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But don’t forget Microsoft let IE rot for years and that is what drove the interest - and the protest - for alternatives and helped Flash thrive. Today Chrome

by eecc 6y ago

But don’t forget Microsoft let IE rot for years and that is what drove the interest - and the protest - for alternatives and helped Flash thrive. Today Chrome is a fairly good platform, tons of support for all sorts of html extensions, and a very strong commitment to security. It’s a really nice product, except for the strings attached. Alphabet should be broken up and Chrome (OS) spun off into its own business; the tracking should be made completely transparent and optional on a subscription base.

pibechorro 6y ago
Broken up by politicians? Ya, hard no. Just stop using it! Stop forcing your choices on people. No one has to use chrome, google search, gmail, etc. There are alternatives to all your problems, open source ones too.
- randalluk 6y ago
  There's an unstated premise here that the market doesn't force some people's choices on other people. I doubt that that's true - especially when competition is limited. There are limited alternatives currently, and this discussion contains plausible scenarios by which huge companies could use their power to limit even further those alternatives, and the choice available to us.
- teddyh 6y ago
  Can you name a few consumer-level boycotts in, say, the last 50 years, which actually accomplished their goals?
  - Hallucinaut 6y ago
    They didn't suggest a boycott. Each individual consumer decision makes a difference in aggregate. Every failed business in history is a result of consumer decisions away from what they have to offer, so I don't particularly understand that rationale.
    - kaba0 6y ago
      People are “easy” to manipulate, especially when your control reaches basically every aspect of their life. Hiding/downplaying few articles here, shoving another into my face there with an opaque algorithm will achieve basically anything over a long time. Also, you underestimate the effect of laziness. A company really has to do some atrocious thing to result in people leaving its services. Like, what would make the average person change from Gmail? He/she may not even know that 1) it is part of google which should be avoided now 2) what are alternative email providers 3) the whole change requires quite the technical know how. It is simply naive to expect that “the market will solve it” to work in the general case. Competition only works when there are strict rules. Otherwise, the strongest/least fair player wins, and that’s why monopolies have to be broken up.
      - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        I agree that monopolies have to be broken up. I'd start with the government.
      - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        I'm going to rephrase my original comment, which got flagged: There's inherent hypocrisy in having the biggest monopoly of them all regulate smaller monopolies. Because they're 'monopolies'. Right.
        kaba0 6y ago
        I’m fairly sure I have no say in google’s politics, but I do have a (limited) say in my country’s. Also, the two don’t even play in the same field. The government is more like the referee in a sport.
        ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        Oh, but you do have a say: You can work for Google! It's the same as moving to a different country and becoming a citizen to be eligible to vote. Referees, in comparison to governments, can be fired for doing a poor job.
- kaba0 6y ago
  The government is chosen by the people and enforced by their choice to make decisions. A company without control is cancer. Just look at Nestle, Facebook and Google and plenty of others abusing their size and that people are NOT rational entities en masse. A government should (and they are the only thing that can) step up against these abuses.
  - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
    Products are chosen by 'the people' (consumers) too.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      Products are chosen by a weighted sample of the people, according to how much money somebody has access to. "Vote with your wallet" means that different people have different sized votes. "Vote with your wallet" is an inherently anti-democratic phrase.
      - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        How much money somebody has access to is directly correlated with how much time (of which everybody gets the same 24 hours a day) they spend on trying to earn money. People who care less about money will earn less and that is their own fault. The same is true in politics. Those who shout the loudest, win. A big wallet helps too. Ever heard of lobbying?
        kaba0 6y ago
        Wow.. so how many hours Jeff Bezos’s day contains? I’m fairly sure a low level worker at amazon spends much more time on work than any of the billionaires.
        ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        A low-level worker made that career choice themselves. They were well aware they wouldn't become rich by working in a warehouse, no matter how many hours they worked. They still have their life in their own hands: They can look for another job. Jeff Bezos sure worked like crazy to get Amazon to where it is now, so he has every right to take it easy now that he's 'made it'.
- PKop 6y ago
  >Stop forcing your choices on people This will never stop, and essentially defines the realm of "politics". Either you and people like-minded that share your views collectivize to protect your preferences from others forcing theirs upon you, or you lose. This includes monopoly corporations that acquire power to restrict your ability to choose. And just wishing it weren't so, or asking people to stop achieves nothing. People won't, so your only choice is to protect your own turf however you can. "Libertarian" style abstaining from this fight ensures you lose, so is an impotent strategy.
curiousmindz 6y ago
Interestingly, this type of perspective is only gained in hindsight. For example, I could see a future, say in 10 years, where we have a vastly better way to browse the web and then we will look back on today and think that Chrome(ium) was coasting on its past success and only providing minor new features (while ensuring that ads continue to be as profitable as possible).
- mkr-hn 6y ago
  I definitely remember takes in the genre of "who cares if IE is never updated. What else could you possibly do on the web?" back when websites were mostly static, JavaScript was still a toy, and all the people who could imagine better were trying to convince everyone to switch to [Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox]. Microsoft had the inspiration for XMLHttpRequest right there and couldn't see past its Windows-centric strategy. There's an alternate timeline where Microsoft leaned on anyone implementing it. We never would have gotten as far as Sun suing Google over the Java API because no one crossed Microsoft. No AJAX. No web 2.0. No SPAs. It would be a different world.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    > No AJAX. No web 2.0. No SPAs. It would be a different world. Is it better this way? I'm not so sure.
- eecc 6y ago
  Uh? Did you even remember IE? How are the two scenarios even remotely comparable? It was abandon-ware, after Netscape was crushed Ballmer couldn’t imagine anything useful for IE.

by eecc 6y ago

pibechorro 6y ago

Broken up by politicians? Ya, hard no. Just stop using it! Stop forcing your choices on people. No one has to use chrome, google search, gmail, etc. There are alternatives to all your problems, open source ones too.

randalluk 6y ago
There's an unstated premise here that the market doesn't force some people's choices on other people. I doubt that that's true - especially when competition is limited. There are limited alternatives currently, and this discussion contains plausible scenarios by which huge companies could use their power to limit even further those alternatives, and the choice available to us.
teddyh 6y ago
Can you name a few consumer-level boycotts in, say, the last 50 years, which actually accomplished their goals?
- Hallucinaut 6y ago
  They didn't suggest a boycott. Each individual consumer decision makes a difference in aggregate. Every failed business in history is a result of consumer decisions away from what they have to offer, so I don't particularly understand that rationale.
  - kaba0 6y ago
    People are “easy” to manipulate, especially when your control reaches basically every aspect of their life. Hiding/downplaying few articles here, shoving another into my face there with an opaque algorithm will achieve basically anything over a long time. Also, you underestimate the effect of laziness. A company really has to do some atrocious thing to result in people leaving its services. Like, what would make the average person change from Gmail? He/she may not even know that 1) it is part of google which should be avoided now 2) what are alternative email providers 3) the whole change requires quite the technical know how. It is simply naive to expect that “the market will solve it” to work in the general case. Competition only works when there are strict rules. Otherwise, the strongest/least fair player wins, and that’s why monopolies have to be broken up.
    - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
      I agree that monopolies have to be broken up. I'd start with the government.
    - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
      I'm going to rephrase my original comment, which got flagged: There's inherent hypocrisy in having the biggest monopoly of them all regulate smaller monopolies. Because they're 'monopolies'. Right.
      - kaba0 6y ago
        I’m fairly sure I have no say in google’s politics, but I do have a (limited) say in my country’s. Also, the two don’t even play in the same field. The government is more like the referee in a sport.
        ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        Oh, but you do have a say: You can work for Google! It's the same as moving to a different country and becoming a citizen to be eligible to vote. Referees, in comparison to governments, can be fired for doing a poor job.
kaba0 6y ago
The government is chosen by the people and enforced by their choice to make decisions. A company without control is cancer. Just look at Nestle, Facebook and Google and plenty of others abusing their size and that people are NOT rational entities en masse. A government should (and they are the only thing that can) step up against these abuses.
- ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
  Products are chosen by 'the people' (consumers) too.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    Products are chosen by a weighted sample of the people, according to how much money somebody has access to. "Vote with your wallet" means that different people have different sized votes. "Vote with your wallet" is an inherently anti-democratic phrase.
    - ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
      How much money somebody has access to is directly correlated with how much time (of which everybody gets the same 24 hours a day) they spend on trying to earn money. People who care less about money will earn less and that is their own fault. The same is true in politics. Those who shout the loudest, win. A big wallet helps too. Ever heard of lobbying?
      - kaba0 6y ago
        Wow.. so how many hours Jeff Bezos’s day contains? I’m fairly sure a low level worker at amazon spends much more time on work than any of the billionaires.
        ilovepitchdecks 6y ago
        A low-level worker made that career choice themselves. They were well aware they wouldn't become rich by working in a warehouse, no matter how many hours they worked. They still have their life in their own hands: They can look for another job. Jeff Bezos sure worked like crazy to get Amazon to where it is now, so he has every right to take it easy now that he's 'made it'.
PKop 6y ago
>Stop forcing your choices on people This will never stop, and essentially defines the realm of "politics". Either you and people like-minded that share your views collectivize to protect your preferences from others forcing theirs upon you, or you lose. This includes monopoly corporations that acquire power to restrict your ability to choose. And just wishing it weren't so, or asking people to stop achieves nothing. People won't, so your only choice is to protect your own turf however you can. "Libertarian" style abstaining from this fight ensures you lose, so is an impotent strategy.

curiousmindz 6y ago

Interestingly, this type of perspective is only gained in hindsight. For example, I could see a future, say in 10 years, where we have a vastly better way to browse the web and then we will look back on today and think that Chrome(ium) was coasting on its past success and only providing minor new features (while ensuring that ads continue to be as profitable as possible).

mkr-hn 6y ago
I definitely remember takes in the genre of "who cares if IE is never updated. What else could you possibly do on the web?" back when websites were mostly static, JavaScript was still a toy, and all the people who could imagine better were trying to convince everyone to switch to [Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox]. Microsoft had the inspiration for XMLHttpRequest right there and couldn't see past its Windows-centric strategy. There's an alternate timeline where Microsoft leaned on anyone implementing it. We never would have gotten as far as Sun suing Google over the Java API because no one crossed Microsoft. No AJAX. No web 2.0. No SPAs. It would be a different world.
- andrepd 6y ago
  > No AJAX. No web 2.0. No SPAs. It would be a different world. Is it better this way? I'm not so sure.
eecc 6y ago
Uh? Did you even remember IE? How are the two scenarios even remotely comparable? It was abandon-ware, after Netscape was crushed Ballmer couldn’t imagine anything useful for IE.