6 ms·

Monopoly

scarface74 7y ago
For Windows there is Firefox, and IE Edge. For the Mac their are both of those plus Safari. Not to mention Chromium based browsers.
- zaarn 7y ago
  Doesn't mean that Chrome isn't a monopoly, with their current marketshare, if Chrome introduces a new feature or changes how some feature works, all competitors have no choice but to implement that change or websites stop working.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Right, because Apple is going to change how Safari works on iOS because of a change that Google makes.... And “monopoly” has a legal definition it isn’t defined by random HN posters every week.
    - zaarn 7y ago
      In the EU having a monopoly doesn't require you to be the only vendor in the market, it's sufficient to be large enough to exert abusive market forces on competitors. Google Chrome definitely fits that definition, so no it's not redefined by random HN posters this week.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        And having a monopoly isn’t illegal. Again, despite what all of the wannabe lawyers who post to HN think. How many times have HN users posted that Apple is a “monopoly”?
        zaarn 7y ago
        Google is certainly not a corporation that has ever shown to have an interest in the best for their users. They have already done quite a few things that benefit them or hurt competitors (youtube's UI is slow on firefox, changing the scrolling UI for no reason, trying to kill adblockers and now blocking uBlock from their store).
        scarface74 7y ago
        Google is no different than any other for profit corporation. Their first interest is making money by getting their customers to pay them. Their customers are advertisers. Their users are what they sell to their customers.
        zaarn 7y ago
        Even better reason to push for independent browser engines like Gecko (Firefox).
        scarface74 7y ago
        And that’s fine. But anytime HN users start whining “monopoly” the next thing they start screaming is for government to intervene every time that Google/Apple/Amazon doesn’t something that they don’t like.
        zaarn 7y ago
        Oh, don't worry, the government, or atleast the EU, should intervene and force Google to split Chrome into an independent organization.
        scarface74 7y ago
        And when has the EU successfully come to the rescue of geeks who don’t like the way a software company runs?
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago
    That's not really how it worked pre-2010 when IE had the monopoly. And for all of Chrome (and Google's) faults, it does seem to be reasonably standards- compliant and even open to experimentation. If they want to spend some of their piles of cash developing new features that other browsers can then adopt and then standardise, I don't see the problem. If developers choose to use Chrome-only features and their pages break on other browsers, that's on them
    - zaarn 7y ago
      When IE had a monopoly it was bad because Microsoft made a shitty webbrowser and everyone built websites for IE. Even today I have devices which are "best viewed on IE6", thanks to modern browsers they still tend to work somewhat. Chrome will not be bad because it's a shitty browser, it'll be bad because Google can force features into standards and essentially do what they want with no recourse. It's not the developers fault directly but they inherently support an abusive vendor-user relationship. Everyone who doesn't see that is just a Google-apologist.
      - cookie_monsta 7y ago
        > it'll be bad because Google can force features into standards and essentially do what they want with no recourse. Again, not the way it worked with IE 1-8 > Everyone who doesn't see that is just a Google-apologist. Well I don't and I'm not.
        zaarn 7y ago
        And again, that's what Google is already doing, I'm not saying they're doing the exact same things that happened with IE1-8 but a browser monopoly is still equally bad regardless of how badly a browser is maintained.
        cookie_monsta 7y ago
        Oh, absolutely - I'm not arguing in favour of browser monopolies. I'm saying that browser standards aren't a popularity contest. You can have the most popular browser in the world but still not be able to strongarm your way into compliance. Remember attachEvent?
- gtirloni 7y ago
  You need to think in terms of a de facto monopoly in this case: https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/de-facto-monopoly/ https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/de-facto-monopoly/ https://business-law.freeadvice.com/business-law/trade_regulation/monopoly_power.htm https://business-law.freeadvice.com/business-law/trade_regul... I don't know if the 69% number from StatCounter would qualify as a de facto monopoly, but it's close to the 75% number quoted in the previous article: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Well, “de facto” monopoly doesn’t mean anything in the eyes of the law. That’s what de jure means Despite what HN posters believe, the definition of a monopoly isn’t “a company that is big and does things I don’t like”. Also according to your own citation. Under the Sherman Act monopoly power is considered the ability of a business to control a price within its relevant product market or its geographic market or to exclude a competitor from doing business within its relevant product market or geographic market. Where in that act does it say anything about “banning an ad blocker”? It specifically mentions “price”. Are we going to say that the government can tell businesses what is allowed in its own store?
    - gtirloni 7y ago
      De facto means something in the eyes of the law. Where did you get it from that it doesn't? > Are we going to say that the government can tell businesses what is allowed in its own store? Yes, we definitely are. If there's a monopoly and the monopolist is blocking people from participating, of course we can get the courts involved. Just google all the antitrust cases about Microsoft, Google and Apple, among others. Re: "price", even if there's no monetary exchange, other goods are being exchanged (personal information, ads, etc).
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Is Google “blocking” anyone from using Firefox, or IE? So now are we just going to make commonly understood words like “price” mean completely random things?
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Google Search can't be a monopoly as Bing exists. Hey guys, remember Bing?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

Monopoly

For Windows there is Firefox, and IE Edge. For the Mac their are both of those plus Safari. Not to mention Chromium based browsers.

zaarn 7y ago
Doesn't mean that Chrome isn't a monopoly, with their current marketshare, if Chrome introduces a new feature or changes how some feature works, all competitors have no choice but to implement that change or websites stop working.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Right, because Apple is going to change how Safari works on iOS because of a change that Google makes.... And “monopoly” has a legal definition it isn’t defined by random HN posters every week.
  - zaarn 7y ago
    In the EU having a monopoly doesn't require you to be the only vendor in the market, it's sufficient to be large enough to exert abusive market forces on competitors. Google Chrome definitely fits that definition, so no it's not redefined by random HN posters this week.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      And having a monopoly isn’t illegal. Again, despite what all of the wannabe lawyers who post to HN think. How many times have HN users posted that Apple is a “monopoly”?
      - zaarn 7y ago
        Google is certainly not a corporation that has ever shown to have an interest in the best for their users. They have already done quite a few things that benefit them or hurt competitors (youtube's UI is slow on firefox, changing the scrolling UI for no reason, trying to kill adblockers and now blocking uBlock from their store).
        scarface74 7y ago
        Google is no different than any other for profit corporation. Their first interest is making money by getting their customers to pay them. Their customers are advertisers. Their users are what they sell to their customers.
        zaarn 7y ago
        Even better reason to push for independent browser engines like Gecko (Firefox).
        scarface74 7y ago
        And that’s fine. But anytime HN users start whining “monopoly” the next thing they start screaming is for government to intervene every time that Google/Apple/Amazon doesn’t something that they don’t like.
        zaarn 7y ago
        Oh, don't worry, the government, or atleast the EU, should intervene and force Google to split Chrome into an independent organization.
        scarface74 7y ago
        And when has the EU successfully come to the rescue of geeks who don’t like the way a software company runs?
- cookie_monsta 7y ago
  That's not really how it worked pre-2010 when IE had the monopoly. And for all of Chrome (and Google's) faults, it does seem to be reasonably standards- compliant and even open to experimentation. If they want to spend some of their piles of cash developing new features that other browsers can then adopt and then standardise, I don't see the problem. If developers choose to use Chrome-only features and their pages break on other browsers, that's on them
  - zaarn 7y ago
    When IE had a monopoly it was bad because Microsoft made a shitty webbrowser and everyone built websites for IE. Even today I have devices which are "best viewed on IE6", thanks to modern browsers they still tend to work somewhat. Chrome will not be bad because it's a shitty browser, it'll be bad because Google can force features into standards and essentially do what they want with no recourse. It's not the developers fault directly but they inherently support an abusive vendor-user relationship. Everyone who doesn't see that is just a Google-apologist.
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
      > it'll be bad because Google can force features into standards and essentially do what they want with no recourse. Again, not the way it worked with IE 1-8 > Everyone who doesn't see that is just a Google-apologist. Well I don't and I'm not.
      - zaarn 7y ago
        And again, that's what Google is already doing, I'm not saying they're doing the exact same things that happened with IE1-8 but a browser monopoly is still equally bad regardless of how badly a browser is maintained.
        cookie_monsta 7y ago
        Oh, absolutely - I'm not arguing in favour of browser monopolies. I'm saying that browser standards aren't a popularity contest. You can have the most popular browser in the world but still not be able to strongarm your way into compliance. Remember attachEvent?
gtirloni 7y ago
You need to think in terms of a de facto monopoly in this case: https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/de-facto-monopoly/ https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/de-facto-monopoly/ https://business-law.freeadvice.com/business-law/trade_regulation/monopoly_power.htm https://business-law.freeadvice.com/business-law/trade_regul... I don't know if the 69% number from StatCounter would qualify as a de facto monopoly, but it's close to the 75% number quoted in the previous article: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
- scarface74 7y ago
  Well, “de facto” monopoly doesn’t mean anything in the eyes of the law. That’s what de jure means Despite what HN posters believe, the definition of a monopoly isn’t “a company that is big and does things I don’t like”. Also according to your own citation. Under the Sherman Act monopoly power is considered the ability of a business to control a price within its relevant product market or its geographic market or to exclude a competitor from doing business within its relevant product market or geographic market. Where in that act does it say anything about “banning an ad blocker”? It specifically mentions “price”. Are we going to say that the government can tell businesses what is allowed in its own store?
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    De facto means something in the eyes of the law. Where did you get it from that it doesn't? > Are we going to say that the government can tell businesses what is allowed in its own store? Yes, we definitely are. If there's a monopoly and the monopolist is blocking people from participating, of course we can get the courts involved. Just google all the antitrust cases about Microsoft, Google and Apple, among others. Re: "price", even if there's no monetary exchange, other goods are being exchanged (personal information, ads, etc).
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Is Google “blocking” anyone from using Firefox, or IE? So now are we just going to make commonly understood words like “price” mean completely random things?
Hamuko 7y ago
Google Search can't be a monopoly as Bing exists. Hey guys, remember Bing?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]