5 ms·

That sounds like a problem for Google to solve, not the public. "We setup our business so that it's too difficult to comply with the law" isn't an excuse in any

by hfkwer 3y ago

That sounds like a problem for Google to solve, not the public. "We setup our business so that it's too difficult to comply with the law" isn't an excuse in any context.

rsynnott 3y ago
In theory, yes. In practice, didn't MS use basically this as one of their arguments when the FTC tried to break them up back in the day?
- pie420 3y ago
  "The US failed to break up a monopoly that to this day stifles competition and prevents effective capitalism by making itself to complicated to regulate, so lets keep making the same mistakes"
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? I don't think I've heard anyone beat that drum and get a band marching behind it in years. This is the same Microsoft that's seen its desktop market share slowly erode since 2013, right? The one holding 1.9% of smartphone marketshare? The one so impossible to regulate that the FTC is regulating it right now (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/ftc-seeks-block-microsoft-corps-acquisition-activision-blizzard-inc https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...)?
    - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
      > Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? Of course they do, and anyone who is confused by their marketing into thinking otherwise is just plain blind. The last someone "beat that drum" was none other than the british competition regulator aka CMA not _two months ago_, which among maaany other things literally complained Microsoft was still using their monopoly power to prevent gaming on desktop Linux. Stay classy, MS. > We found that the Microsoft Cloud Remedy had several shortcomings: [..] Microsoft would not have to supply Activision’s full range of games to providers that may decide to operate using a non-Windows PC operating system (eg Linux)
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        The European Commission respectfully disagrees. https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-share/ https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-s...
        AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        Ironically, I already predicted that the EC would likely bend over and accept MS's ridiculous proposal, but we would never know since the CMA rejecting it first would leave the EC in a untenable position. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772912 I guess it is not as untenable as I thought, and the EC believes it can just throw shit towards the CMA until they get away with it. I also have my confirmation on whether the EC would be stupid enough to accept the deal. Anyway, you cannot disagree with the fact that MS still _tried_ to stifle Linux, which is the point (and the part that I'm quoting). And arguably both as server and as a desktop OS.
        shadowgovt 3y ago
        Sure, back in the day. And they don't go out of their way to support it in the modern era. ...but this goes back to the US interpretation of "monopoly practice" vs. the European interpretation. Where was the consumer harm? How does MS "stifle" an OS that you can just pick up from a CD, floppy disk, or the Internet and drop on a machine you own? History seems to have shown "You can't." In general, the biggest hindrance to Linux desktop adoption is the Linux UX (and for games, the experience of building one with the libraries available on Linux [https://utopixel.games/en/blog/building-outer-wonders-for-linux/ https://utopixel.games/en/blog/building-outer-wonders-for-li...]), not anything Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) have done to it.
        AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        "Back in the day" is stretching it since MS did this 2 months ago. With the same strategy they used to kill Be decades ago, which obviously works. It's irrelevant what you think about Linux UX. It is just fact that MS is worried enough that _to this day_ they are using their monopoly position to stifle non-Windows OSes ( desktop AND server) every frigging time they can. Same way they have doing continuously for decades. And also despite the fact their marketing dept says that "MS loves Linux" and the armchair analysts say that MS makes money from Linux servers.
    - pie420 3y ago
      Of course. It controls 90% + of the global PC desktop OS market. Every single business runs on Windows, and a tiny fraction on Apple. It's a classic monopoly, kin of like when US Steel had some refineries and technically competed with Standard Oil in the oil industry, but only on paper, and mostly served to create the illusion of competition.
shadowgovt 3y ago
Keeping in mind that the law wasn't that when the tech stack was built. It would certainly be a problem for Google to solve, but one should note that legally requiring this of the company would be tantamount to legally requiring Google to shut down (which in the long run would harm user privacy because the company would almost certainly be replaced by an ecosystem of companies that care far less about privacy than Google does, and a gaggle of unrelated firms running hither and thither with user data is harder to regulate than one megacorp). There are better ways to serve the public interest here.
- hfkwer 3y ago
  > legally requiring this of the company would be tantamount to legally requiring Google to shut down What a leap in logic. Care to elaborate? That assertion is insane and the rest of the comment hinges on that.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Most of the value of Google is the services it provides (search and ads, and indeed cloud, which is a separate product and not just "Google's internal fabric exposed") on its internal fabric. Splitting out "Google Services" from ads or search creates a company with one customer (or two, if we've split out ads and search) that is basically in no market position to get more customers because Google's internal fabric is not a "cloud offering" (source: I was listening in when the company decided to offer Google Cloud and not make that "just the bare metal we run everything on;" Google's internal bare metal is too developer-hostile to the common way things are done outside Google to be a viable product). Meanwhile, search and ads would be in a place where there was only one "cloud" company in the world they could run their product on. For all its money, I don't believe Google could afford to re-tool their products to work on someone else's cloud, so once the "Services" company foundered for being unable to compete / having a monoculture of customers, the ads and search companies would die for lack of vendor offering the one bespoke cloud model they can run on.

by hfkwer 3y ago

That sounds like a problem for Google to solve, not the public. "We setup our business so that it's too difficult to comply with the law" isn't an excuse in any context.

rsynnott 3y ago

In theory, yes. In practice, didn't MS use basically this as one of their arguments when the FTC tried to break them up back in the day?

pie420 3y ago
"The US failed to break up a monopoly that to this day stifles competition and prevents effective capitalism by making itself to complicated to regulate, so lets keep making the same mistakes"
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? I don't think I've heard anyone beat that drum and get a band marching behind it in years. This is the same Microsoft that's seen its desktop market share slowly erode since 2013, right? The one holding 1.9% of smartphone marketshare? The one so impossible to regulate that the FTC is regulating it right now (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/ftc-seeks-block-microsoft-corps-acquisition-activision-blizzard-inc https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/12/...)?
  - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
    > Does modern MS stifle competition and prevent effective capitalism? Of course they do, and anyone who is confused by their marketing into thinking otherwise is just plain blind. The last someone "beat that drum" was none other than the british competition regulator aka CMA not _two months ago_, which among maaany other things literally complained Microsoft was still using their monopoly power to prevent gaming on desktop Linux. Stay classy, MS. > We found that the Microsoft Cloud Remedy had several shortcomings: [..] Microsoft would not have to supply Activision’s full range of games to providers that may decide to operate using a non-Windows PC operating system (eg Linux)
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      The European Commission respectfully disagrees. https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-share/ https://gamerant.com/cma-overstated-microsoft-cloud-gaming-s...
      - AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        Ironically, I already predicted that the EC would likely bend over and accept MS's ridiculous proposal, but we would never know since the CMA rejecting it first would leave the EC in a untenable position. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35772912 I guess it is not as untenable as I thought, and the EC believes it can just throw shit towards the CMA until they get away with it. I also have my confirmation on whether the EC would be stupid enough to accept the deal. Anyway, you cannot disagree with the fact that MS still _tried_ to stifle Linux, which is the point (and the part that I'm quoting). And arguably both as server and as a desktop OS.
        shadowgovt 3y ago
        Sure, back in the day. And they don't go out of their way to support it in the modern era. ...but this goes back to the US interpretation of "monopoly practice" vs. the European interpretation. Where was the consumer harm? How does MS "stifle" an OS that you can just pick up from a CD, floppy disk, or the Internet and drop on a machine you own? History seems to have shown "You can't." In general, the biggest hindrance to Linux desktop adoption is the Linux UX (and for games, the experience of building one with the libraries available on Linux [https://utopixel.games/en/blog/building-outer-wonders-for-linux/ https://utopixel.games/en/blog/building-outer-wonders-for-li...]), not anything Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) have done to it.
        AshamedCaptain 3y ago
        "Back in the day" is stretching it since MS did this 2 months ago. With the same strategy they used to kill Be decades ago, which obviously works. It's irrelevant what you think about Linux UX. It is just fact that MS is worried enough that _to this day_ they are using their monopoly position to stifle non-Windows OSes ( desktop AND server) every frigging time they can. Same way they have doing continuously for decades. And also despite the fact their marketing dept says that "MS loves Linux" and the armchair analysts say that MS makes money from Linux servers.
  - pie420 3y ago
    Of course. It controls 90% + of the global PC desktop OS market. Every single business runs on Windows, and a tiny fraction on Apple. It's a classic monopoly, kin of like when US Steel had some refineries and technically competed with Standard Oil in the oil industry, but only on paper, and mostly served to create the illusion of competition.

shadowgovt 3y ago

Keeping in mind that the law wasn't that when the tech stack was built. It would certainly be a problem for Google to solve, but one should note that legally requiring this of the company would be tantamount to legally requiring Google to shut down (which in the long run would harm user privacy because the company would almost certainly be replaced by an ecosystem of companies that care far less about privacy than Google does, and a gaggle of unrelated firms running hither and thither with user data is harder to regulate than one megacorp). There are better ways to serve the public interest here.

hfkwer 3y ago
> legally requiring this of the company would be tantamount to legally requiring Google to shut down What a leap in logic. Care to elaborate? That assertion is insane and the rest of the comment hinges on that.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Most of the value of Google is the services it provides (search and ads, and indeed cloud, which is a separate product and not just "Google's internal fabric exposed") on its internal fabric. Splitting out "Google Services" from ads or search creates a company with one customer (or two, if we've split out ads and search) that is basically in no market position to get more customers because Google's internal fabric is not a "cloud offering" (source: I was listening in when the company decided to offer Google Cloud and not make that "just the bare metal we run everything on;" Google's internal bare metal is too developer-hostile to the common way things are done outside Google to be a viable product). Meanwhile, search and ads would be in a place where there was only one "cloud" company in the world they could run their product on. For all its money, I don't believe Google could afford to re-tool their products to work on someone else's cloud, so once the "Services" company foundered for being unable to compete / having a monoculture of customers, the ads and search companies would die for lack of vendor offering the one bespoke cloud model they can run on.