[teddyh]

> You never really see that if AWS adds a product, or GCP adds a product or any other products from bigger CDNs.

Accusations of hypocrisy is not an argument. Instead of accusing me (and all other detractors) of not criticizing others enough, please elaborate why this isn’t what I described.

Cloudflare (and others) keep releasing products which makes their central role more central and less vulnerable to competition. They ought not to do that, and I would argue for laws which prevent them from doing that if necessary.

Regarding the problem, this kind of problem should not be solved by one central actor. Instead, these problems should be solved by new network and protocol designs.

[jnwatson]

From that line of argument, we should really get folks off Linux. And nginx.

[teddyh]

Is Linux a central actor? No, it’s not; any people could continue development at any time if the current people stop developing it.

Also, the comparison is flawed, since neither Linux nor Nginx are network services.

[onion2k]

please elaborate why this isn’t what I described

Approximately 1/3 of the most popular websites use Cloudflare[1]. That's not really an argument against the fact that Cloudflare might want to be 'the central server of the internet', but it's a suggestion that they have some way to go yet. I'd bet that Google Tag Manager and some AWS services are integrated into more than 1/3.

[1] From https://backlinko.com/cloudflare-users

[teddyh]

What, “They’re not an empire, they only rule ⅓ of the Earth’s surface!”?

Or “Cloudflare cannot possibly be taking advantage of their market share, since they have competition!”?

[jraph]

Google Tag Manager can be down without affecting websites uptime and as a visitor I can block them. I do block them, by the way. So, it's quite central, but at least not really a point of failure.

AWS and Cloudflare, on the contrary… (and also Google products like fonts.googleapi.com, or probably anything under googleapi.com)

[gautamdivgi]

That’s too much government control for my liking. Just being honest. Laws that prevent free enterprise never end well. There should be laws that prevent companies from selling a product at a “loss” to gain market share. But to prevent companies from releasing products is completely different level of control which is undesirable.