[saghm]

There's no contradiction here; it's totally possible for a company to make a feature configurable so that it doesn't block their competitors but also intentionally design and market it in a way that's misleading in ways that will lead to their competitors getting blocked. When we're talking about a company as large as Google and a product with as much market share as Chrome, I don't think it's that crazy to think that things like this add up to encouraging even more hegemony, and when that happens to align perfectly with the incentives of the company making said product decisions, I also don't think it's crazy to think it's unlikely to be a coincidence.

[insanitybit]

If the argument is that Google has built a product that encourages use of Google products, of course. The question is whether that's some sort of trickery or odd or bad. "Google offers Managed Chrome as a service" hardly seems controversial to me.

[jchw]

Google offering managed chrome as a service is a completely sensible thing. The problem is that they are nearly a browser monopoly, and making Google Workspace work in such a way with Google Chrome feels to me like anti-competitive practices. If we didn't have one giant megacorp that did both things, it would be different.

Of course, so far the only workable model for web browsers is having a giant megacorp fund their development and maintenance. Which is a huge issue, and we will do basically nothing about it.

(Don't get me wrong. I have high hopes for Ladybird and even Servo, but they may come too late if effectively-proprietary features force most users to stick to Chrome anyways.)

[insanitybit]

I'm not sure what the alternative is. Is there will from Firefox to support a "standard browser config", at which point GSuite could add support for managed Firefox config? If you want managed Firefox, Mozilla could offer that as well (they have something but it's different enough).

[spwa4]

The alternative that we've used for the past 100+ years is to force such companies apart. Is Google Docs allowed to offer a "managed chrome" policy? Sure. Is Google Chrome allowed to be a browser? Absolutely!

But if either side is close to a monopoly, both cannot be part of the same company, even if that means breaking an existing company up.