Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by GeekyBear 78 days ago
The same way Google evaded regulatory scrutiny for refusing to allow a YouTube client for Windows Phone?
1 comments

Internet Explorer Mobile is a YouTube client. You're describing a client-server disagreement when the user is talking about an entirely client-based conflict.
Google deployed custom code to actively block the clients so it went beyond just a disagreement
That's normal behavior when your server is being reverse-engineered or abused. Video bandwidth is not free.

Apple's decision is not constrained by server logic or ballooning costs, it is entirely a client-based policy to not sign CUDA drivers.

> That's normal behavior when your server is being reverse-engineered or abused. Video bandwidth is not free.

Microsoft rewrote their Windows Phone native client to pass through Google's ads. Google still blocked it.

Was it normal behavior when Google blocked Amazon Fire devices from connecting to YouTube with a web browser during the Google/Amazon corporate spat?

To be fair, Google did back down almost immediately when the tech press picked up on it.

Not allowing a native client for your monopoly market share video service on Amazon devices while also blocking Amazon's web browser on those devices is making things a bit too obvious.

Again - servers are always offered at-will. If the service provider wants to boot you out, their TOS usually won't give you the right to renegotiate service.

Clients are not offered at-will, they either work or they don't. Nvidia ships AArch64 UNIX drivers, Apple is the one that neglects their UNIX clients.

Using your monopoly market share video service as a weapon against companies offering platforms that compete with your own is textbook antitrust behavior.

Google used YouTube as a weapon against both Windows Phone and devices running Amazon's Fire fork of Android.

There hasn't been any abuse in this story as far as I know, it's not like mass downloads of videos happened with their client.
That's besides the point, you don't own the server. You cannot expect the server to work forever, or demand a right to access it.

You do own the client though. In the example upstream, the failure to support macOS clients can't be blamed on Nvidia because they already wrote AArch64 UNIX support.

When you have a monopoly like YouTube, yes you can expect to have an access to the platform if it prevents competition. It's textbook antitrust laws.
You cannot use a monopoly market share product like YouTube as a weapon against companies who compete with you in other areas.

This is as basic as antitrust law gets.