[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.