[readams]

Google makes the browser because they are profoundly vulnerable otherwise to platform owners demanding payment for access to their platforms. Android exists because Google wanted protection against a Microsoft mobile monopoly that seemed inevitable (of course it turned out to be the Apple mobile monopoly that was the real threat; notice that Google has to pay Apple billions annually for access to their platforms). Internet explorer was a similar threat. Chrome was the response to that threat.

If Google can't influence this, then there will be other platform owners who will the ones with all the margins. A world where Microsoft and Apple just squeeze all the profit out of the internet is not obviously (at least to me) better than one where they can't.

[wyattpeak]

I agree, but feel like this is only a problem because antitrust rulings are blue-moon events. In a healthy system I would expect Google to be restricted from dominating the browser landscape, and in turn Apple from restricting access to their platform.

Market power is a difficult thing to wrangle. There isn't going to be any policy which can't eventually be worked around by some party. The policy has to evolve with the landscape.

[cageface]

That's the thing that makes me uneasy about this. I'm ok with some regulation of Google and perhaps even some kind of breakup. What I don't want to see is regulators picking winners and losers. I'm concerned about Google's control over the web but at least their interested are aligned with the survival of the web and not completely locked down & proprietary platforms like iOS.

[arrosenberg]

If regulators don't get involved, they are still picking winners and losers.

[cageface]

Can't follow the logic there. If I don't jump in the middle of a horse race am I still picking a winner?

[zaarn]

The market Google and Friends are in is not a horse race.

It's more like you know that someone is manipulating the bets on the horse race, possibly even forcing results by paying off the competitors. If you do nothing, you are picking winners (the betting house) and loosers (the betters), if you do something you reverse that.

[abstractbarista]

I saw a sign at a recent protest that read "Silence is Consent". Prior to this, I've been blasted all my life with "Silence is Not Consent".

So which is it? Can you help me out here?

As for myself, I'm certain that silence is not consent. It's a freely-made choice not to take part in something.

Thus, doing nothing is not equivalent to picking winners. Picking winners is when you ... wait for it ... pick winners.

[arrosenberg]

That's the wrong analogy. Regulators aren't random spectators sitting in the stands, they are the referees. The better analogy would be if you were assigned to monitor the race for violations, and you discovered the winning horse had broken a rule. As the referee, your decision whether or not to enforce the rules has a direct impact on the results. Just so, if regulators choose not to act, they are picking the incumbents as the winners, whether or not that is ideal, best, legal or good.

[cageface]

In this race every horse is breaking every rule they can get away with and exploiting every advantage. If you suddenly want to jump in and start enforcing rules, which I think probably should happen, you need to be very careful that you don't wind up making things worse by legitimizing the abuses of only one horse. If you can't do that then you're better off just letting them fight it out.

[thu2111]

But anti-trust law is vague, and violations are often in the eye of the beholder. A sports game is also the wrong analogy because sports games have very clearly defined rules, specifically to avoid referees picking winners.

Governments are nowhere near that level of rigour or coherency, especially if you look at EU anti-trust. The USA at least requires the government to demonstrate some actual harm to consumers in court. EU anti-trust requires a single bureaucrat to decide that competitors were harmed, and they can then levy any fine they like which goes straight into the EU Commission's coffers. It can only be appealed in some sort of court after the fine is paid, and the court is packed with judges who want to see the EU expand (via spending), so that's cold comfort.

That approach is incoherent: the whole point of capitalist competition is that the better firm in some sense harms the weaker firm by taking away its customers. And giving the referee the power to transfer money from the competitors to their own pockets at will, without needing to convince anyone else at all, is clearly an enormous conflict of interest.

Many arguments about anti-trust do implicitly assume the US model, which at least has some tenuous connection to harm to the general public. That isn't really true internationally, yet ramped up anti-trust in the USA would absolutely be taken as a green light by other parts of the world to whack US firms with enormous fines for conduct that isn't actually bad in any way.

[chiefalchemist]

I believe the idea is, Google _is_ winning currently. Choosing not to get involved is a choice in favor of that winner.

It's an interesting point. To me it has merit.

[leptons]

Google AMP is bad. Google Pagespeed Insights is bad and misleading. Google has its own agenda for the web, and it doesn't really align with anything but the survival of Google.

[cageface]

I think that goes too far. Google does have an agenda for the web but at least it includes the web. Apple would like nothing better for the entire internet to be locked down and controlled inside its app store. We're better off with Android and Chrome than we would be without them.

[marcthe12]

I hope some pseudo open source components come under non profit with reduced Google control. So other big player have bigger say in stuff Chromium and Android.

[mcny]

> breakup

If you look at the breakup of Ma Bell, I think you’ll doubt the government’s ability to break up a company properly.

[cageface]

I doubt their ability to regulate properly too. But it does seem like the big tech companies have failed to self-regulate.

[andromeduck]

How can they self regulate when government keeps screwing with the incentives?

Did busting kingpins solve the drug problem?

[mcny]

Worse, the corporations have to meddle with their own regulation because they know other corporations will. My understanding is AT&T basically wrote its own consent decree.

Who in their right mind decided that the solution to a national monopoly is a handful of regional monopolies...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Bell_Operating_Compan...

> In the early 1970s, American antitrust regulators became suspicious that Bell was abusing its monopoly power, and in 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Bell claiming violations of the Sherman Act. In 1982, feeling that it could not win, Bell agreed to a Justice Department-mandated consent decree that settled the lawsuit and ordered it to break itself up into seven "Regional Bell Operating Companies" (known as "The Baby Bells"), which it did in 1984, ending the original company's existence. These "Baby Bells" are now independent companies, and several of them are very large corporations in their own right, such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, and CenturyLink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System

[wyattpeak]

> What I don't want to see is regulators picking winners and losers

I'm not thrilled by the idea either, but I'd prefer it to another round of IE6. When it comes to dealing with monopolies I think you're solidly in the realm of looking for the least bad choice.

[cageface]

I don't think IE6 really compares to Chrome. IE6 froze the web in time and made impossible for standards to evolve. Chrome may be in danger of becoming synonymous with the web but it's hardly standing still. In fact the most common complaint is that it's adding features too quickly and trying to do too much.

[wyattpeak]

IE6 was the most innovative browser of all until it won the race. I don't think we're at the stage yet where we can say if Chrome can be compared or not.

[nwienert]

The features they are adding are often unnecessary and designed to help them further lock down the web, prevent ad blocking, etc.

I’m surprised no ones even noticed that Portals are basically AMP Supercharged to where you’d never leave Google. Truly dystopian future they’re trying to slowly cement.

[saithound]

> The features they are adding are often unnecessary and designed to help them further lock down the web

Reminds me of the Browser Wars of yesteryear, when Microsoft and Netscape invented their own unnecessary, easily abused, proprietary HTML tags, such as blink and marquee.

[1] https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/blink-marquis-tag/

[cageface]

A lot of people noticed and I thought the gave a reasonable counter argument as to why this was not the case.

[koalaman]

examples?

[srtjstjsj]

If Google, Apple, and MS were prevented from developing web browsers, who would? The mass public wouldn't bother buying a copy of Netscape. We'd likely have skipped over the web entirely and gone right to native app stores for everything, like the bad old days on cell phones.

[KronisLV]

What about the Mozilla Foundation? Or are they also included in this hypothetical?

[CydeWeys]

Most of their revenue comes from Google. In this hypothetical example where the largest tech companies are no longer involved in Web browsers, where would Mozilla's funding come from?

[Zenbit_UX]

Funding would still come from Google to buy there way into the default search engines list. Just because Google loses Chrome in this hypothetical doesn't mean they don't care about search and ads anymore.

[CydeWeys]

When you're providing the majority of someone's revenue you kind of have some say in how they do things though ..

[wyattpeak]

I don't recall suggesting they be prevented from developing browsers. I said they should be prevented from dominating the market.

[madeofpalk]

> notice that Google has to pay Apple billions annually for access to their platforms)

uhhhh, doesn't Google pay Apple billions to be the default search engine on iOS? That's not "forced to pay for access", but "choses to make a business deal that costs them billions to make them billions more"

[mjburgess]

Well, consider that if Apple were an open platform, this default would be set by most "for free".

"Forced" here doesn't mean coerced, more in the sense of "forced error"; ie., as a move within a game than an opponent forces you to make.

[dan1234]

Google pay Mozilla too[0], and they're about as open as you can get.

[0]https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/15/21370020/mozilla-google-f...

[mjburgess]

See my comment below. I meant a more general sense of open, maybe "unbiased" or "biased towards their users preferences". ie., where any decision about the platform (including defaults) is left to the users, or defaulted to their clear general preference.

The "issue" is that they are charging for something the users would set themselves, and otherwise, already want.

Google is being "forced" into paying for this only because apple is willing to act against its users preferences, and eg., set a Bing default.

[waon]

> Well, consider that if Apple were an open platform, this default would be set by most "for free".

> If the platform invited the user to set a default, or was "biased towards their user's preferences", as most would select google, google would be the "natural default".

You almost make it sound like defaulting to Google without making people aware of the alternatives is “open” and unbiased.”

[dan1234]

iOS/macOS users can set their own default search engine. Google just know that most people won't change what's set by default.

[hajile]

Paying for access is different than paying for promotion. Mozilla is paid to promote Google as default search engine.

[madeofpalk]

What?

I get that iOS is closed down, but I'm a bit confused how being "open" would resolve the fact that a default search engine for Safari is set? You can still change your search engine on iOS (to one of few the browser ships with, Google, Yahoo, Bing and Duck Duck Go in UK)

Firefox is completely open/open source (isnt it?), yet Google pays Firefox for being the default search engine.

Open vs Closed has nothing to do with this. Google wants to be the default in browsers, and it choses to pay for the luxury.

[mjburgess]

I mean open in a more general sense, not of its source code.

If the platform invited the user to set a default, or was "biased towards their user's preferences", as most would select google, google would be the "natural default".

There is a sort of mild rent-seeking / racketeering in asking google to pay to configure a service Apple provides, to a default Apple's users would chose for themselves.

[wil421]

How does Apple being a closed platform prevent me from choosing my search engine on iOS?

[yoz-y]

Try setting the Safari search engine to Exalead for example.

[Siira]

It's called rent seeking.

[srtjstjsj]

Google pays Apple to advertise their Search Engine in Safari. Google, like every website, gets access to Apple platforms for free via Safari, with no obligation to pay 30% up front nor 30% of any other revenues, be they direct purchases or indirect via ads.

Google is quite fortunate that Apple doesn't block web ads or intercept web payments and charge a platform fee for that.

[deepstack]

what really need to happen with ani-trust is to alter the system politically, monetarily and militarily to prevent oligopoly. oligopoly is pretty much monopoly with theatre piece.

[legulere]

At least it would put Mozilla into a better position.