[3jckd]

This is the key point here. Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari) and MIcrosoft (Edge) funnel money from other ventures to their browser dev teams. For Apple and Microsoft it’s just a staple tool that each operating system needs but for Google it’s a platform that guides users towards their other services and ties them in, YouTube, Gmail, Drive, to name but a few.

In the current business model, there’s absolutely no competing with them long term. You’d have to either break them up or create some weird funding schemes driven by govs and users that don’t care (public good or some other utilitarian argument).

[dwd]

This where anti-trust kicks in, that you don't allow companies to leverage a monopoly/duopoly position in one market to destroy competition in another. Particularly if they give products away for free to destroy the existing competition or as a lead in to their existing profit-making product.

[extropy]

The tricky bit here is that for most users the browser is "free" so there is no market to destroy.

You need to offer some value added services (like privacy, less ads) to be able to charge for the browser.

[pintxo]

Problematic might be the delay in the process. Anti-trust cases can take decades until a final verdict is given.

[gridlockd]

> Particularly if they give products away for free to destroy the existing competition...

You're thinking of predatory pricing, but he market price for a browser has been zero for a long time.

Users chose to ditch Firefox and IE for Chrome because it was the better product. That's competition at work. The point of anti-trust is to protect the consumer, not the weak market participants.

If tomorrow Google decided to do something to Chrome, that isn't in the consumer's interest, immediately the opportunity arises for competitors to outdo them - with their own code even.

> ...or as a lead in to their existing profit-making product.

Isn't that the point of most free products? I doubt there's an anti-trust case to be made there.

[disgruntledphd2]

Oh really? Where's the price for advertising on the Google.com homepage?

Surely Google wouldn't allocate ad-space preferentially to their own products, right?

And surely they wouldn't bug me for five plus years about how the internet is faster with Chrome?

Nah, that would never happen ;)

[nemacol]

>The point of anti-trust is to protect the consumer, not the weak market participants

I don't think your definition of anti-trust is accurate. Protect consumers by creating a competitive market. To promote and protect competition because consumers and the economy as a whole benefits when we have more competition in the market.

[pessimizer]

> Users chose to ditch Firefox and IE for Chrome because it was the better product.

This is essentially a religious belief, and using "Chrome is the superior browser" as the foudation to your argument that "Google did nothing wrong" is weak and essentially circular.

These massive, unregulated companies can lose an enormous amount of money on products indefinitely, either choosing to sink cash into them quickly in order to follow (or drive) the market into rapid change that a company that is required to bring in revenue can't keep up with, or in a slower market just park the product at an adequate quality, and wait for the competition to stumble.

After the competition dies, then you can squeeze the customer for all they're worth.

[tomxor]

> This is essentially a religious belief, and using "Chrome is the superior browser" as the foudation to your argument that "Google did nothing wrong" is weak and essentially circular.

Lets not oversimplify things. "Product competition" and "google doing nothing wrong" do not need to be, and are not, synonymous. These attributes are separated by at least a decade though.

I'm pretty sure enough of us in this thread were using the web when chrome was emerging, it _did_ offer a compelling alternative to the pretty dire alternatives at the time whatever your platform, and all on it's own merrits. For such complex beasts it's hard to quantize into best, and browsers wax an wayne in terms of keeping up with web standards and performance expectations... never the less at the time, chrome was a breath of fresh air in the context of the very stale state of browser development.

At the time it really didn't matter what Google's motives were, browsers sucked and this was good competition... But in the context of a monopoly in browser share (which lets face it chrome has become)... Motive is very important.

I agree with you though, the parent comment is wrong that the competition is still alive, it's merely historic at this point.

The underlying theme is motives vs competition - in the right context (competition), ulterior motives are neutralized due to market forces. However once overcome, those true motives take over.

[gridlockd]

I've been a Firefox user through all these years and still am. I don't like Google. I can still admit that during a crucial phase, Chrome was the better browser. Nowadays I don't think it's much of a difference, but the ship has sailed.

I never said that "Google did nothing wrong". I'm saying that if Google were to do something wrong that users actually care about, that would open the opportunity for competition to gain traction by offering a better product - based on their own codebase even!

That situation is what limits Google's options and that's what differentiates it from an actual monopoly. If you have a monopoly, your users are forced to use your services, because nobody else is able to compete. Nothing forces me to use Google's browser.

If you're making an anti-trust case, it has to be solid. If you just don't like the situation or making some sort of moral case, that's a different story.

[Miraste]

It's also worth noting that even though Microsoft didn't need Edge to succeed to nearly the degree Firefox has to in order to continue development, the competition from Chrome was so intense they gave up anyway. Fields where even subsidized megacorp projects can't stay above water are very tough places for mid-size nonprofits.

[dageshi]

I think if you look at Chrome from Google's pov originally, the last thing they wanted was someone putting out a browser where the default search engine of whatever you typed into the address bar couldn't be changed to google. A competitor could attack google by owning the browser, perhaps what they thought microsoft would do.

[daemin]

They also didn't want a small company making a browser which some other company could pay to become the default search engine.