3 ms·

It would be a funny thing were it not for the fact that we have a massive company doing blatantly anti-competitive things. If the Feds every want to try to bre

It would be a funny thing were it not for the fact that we have a massive company doing blatantly anti-competitive things. If the Feds every want to try to break up G, this will be submitted as evidence. Edit: this is exactly what a monopolizer looks like in action. One tactical move at a time, until they have full control of an adjacent layer in the value chain. In this case browsers.

dwheeler 7y ago
> Edit: this is exactly what a monopolizer looks like in action. One tactical move at a time, until they have full control of an adjacent layer in the value chain. In this case browsers. I think this was fundamentally different than a monopoly move. A monopolistic action would require a user of one Monopoly service to use another service by the supplier, such as a browser. That is absolutely not what happened here. In this case, YouTube asked people to upgrade to a number of options, including a newer version of IE. Notice that they did not require tying of one of their services with another. I think that makes it completely different.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- sonnyblarney 7y ago
  It's close enough to being a legal problem that an internal lawyer immediately responded, specifically with the issue of 'why did you put Chrome first'? That there were options, doesn't absolve them of possible anti-competitive acts. For example, imagine that they did this to a browser made by a small company? Or another search engine? Google has enough power that it doesn't need to form an overt strategy in many of these areas. Just by having assertive employees, loose rules, and Engineers not considering implications beyond their noses ... they can make all sorts of little 'wins' like this. Today, the Chrome/Mozilla market share issue is fundamentally about power, not about 'the better product' and has Google has an infinite amount of money to subsidize that layer of the market, they will dominate, much as they do with Android. If the iPhone weren't one of the greatest products of a generation, and it were just some other thingy ... then Android would be fully dominant as well. Arguably the only reason that Mozilla exists is to allay concerns of competition. Google has an incredible amount of power, I'm actually thankfully it's not aggressively abused, but soon as the founders leave, culture erodes, other priorities sink in, I believe there's little doubt that bias will creep into search engine results, for example.

dwheeler 7y ago

> Edit: this is exactly what a monopolizer looks like in action. One tactical move at a time, until they have full control of an adjacent layer in the value chain. In this case browsers. I think this was fundamentally different than a monopoly move. A monopolistic action would require a user of one Monopoly service to use another service by the supplier, such as a browser. That is absolutely not what happened here. In this case, YouTube asked people to upgrade to a number of options, including a newer version of IE. Notice that they did not require tying of one of their services with another. I think that makes it completely different.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sonnyblarney 7y ago
It's close enough to being a legal problem that an internal lawyer immediately responded, specifically with the issue of 'why did you put Chrome first'? That there were options, doesn't absolve them of possible anti-competitive acts. For example, imagine that they did this to a browser made by a small company? Or another search engine? Google has enough power that it doesn't need to form an overt strategy in many of these areas. Just by having assertive employees, loose rules, and Engineers not considering implications beyond their noses ... they can make all sorts of little 'wins' like this. Today, the Chrome/Mozilla market share issue is fundamentally about power, not about 'the better product' and has Google has an infinite amount of money to subsidize that layer of the market, they will dominate, much as they do with Android. If the iPhone weren't one of the greatest products of a generation, and it were just some other thingy ... then Android would be fully dominant as well. Arguably the only reason that Mozilla exists is to allay concerns of competition. Google has an incredible amount of power, I'm actually thankfully it's not aggressively abused, but soon as the founders leave, culture erodes, other priorities sink in, I believe there's little doubt that bias will creep into search engine results, for example.