4 ms·

It’s not clear if chrome is really the heart of Google’s monopoly power, if it is a monopoly. It seems to me like the combination of being the ad network and th

It’s not clear if chrome is really the heart of Google’s monopoly power, if it is a monopoly. It seems to me like the combination of being the ad network and the (non ad) content distribution & discovery network is the real issue. If I had to pick a thing to make Google give up, it would probably be YouTube and not Chrome.

cookiengineer 6y ago
> I had to pick a thing to make Google give up, it would probably be YouTube and not Chrome. Most people don't realize WHY google started to build their own web browser in the first place. It was actually because of google docs. Google wanted to dominate the office software sector, and Microsoft didn't let them on Windows. Therefore Google had to change the platform - to the web. Regarding ad networks: google analytics is used among around 84.1% of websites. If that is not a monopoly, then I don't know what is. The rest is like a couple of pedestrians on the street that don't have a car already. I mean, you cannot justify that this should be allowed. Not a single country on the planet should have access to THAT much data, and much less a single company without any moral obligations because they don't even pay taxes in the countries they are operating in.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
  What was the action that prevented a Google-docs-on-windows?
  - wiredearp 6y ago
    Internet Explorer.
    - lstamour 6y ago
      They could have contributed to Firefox... more than just monetarily, I mean. They used their dominant position in search etc to push Chrome out to the masses... They had, in fact, previously pushed Firefox. I remember cheering at this point: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mozilla-firefox-on-google-homepage/3333/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mozilla-firefox-on-googl...
      - dfabulich 6y ago
        Firefox's architecture at the time was years behind WebKit. People forget how much faster and better Chrome was when it launched in 2008. Google was able to build Chrome in-house faster and at lower cost than it would have been to rewrite Firefox from scratch under Mozilla governance. They would have had to convince Mozilla to do all of this stuff. https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html
        Yoric 6y ago
        No, Chrome was not faster at the time. It was slower on all speed benchmarks. However, it was more responsive thanks to smart UX design and implementation. The real advantage of WebKit (or KHTML) was that it was way, way, way easier to embed than Gecko. That made experimenting much easier. > They would have had to convince Mozilla to do all of this stuff. https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html People tend to forget that the Chrome team was initially a Firefox team paid by Google to work on "the chrome" (which has always been the name of the back-end of Firefox). Legend has that Google decided to roll out their own browser when they realized that they could not arbitrarily land any feature in Firefox without a review from someone out of Google. More specifically, legend has it that Google prepared a large refactor of Firefox called "Places", reviewed it internally, then attempted to land this as a single patch to Firefox, without any public review. It is my understanding that this is how Google open-source typically works (big code drops), but definitely not how true open-source works (incremental changes). This was blocked by Mozilla until it could be split into smaller changes that could be reviewed and discussed individually. Places eventually landed (and new versions of Places are still part of Firefox to this day) but, says the legend, Google was pissed off and decided that they would be better off with their own, in-house, browser.
        jasode 6y ago
        >No, Chrome was not faster at the time. It was slower on all speed benchmarks. Chrome when released on September 2008 had the faster Javascript v8 engine. (Built by Lars Bak team in Denmark.) The improved performance was very noticeable on js heavy websites like Google Maps when scrolling the map and zooming in and out. A paper[1] showing Chrome winning on various performance benchmarks matches my recollection of performance differences. Also, Chrome's per-process isolation for each tab also made it more stable when dealing with buggy websites (bad javascript code leaking memory). Firefox would crash more often. The tradeoff was that Chrome used a lot more RAM than Firefox. [I didn't downvote your comment.] [1] https://peerj.com/articles/cs-28.pdf https://peerj.com/articles/cs-28.pdf
- omegabravo 6y ago
  Since Google's delivery platform has been the web for over a decade, it was paramount to protect their revenue. Consider if the world moved to first party apps (ie, news app, ebay app, amazon app) for _everything_, Google would lose their stranglehold. It's in Google's best interest to make the web be as rich and engaging as mobile apps. Google Chrome increased the expected performance of browsers substantially after it was released. Their ad delivery network utterly eclipses all other revenue last time I checked.
mantap 6y ago
Separating YouTube from google would kill it unless it went to another mega tech company like amazon or Microsoft.
- muzika 6y ago
  How so?
  - mjevans 6y ago
    Imagine that the laws have been written with an extremely narrow 'Switzerland' clause. This law says if something is taken down right away, with zero proof of ownership or collateral, when a specific type of legal request is made then the service provider has immunity to copyright lawsuits. Due to the lack of burden of proof or stakes, this makes automating such legal requests a weaponization of the legal system. An inordinate quantity of resources are also spent to proactively, based on a provided library of possible infringement fingerprints, automatically mark anything as something to block. For many things the automation actually works out, however any time there is Fair Use (which is viewed as a legal defence) or Authorized Use (except problems of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing) it really doesn't. Combine this with a system where there's also no government provided system of authenticating an individual as someone, and tying them to specific legally owned works or authorization to act by such owners and it should be obvious where the problems and solutions exist. Without a megacorp's army of lawyers, my opinion is, it seems very likely youtube and any other similar entities would either be sued or legislated out of existence.
- rodgerd 6y ago
  That would be a net win for society, at this point.
zanny 6y ago
Breaking out Youtube doesn't fix what gives them their disproportionate power. Youtube is a low profit pretty basic video site by and large that works because of the adsense monopolization. And that largely come down to the answer to the question: if you make a website, how can people find it? Whether its you advertising to them or them searching into you its all Google. And that's the problem because Google does exploit this discover ability monopoly hugely.
_qulr 6y ago
> If I had to pick a thing to make Google give up, it would probably be YouTube and not Chrome. You don't have to pick a thing though. For some reason the article title highlights Chrome, but the article makes clear that they're considering many options, only one of which is Chrome. To me it's interesting that Google has the #1 or #2 market share in so many different areas: search, advertising, web browsers, mobile OS, app stores, email, maps. There are so many, I'm surely forgetting some. DNS? Office suites? In almost any area that Google wants to enter, they automatically become one of the biggest players. The only thing they couldn't do was make a social network... EDIT: I forgot online video, duh! Maybe we need a bunch of Baby Googles, like the Baby Bells after the breakup of Ma Bell.

cookiengineer 6y ago

> I had to pick a thing to make Google give up, it would probably be YouTube and not Chrome. Most people don't realize WHY google started to build their own web browser in the first place. It was actually because of google docs. Google wanted to dominate the office software sector, and Microsoft didn't let them on Windows. Therefore Google had to change the platform - to the web. Regarding ad networks: google analytics is used among around 84.1% of websites. If that is not a monopoly, then I don't know what is. The rest is like a couple of pedestrians on the street that don't have a car already. I mean, you cannot justify that this should be allowed. Not a single country on the planet should have access to THAT much data, and much less a single company without any moral obligations because they don't even pay taxes in the countries they are operating in.

GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
What was the action that prevented a Google-docs-on-windows?
- wiredearp 6y ago
  Internet Explorer.
  - lstamour 6y ago
    They could have contributed to Firefox... more than just monetarily, I mean. They used their dominant position in search etc to push Chrome out to the masses... They had, in fact, previously pushed Firefox. I remember cheering at this point: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mozilla-firefox-on-google-homepage/3333/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/mozilla-firefox-on-googl...
    - dfabulich 6y ago
      Firefox's architecture at the time was years behind WebKit. People forget how much faster and better Chrome was when it launched in 2008. Google was able to build Chrome in-house faster and at lower cost than it would have been to rewrite Firefox from scratch under Mozilla governance. They would have had to convince Mozilla to do all of this stuff. https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html
      - Yoric 6y ago
        No, Chrome was not faster at the time. It was slower on all speed benchmarks. However, it was more responsive thanks to smart UX design and implementation. The real advantage of WebKit (or KHTML) was that it was way, way, way easier to embed than Gecko. That made experimenting much easier. > They would have had to convince Mozilla to do all of this stuff. https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html People tend to forget that the Chrome team was initially a Firefox team paid by Google to work on "the chrome" (which has always been the name of the back-end of Firefox). Legend has that Google decided to roll out their own browser when they realized that they could not arbitrarily land any feature in Firefox without a review from someone out of Google. More specifically, legend has it that Google prepared a large refactor of Firefox called "Places", reviewed it internally, then attempted to land this as a single patch to Firefox, without any public review. It is my understanding that this is how Google open-source typically works (big code drops), but definitely not how true open-source works (incremental changes). This was blocked by Mozilla until it could be split into smaller changes that could be reviewed and discussed individually. Places eventually landed (and new versions of Places are still part of Firefox to this day) but, says the legend, Google was pissed off and decided that they would be better off with their own, in-house, browser.
        jasode 6y ago
        >No, Chrome was not faster at the time. It was slower on all speed benchmarks. Chrome when released on September 2008 had the faster Javascript v8 engine. (Built by Lars Bak team in Denmark.) The improved performance was very noticeable on js heavy websites like Google Maps when scrolling the map and zooming in and out. A paper[1] showing Chrome winning on various performance benchmarks matches my recollection of performance differences. Also, Chrome's per-process isolation for each tab also made it more stable when dealing with buggy websites (bad javascript code leaking memory). Firefox would crash more often. The tradeoff was that Chrome used a lot more RAM than Firefox. [I didn't downvote your comment.] [1] https://peerj.com/articles/cs-28.pdf https://peerj.com/articles/cs-28.pdf
omegabravo 6y ago
Since Google's delivery platform has been the web for over a decade, it was paramount to protect their revenue. Consider if the world moved to first party apps (ie, news app, ebay app, amazon app) for _everything_, Google would lose their stranglehold. It's in Google's best interest to make the web be as rich and engaging as mobile apps. Google Chrome increased the expected performance of browsers substantially after it was released. Their ad delivery network utterly eclipses all other revenue last time I checked.

mantap 6y ago

Separating YouTube from google would kill it unless it went to another mega tech company like amazon or Microsoft.

muzika 6y ago
How so?
- mjevans 6y ago
  Imagine that the laws have been written with an extremely narrow 'Switzerland' clause. This law says if something is taken down right away, with zero proof of ownership or collateral, when a specific type of legal request is made then the service provider has immunity to copyright lawsuits. Due to the lack of burden of proof or stakes, this makes automating such legal requests a weaponization of the legal system. An inordinate quantity of resources are also spent to proactively, based on a provided library of possible infringement fingerprints, automatically mark anything as something to block. For many things the automation actually works out, however any time there is Fair Use (which is viewed as a legal defence) or Authorized Use (except problems of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing) it really doesn't. Combine this with a system where there's also no government provided system of authenticating an individual as someone, and tying them to specific legally owned works or authorization to act by such owners and it should be obvious where the problems and solutions exist. Without a megacorp's army of lawyers, my opinion is, it seems very likely youtube and any other similar entities would either be sued or legislated out of existence.
rodgerd 6y ago
That would be a net win for society, at this point.

zanny 6y ago

Breaking out Youtube doesn't fix what gives them their disproportionate power. Youtube is a low profit pretty basic video site by and large that works because of the adsense monopolization. And that largely come down to the answer to the question: if you make a website, how can people find it? Whether its you advertising to them or them searching into you its all Google. And that's the problem because Google does exploit this discover ability monopoly hugely.

_qulr 6y ago

> If I had to pick a thing to make Google give up, it would probably be YouTube and not Chrome. You don't have to pick a thing though. For some reason the article title highlights Chrome, but the article makes clear that they're considering many options, only one of which is Chrome. To me it's interesting that Google has the #1 or #2 market share in so many different areas: search, advertising, web browsers, mobile OS, app stores, email, maps. There are so many, I'm surely forgetting some. DNS? Office suites? In almost any area that Google wants to enter, they automatically become one of the biggest players. The only thing they couldn't do was make a social network... EDIT: I forgot online video, duh! Maybe we need a bunch of Baby Googles, like the Baby Bells after the breakup of Ma Bell.