[joshAg]

> 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...

[ajross]

> 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.

[joshAg]

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.

[ajross]

> 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.

[joshAg]

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.

[euyyn]

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

[joshAg]

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.

[Mindwipe]

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

There's no public mechanism for doing so. If Apple would do so to people it liked is not known.

You could license PlayReady from Microsoft though, and lots of people do for various implementations. There are also a few other companies that do similar modules, mostly aimed at the global pay TV market.

The terms would be fairly painful for a free browser vendor I expect, but "I priced my product at a level where I can't afford to buy in the things my users want from any of the independent vendors" isn't really an anti-trust concern.

[dralley]

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".

[ajross]

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).

[damnyou]

Thankfully the misguided consumer welfare model of antitrust has slowly been changing with Lina Khan's work.

[robocat]

Why is it not that HBO pressured Google into using DRM, and that HBO are the evil guys here?

[joshAg]

Because Google isn't beholden to HBO.

Secondly, the issue isn't that google added DRM to chrome, it's that the DRM was pushed into an ostensibly open standard, but the implementation of that open standard is locked behind a licensing agreement with Google because it's illegal to make a compatible client under the DMCA, since that would be considered copyright circumvention.

If instead google and HBO had made a specialized browser app to handle the DRM or even just a browser extension that enabled the browser to understand a nonstandard html tag, then the argument that Google is using Chrome's footprint to to modify open standards to make it harder for people to compete with them starts to fall flat on its face (cw. no one is complaining that an HBO app for android and iOS is a monopoly that needs to be broken up). But doing it that way makes it much harder for HBO to acquire customers, because it requires customers to install a new app on their PC or an extension in their browser.

[Mindwipe]

> Secondly, the issue isn't that google added DRM to chrome, it's that the DRM was pushed into an ostensibly open standard, but the implementation of that open standard is locked behind a licensing agreement with Google because it's illegal to make a compatible client under the DMCA, since that would be considered copyright circumvention.

It's not locked behind a licensing agreement with Google. It just unambiguously isn't. Google's own implementation is, but they aren't even the majority provider of EME CDM modules in the market, and there are several competitors, as well as an entirely free specification for one.

The problem for these smaller browser vendors isn't building their own EME modules, it's convincing major content streaming websites to trust their modules, which they don't. And that really isn't any different to the fact that if they were to start running their own certificate signing authority there's no reason why lots of sites would start trusting them either.

[lifthrasiir]

> We watch Microsoft choke Netscape to death in the 90's, and at the end of the day nothing happened.

Well, yeah, nothing happened as the IE development was grounded to a halt.

[ajross]

The MS settlement with the DoJ was reached in 2001, about three months after the release of IE6. If anything I think history shows the opposite occurred. Internet Explorer continued rapidly evolving during the antitrust case and its development "grounded to a halt" after the government let Microsoft off the hook.

Which makes enough sense. MS always viewed the web as an enemy and wanted people on windows apps as their primary gateways. They needed a browser until they won, then they tried to kill it. Ultimately it was Apple who succeeded at that vision, obviously.

[leadingthenet]

Apple unfortunately did not succeed at that vision, and all the damn Electron apps running on my Mac are proof of that.

[chx]

> Ultimately it was Apple who succeeded at that vision, obviously.

At what vision?

[ajross]

An OS where almost all interaction is through applications written to a proprietary API and not a common cross-platform standard.

[comex]

Browsers with Widevine support, according to [1] and [2]:

- Chrome

- Firefox

- Brave (Chromium fork, built in ad blocking)

- Opera (Chromium fork)

- Roku

- Samsung Tizen smart TVs

Browsers which support a similar selection of streaming providers through different DRM solutions:

- Edge (Chromium fork)

- Safari

Just because you can't get a license for "my personal open source browser" doesn't mean there's a barrier to serious competitors here. (At least, not at present.)

[1] https://castlabs.com/resources/drm-comparison/

[2] https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360023851591-How...

[onli]

> Just because you can't get a license for "my personal open source browser" doesn't mean there's a barrier to serious competitors here. (At least, not at present.)

There is no way to know if not one of those "personal open source browsers" they blocked would have become the new chrome. The shared video playback experience of the one they sabotaged sounded neat.

It's not about adblocking, the article gets that wrong. If Chrome limits adblocking there are a bunch of alternatives that allow it. But the DRM control position they lobbied themselves into is in my eyes a barrier of entry to a relevant part of technological projects and something an antitrust case could address.

Yes, there are a few other browsers that can do the same, play DRMed videos. That makes the case harder. But why should Google have the power to control who can build browsers that support streaming sites? All while having economic interests to limit the competition? I think that's still a trust issue.

But I'm absolutely biased. I hated the DRM decision and would love it if it has dire consequences.

[Mindwipe]

> But why should Google have the power to control who can build browsers that support streaming sites?

They don't.

You can build one tomorrow. I can go and get the clearkey spec and make one right now, very quickly.

But if you do why do streaming sites trust you? And that really isn't anything to do with Google.