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by realusername 73 days ago
Google deployed custom code to actively block the clients so it went beyond just a disagreement
1 comments

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.

> monopoly market share video service

A "monopoly" "service"? What have they monopolized, laziness? It's not the App Store, you can go replace it with DailyMotion at your earliest convenience.

You're still retreading why your original comment was not at all relevant to the critique being made. We have precedent for prosecuting monopolistic behavior in America, but it doesn't encompass services even when they're mandatory to use the client. It does have a precedent for arbitrarily preventing competitors from shipping a runtime that competes with the default OS, incidentally.

When your product has a monopoly market share, you don't get to use it as a weapon against competitors in other markets, even if you claim there is some imaginary exception to antitrust law involving servers.
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're going to need to cite legal precedent for that. I could not go sue HBO for monopolizing Game of Thrones and refusing to stream it in 8K to my Linux PC. There are no damages.
Google is above the law in the US, there's a reason why the CEO sits at the presidential inauguration. It's not about laws but power.

And your example is pretty poor, HBO doesn't have a 10th of the power of YouTube.

You're going to need to cite this imaginary "server" exemption to American antitrust law that you claim to believe exists.
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.