/05/30/google-chrome-the-perfect-antitrust-villain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DubiousPusher</author><text>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&amp;#x27;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 discussions all have viable quality alternatives.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t like Chrome? Pick up Firefox, it&amp;#x27;s quick and easy to change. And it&amp;#x27;s the best product it&amp;#x27;s probably ever been.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t like Google search? There&amp;#x27;s Bing, there&amp;#x27;s DuckDuckGo and more.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t like Facebook? Try any of the bajillion other social networks. Hell, quite social networks and call your grandma instead. It&amp;#x27;s better for ya.&lt;p&gt;Antitrust isn&amp;#x27;t supposed to be a bludgeon to knock whoever is on top off the top. It&amp;#x27;s supposed to be a tool to break open markets where companies have successfully closed off competition and made it impossible for opponents to succeed. I just don&amp;#x27;t see that in the web right now. There is no conceivable reason Facebook couldn&amp;#x27;t be replaced and there&amp;#x27;s ample research showing that young people are already making that transition to other platforms.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, industries like internet service, cellular and in some places water provision, leave consumers with essentially no alternative and no choice. I see this wave of anti-web 2.0 furvor as people championing a good cause, antitrust, in utterly the wrong place for our time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dralley</author><text>&amp;gt;Facebook, Google Search and Chrome, the most discussed products in current antitrust discussions all have viable quality alternatives.&lt;p&gt;People need to stop thinking of Google and Facebook as if they offer consumer services.  They don&amp;#x27;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 &amp;quot;duopolists&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.emarketer.com&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;global-ad-spending-update&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.emarketer.com&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;global-ad-spending-update&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;See also: AMP, internet.org</text></comment>