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by JumpCrisscross 5 days ago
Google doesn’t have a monopoly in workspace applications.
2 comments

You don't have to have a monopoly to be monopolistic.
The Sherman Act says that any action by an individual, or conspiracy of a group of individuals, to "restrain trade" or seek a monopoly is illegal.

Monopolies aren't a prerequisite for antitrust action, they're the failure state when you should have acted sooner.

Taco Bell is a monopoly because they restrain the trade of tacos because they ask me to take my taco truck elsewhere when I park in their parking lot to sell tacos. Never mind there are other places I can set up my truck, never mind there are tons of other taco shops, Taco Bell is a monopoly as now I need to go find a different corner to sell my tacos, they're restraining the trade of tacos.

Everything is a monopoly these days. Its practically meaningless in these conversations.

Get this, they won't even let me sell my tacos through the Taco Bell app. What a monopoly! We need to get the FTC to enforce Taco Bell's and Taco Bueno's mobile apps to make their apps support every taco truck's ordering system. They're restraining the marketplace of selling tacos through their apps to only their own stores!

Every feature of their apps needs to be easily integrated into whatever random POS every single food truck uses! I should be able to buy tacos from any taco vendor through the Taco Bell app. They're a monopoly!

I would actually be pretty concerned if Taco Bell bought Ford and would only allow Ford cars to use their drive-through or parking lot.

Imagine a world where 95% of grocery stores insist on you driving a Ford car.

What if it was they bought a car brand and added a transponder to the car so owners of taco bell cars could be auto-identified and had their favorite orders already ordered for them while all other models of cars were still free to use the normal drive through process? Would that be a "monopoly" somehow?

Isn't that more of what's going on here? An optional feature people can use if they choose to use the holistic platform?

This isn't forcing anyone to choose Chrome. The customer can still use any browser they want with Workspace. They get an extra feature when they use Chrome though.

Sorry, how is "blocking Firefox" not forcing people to choose Chrome?

I suppose you can argue the admin is doing it and Google is merely facilitating it, but the article title is "block Firefox access"

I doubt Microsoft would qualify as a monopoly under present-day excuses being made for Google yet here we are with Internet Explorer Part Deux.