15 ms·

Google's Chrome antitrust paradox

101 points by wouterjanl 2y ago

wouterjanl 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
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candiddevmike 2y ago
US v Google antitrust trial is scheduled for September 9: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023... (in case this article made you wonder what is happening with it)
sebazzz 2y ago
It is just genius. After actually building a better browser, just implementing web standards while they are still on the standard track - or even before it - forcing competitors to implement them and also slowing them down in the process.
- troupo 2y ago
  Chrome often only pays lip service to the standards process. They often spit out a semblance of the spec, and enable it by default almost immediately. See, e.g. most of the hardware and PWA/related APIs.
  - wbl 2y ago
    How else do you get to learn what works in the real world? Saying "you can't make a feature until everyone agrees" is a recipe for stasis.
    - harles 2y ago
      > you can't make a feature until everyone agrees Except that’s exactly how the web is supposed to work and the reason Google was able to build a giant search business in the first place. This is absolutely them shitting in the punch bowl. We made plenty of progress without fragmentation.
      - strongpigeon 2y ago
        In a sense though, the WHATWG was fragmentation and was what helped move the web forward after the W3C got too slow and hard to get anything through… Requiring consensus to add anything to the web is how progress will slow down to a crawl and we have precedent for this. The current process seems pretty good IMO
        zer00eyz 2y ago
        The whole point of a slower moving standard is that you are less likely to fuck yourself. Plan Ahea d At some point whatwg is going to jump the shark. They are going to feature paint themselves into a corner and have to make the choice of "cut off some chunk of the web" or "go forward on a new stack". The all gas no brakes add features like were a start up forget about thoughtful or engineering is a bad way to sustain something.
        talldayo 2y ago
        > They are going to feature paint themselves into a corner Has the web not done that, several times over at this point? We've lost too many online standards to count, from all of the FAANG vendors. > The all gas no brakes add features like were a start up forget about thoughtful or engineering is a bad way to sustain something. If native smartphone runtimes were not complete dogshit, I'd probably agree with you. Without the industry's cooperation though, expanding the lowest-common-denominator platform was an inevitability. People want emulators, game streaming, proper download management, the real features that the OEMs are too afraid to publish. If they won't provide that, then their users will find another way. And so, these "all gas no brakes" features are a product of legitimate demand. It's sad, yeah; but what's even sadder is the miserly behavior from companies like Apple that market user freedom as a security apocalypse. The openness of the web has finally caught-up with it's most-restricted users.
  - pgeorgi 2y ago
    There precedence: https://www.powermapper.com/blog/web-standards-implementation-process/ https://www.powermapper.com/blog/web-standards-implementatio... says draft spec, then candidate recommendation (unstable), then 2 independent implementations, then recommendation (== spec in w3c terms) It's still in their docs, too: https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#implementation-experience https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#implementation-exp... "are implementations publicly deployed?"
    - troupo 2y ago
      "Implementations publicly deployed" is widely understood as "released behind a flag to gather feedback and work out issues", not "release without a workable spec"
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    I struggle to think of any piece of software or any group on the planet that has better commitment to transparency & doing it right. Who do you think does a better job, and how? https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#new-feature-process https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#new-featu... shows the process followed. Creating an explainer comes first, which is to be presented immediately to an incubation venue like WICG. Prototype behind a feature flag. Then widening review further, getting request for positions. It's recommended to start an origin trial which will run for a quarter or more. If everything is going fine, then one can start the intent to ship process. Looking at https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev paints such a picture of slow, controlled evolution. It's absurd to me this kind of flak blasted in the air trying to shoot down something that is generally so measured & controlled & steady in releasing. No one else has anything half this controlled. Who else does Intent to Experiment or Intent to Prototype? Few software has such a model where it's so clear what's coming, what's happening, where change & evolution is done in a controlled, slow, deliberate fashion, where prototypes are worked on & tested in the field for a significant amount of time before coming back to shipping. Few other softwares have such an extreme responsibility in going to working bodies, in soliciting requests for positions, where all manners of discovery are done. > See, e.g. most of the hardware and PWA/related APIs. Unclear what specific specs you are trying to throw under the bus here. PWAs took a long time to cook, in my view; hardly did they seem rashly done. A lot of people are really offended the web has MIDI & Gyrometer & other support, to the degree that they wouldn't let others enjoy this.
    - troupo 2y ago
      > shows > paints Exactly. You can show and paint all you want. And then there's reality. > Unclear what specific specs you are trying to throw under the bus here. Almost all the hardware specs (most of which are "not on any standards track", shipped in Chrome), things like Backround Fetch and Background Sync (same). There are also others that Google shipped even before there was consensus and there were glaring issues in the spec (like Constructible Stylesheets) > A lot of people are really offended the web has MIDI & Gyrometer & other support, to the degree that they wouldn't let others enjoy this. To call this a misrepresentation of reality is a gross understatement
  - winter_blue 2y ago
    > They often spit out a semblance of the spec, and enable it by default almost immediately. On the flip side, standards committees can be painfully slow. Can anyone explain why DOM access from WebAssembly hasn’t even been specced out yet (let alone even implemented) despite years and years (approaching a decade) of discussions around this? Like, seriously, what is going on with this?
- deleted 2y ago
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- talldayo 2y ago
  To me, the genius part is how they've forced the industry's hand. There's demand for cloud gaming, USB APIs, Bluetooth functionality and graphics libraries, but many OEMs don't implement it on their system. Chrome tells them that they either brush-up their native APIs, or lose their users to an arena where their browser is more capable than their smartphone. That part I fully support, and it's Google's "die by the sword" answer to Apple's stubbornness. Google's AdSense abuses are a horse of a different color though, and absolutely deserving of antitrust remediation. The impact of AdSense has been so harmful that I genuinely fail to imagine a "solution" to the scale of it's harm. Alongside the Apple case, it's a posterchild for "Things the DOJ Should Have Done Years Ago" in this industry.
  - a_wild_dandan 2y ago
    How does Google abuse AdSense? And why is finding a solution difficult? I'm ignorant here.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      Too many ways to count, really. It's an enormous system and I'm not qualified to explain it in detail, nor am I a customer of their products. The long-and-short of it is that Google wields undue monopoly power by mediating their competitors in online advertising, and abuses that control to manipulate ad rankings and kneecap paying advertisers. They do this in several ways, like changing the font/frame/location of the advertisement and fixing it's ranking relative to Google's own products. This is the main argument against them, though there are tons of little inconsistencies that many highlight as salient.
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      There’s an argument to be made that it is abusive by simply existing. It’s a business that is built on network effects since it is a multi-sided auction (people offering ad space and people bidding to show ads in those spaces). There are massive barriers to entering the ad network space as a result, which lets incumbents get away with whatever they want. In my opinion, markets that are inherently not competitive, like ones reliant on network effects, need regulation and forced competition. But more specifically, it is things like Google forcing site owners to enter anti-competitive agreements (see https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=216769 https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...). As part of the agreements Google required, site owners had to preserve the best ad space on pages for Google’s ads instead of ads from rival networks, they were not allowed to insert ads from rival ad networks on the pages that Google search results link to, and they had to get permission from Google before changing how rival ads were displayed on pages where both existed (allegedly). Note that even if site owners found these clauses problematic, in a practical sense they have no choice but to just say “yes”. They need ad revenues to survive in today’s economic environment. And for them, the risk of not having ad revenue is existential while Google doesn’t have anything to lose by being aggressive. It’s an uneven situation where there isn’t really choice for anyone except Google.
- NotSammyHagar 2y ago
  Part of it is that they are just way better at building a web browser that works really well and advances fast and fixes security issues fairly quickly. There's an open source variant (it's degoogled). Google loves this because they have a lot of tracking for their ad platform, but also it works really well. I know that Google also provides a lot of important services like noting dodgy websites and (too late sometimes) noticing dangerous extensions, all the way though, tracking most people all the time for serving them ads. Tesla is a little bit of the same thing with their superchargers. Tesla has done the amazing thing of building them in lots of areas with enough superchargers that they are usable. But the thing that Tesla did that the entire rest of the dcfc industry can't do is just - fix them when they break. It's just stunning that more than a dozen companies can't do this this (EA is the one that really wasted billions, there are known reasons). Tesla is in line to be the predominant EV gas station for the future. Maybe they had some early mover strategy, but as someone who had both a Tesla and a ccs car, there's little comparison. Now that Tesla opened their sc to ccs cars (first with an adapter, later by incorporating that plug in the car directly if wanted), they are likely to control that market. This is incredibly powerful and will set them up to be really successful. Similar things with the Tesla vehicles having fantastic drive trains. Musk is ruining their reputation with his X related comments - but earlier he started ruining Tesla vehicles by removing turn signal stalks, removing drive train stalk, removing physical sensors (for things like curb and rain) and replacing them with poorly working "ai" things. But to get to their predominant positions, I really think Tesla and Google got there by making better mouse traps, which of course also helped their other businesses incredibly. This is way too long but I also wish there was a 100% capable de-googled chrome browser.
- pompino 2y ago
  Chrome is not a better browser because of the various ways it spies on you. It's essentially a keylogger for Google.
cratermoon 2y ago
The title is a nod to https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...
- capital_guy 2y ago
  Which was written by Lina Khan, (now) the current chair of the FTC. Very pointed.
haburka 2y ago
Can’t actually view the paper without making an account apparently, does anyone have a link?
- forgotpwd16 2y ago
  The page asking to make account also has a "download without registration" box. Can click and gives link that starts the download.
- ziddoap 2y ago
  With NoScript blocking everything, I hit "Download This Paper" and it downloaded -- no account needed.
- deleted 2y ago
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keeganpoppen 2y ago
can we keep chrome and just stop the goddamn incessant messages every time i use a google property while not in chrome? it is sickening.
- leosanchez 2y ago
  Every other website I visit asks me to log in with a Google Account using a popup. I feel very uncomfortable with Google's grip on the Web.
gundmc 2y ago
One of the authors of this paper works at Duck Duck Go. This was conspicuously not mentioned in the header information.
- mda 2y ago
  I wonder what other conflict of interest other authors have.
- boomboomsubban 2y ago
  Anastasia Shuba, to save others the hassle of checking. https://nshuba.github.io/ https://nshuba.github.io/ I agree that it probably should be mentioned, but not enough to make me really doubt the rest of their paper.
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Idk, I've recently gotten a popup shilling their version of chromium. I wouldn't be surprised if these are both a part of some PR campaign to push it.
    - paulmd 2y ago
      When people here linked to the “pwease implement rcs so we can get adoption on our proprietary encryption extensions and become iMessage 2.0 but with google” page don’t you think maybe google might have had a PR campaign going on too? Kinda odd this uniquely gets pointed out when it’s someone pushing back slightly on google, everyone is first in line to declare the player with 40% global market share anticompetitive and doesn’t even make a peep about google, even shouts down the attempts to bring the issue forward… …tell me again why this isn’t just lawfare from android fanboys trying to get their choice of OS legislated? People dumped on me when I said that knocking out safari would rapidly lead to a browser monoculture and anticompetitive usage of that from google. The excuse was “if that happens we’ll regulate that too”. Unsurprisingly, kinda seems like people don’t want that to actually happen now that it’s becoming an issue - you’re pushing back on it. See also: the "maybe a chrome monopoly is really better for consumers" downthread, gross. Now, why is that, I wonder??? Maybe because it was just all an attempt to legislate a solution to google v apple after all? Again: google and Tim Sweeney and netflix and facebook and Sony don’t care about you at all, and their goals don’t align with yours. The end state here isn’t user freedom, it’s iMessage with google banners instead. The hope was that you could hitch a ride on google’s PR effort until it was convenient and then discard them/override their wishes, instead it's the other way around. This has always been a choice/anti-choice issue: for some people it's not enough that they personally can choose android, the option for walled-gardens needs to be removed entirely for everyone else too. And now you're seeing things move into the next phase, as they are discarded and google starts to flex the monopoly power that you lobbied to give them.
strongpigeon 2y ago
Having just read the paper, I find their case for separating out Chrome pretty weak. A lot of their points have nothing to do with Chrome being part of Google really. The failure of the (really weak) DNT standard had nothing to do with Chrome. While I get that Google is an advertiser, Chrome did implement DNT and wasn't even as big of a player back then. Then they talk about Widevine DRM which, say what you want about DRMs, is something media platforms actively asked for due to their licensing. But in anycase, I don't see how this has anything to do with the fact that Google owns Chrome? They also talk a lot about self-preferencing, meaning putting pop-ups to install Chrome on a bunch of Google properties (most notably on search). While I agree that this behavior should be condemned and is anti-trust related, it's mostly about Google leveraging their dominant position in search to gain an edge in the browser space, not the other way around... Barring Google from doing this is what needs to happen, not separating Chrome in a different company. They talk a lot about how Chrome is strategically important for Google, which it is. Chrome is a pure strategy play from Google. But that doesn't mean the industry is suffering because of it (in fact I'd argue Chrome helped the industry tremendously). Until Google abuses their position with Chrome, which the authors haven't made a good case for, I don't see why Chrome should be the target they make it to be.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  The FLoC (related to DNT) is absolutely Google leveraging their market position with Chrome to improve their advertising
  - itopaloglu83 2y ago
    This is an interesting point. Could you elaborate please?
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      Google creates and implements its own privacy solution in its browser. Once released, other advertisers are behind and no longer have access to their tracking -> Google dominates the market because it delivers better ROI for advertisers because it knows how to track on Chrome because it built the privacy solution.
retskrad 2y ago
Can you imagine the Mac without Chrome? The mainstream population would simply use Safari and a default Windows browser. The productivity of the Mac in particular would be downgraded to iPhone and iPad levels because everything we do nowadays is web based. Mail, Docs, storage, research, listening to Music, watching content. Chrome's domination has been nothing but positive for the consumer because it's in Google's best interest to keep it as user-friendly as possible to keep its customer loyalty. When the browser is user-friendly, Google makes money. Let's compare it to Safari on iPhone and iPad where Apple is deliberately crippling it so the open web doesn't take a cent away from their App Store model. If we didn't have Chrome, then what you'll get is a world where Apple cripples the open web and Microsoft on the other end only caring about their corporate-world interests. Google is the only company that is keeping the web open and consumer focused.
- sneak 2y ago
  I use a Mac daily without Chrome. Firefox and Safari work great (the latter works even better if you have an iPhone and iPad and use iCloud, yet another antitrust issue).
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  I use Mac Safari exclusively except for a few sites (usually Google's products) that run terribly on it. There's nothing "iPad and iPhone" level about desktop Safari. It also happens to be much easier on the batteries than the Chrome resource hog. > When the browser is user-friendly, Google makes money. Nope, not at all. Google makes money when users view ads. As long as they have competition, they can't go hog wild with it but changes like those in manifest V3[1] show that ad blocking is their natural enemy - regardless of what users want. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-l...
- dmbche 2y ago
  Can you name me one thing chrome does that can't be done in safari or firefox?
- gwbas1c 2y ago
fUCp62 2y ago
Deeming a product with only ~65% market share as an antitrust issue feels wrong and reductive of actual market monopolies. I like Khan and what the FTC has been up to lately, but the contemporary antitrust school of thought feels diluted and overreaching as applied to tech companies
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  > ~65% market share Careful there: A lot of competing browsers are based on Chromium.
shadowgovt 2y ago
Worth noting whenever you read about antitrust: is the writing coming from Europe or the US. European law grounds antitrust in whether the marketplace is harmed. In that context, something could be an antitrust violation if it's hard to compete with, even if that circumstance is better for users. US antitrust is grounded in consumer harm. One could, hypothetically, have an ecosystem where there is one browser and it's not an antitrust situation because the benefits to consumers outweigh drawbacks to competitors (for example, if users perhaps benefit more from an ecosystem with fewer browsers than more browsers, because the odds of any given website working on their browser are higher if web devs don't have to test against dozens of bespoke partially-compliant implementations). Microsoft ran afoul of antitrust because of the consumer harm demonstrated in bundling its browser (which, notably, was a bit of a bug-ridden mess at the time) into its OS (which made the whole experience worse). But nowadays? Everyone has bundled a browser into their OS. (None of this is to say that the US or European model is better, just that it's always important to code-switch when comprehending arguments regarding antitrust coming from the two regions).
- comex 2y ago
  True, though don’t forget that the US consumer welfare standard dates only to the 70s, is rooted in judicial interpretation rather than explicit statutory wording, and has been challenged in recent years. In fact this is brought up in section 2.2.2 of the paper. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard
nonrandomstring 2y ago
There is still the non hexavalent [0] version [1], although it is strewn with blobs [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexavalent_chromium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexavalent_chromium [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob
rockskon 2y ago
I don't like Google being able to unilaterally dictate major internet standards in opposition of just about every non-Google group.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  The manifest v3 stuff might be a sign of things to come if someone doesn't slap down Google's near-monopoly. Google has every reason to make ad-blocking difficult and ineffective.
  - giantrobot 2y ago
    Not just blocking but most of the Web<insert some device technology here> "standards" Google champions have little actual utility outside of better fingerprinting. Everything attached to the computer the browser can enumerate will be used to fingerprint individuals no matter their cookie settings or tab sandboxing.
  - izacus 2y ago
    The manifest v3 stuff was first brought onto the web via Safari and the HN defenders seemed happy about that. Why the double standard now with Google and blaming Google like they're the first?
    - rockskon 2y ago
      Why reframe the topic to something irrelevant? What the standard started out as is not what it ended as. The final result is the only thing that matters.
      - izacus 2y ago
        What's not relevant about Google not being the one that created that kind of extension standard? "slapping down their near monopoly" is nonsense when the other browsers also follow the same extension approach.
skybrian 2y ago
Here’s what they claim to be “dark patterns:” * Prompts to install Chrome and make it your default browser. (Safari and Edge do the same; this is a tactic that’s been common since the browser wars between Netscape and IE.) * The built-in password manager and synchronization using a Google account. * Ads on Google Search for Chrome. * Built-in DRM and the companies like Spotify that require it. * Some Google services like Google Meet and Google Earth were implemented for Chrome first. * Advertisers can place ads using AdWords on Google Search and this is first-party, rather than third-party advertising, which matters when third-party cookies are blocked. * Google Ads provides Google with insight into the popularity of other websites. (As does running the most popular search engine, I will add.) * Chrome’s long-delayed blocking of third-party cookies is finally happening, but first-party cookies are unaffected. * Moving Google services from other domains to google.com subdomains means that they can share cookies without being affected by third-party cookie restrictions. That’s quite a long list of competitive advantages! And there are more! It’s good to be a big tech company that most people use. They aren’t dark patterns, though? None of this seems surprising? I still think Chrome blocking third-party cookies will be a good thing. I guess that’s the paradox, what’s better for privacy isn’t good for competition.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  Prompts to install Chrome and make it your default browser. (Safari and Edge do the same Where is it that people get nagged to install Safari? When visiting Apple's web site? Since Safari is my primary browser, I don't get prompted to install it, so I'm genuinely curious.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    No way they’d do it on ordinary Apple.com. They don’t give enough shits about people using their browser that’s only available at all if you already gave them money to let that interrupt any part of the process of giving them more money. Maybe on the iCloud website? Which I never visit on Apple devices anyway because there are apps for everything…
    - 2y ago
andrewla 2y ago
The sticking points for me are just the integration of Google services into Chrome itself. I should be able to log into a website (say Google Docs) and have the browser be blissfully unaware of the semantics of being "logged in". It should do all the cookies and local storage necessary for this, but under no circumstances should this be part of the browser UI itself. The side panel for "google search results" is worse in some ways, better in some. It's an optional feature, so that's better. But it does not allow you to disable the functionality. If people love it, sure, I don't mind Chrome adding support, but I should not have to have a non-removable "side panel" button in the main browser chrome. The rest of the complaints here don't really bother me. Third-party cookie blocking by default would be great, but you can enable it now and I've been doing that for ages anyway, even though it sometimes breaks things.
gwbas1c 2y ago
I've done front-end web development on-and-off for about 20 years. One thing I've observed in the past few years is that Chromium (Open-source base of Chrome,) has come to dominate the browser platform: HTML has turned into a boondoggle where everyone's pet use case is integrated into the browser; and curiously, everything works first on Chromium. This makes it prohibitively difficult for competing browsers, (Mozilla, Safari,) to keep up with the evolving web standard. As a developer, it "smells" like the Windows monopoly all over again; except this time, because Chromium is open-source, and there are plenty of Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, and Chrome,), it's less obvious.
- iamthirsty 2y ago
  > except this time, because Chromium is open-source, and there are plenty of Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, and Chrome,), it's less obvious. Wouldn't this be actual market forces at work then, since it's open source? Anyone can use it (as the examples you mentioned). It doesn't meet the monopoly standards since it's not in the exclusive possession/control of Google. It was extremely smart to make it open source, and very similarly so with AOSP.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    No, because they just repackage the engine. The driving force of the core development is still Google and their whims.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      I think the real market failure is that you can't not do what Chrome does. Having Chromium doesn't mean much if when you diverge from Chrome sites will break. Having a standard rings hollow when a standard generally means having two browsers implement a feature and Firefox gets their money from Google. And to developers a standard means "works on Chrome $current - 1." It's hard to say that any of this can be pinned on Google like they're somehow to blame but at the same time we've nonetheless found ourselves in a market where users and developers have very little choice and this currently benefits Google quite a bit. Good engineering discipline I think would ask major browsers to break themselves purposefully by randomly disabling any features that are browser specific or outside of some "core" standard saying you must only use these opportunistically but that's not a law you can write.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Direct link to PDF: https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~zubair/files/jetlaw-chrome-antitrust-paradox.pdf https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~zubair/files/jetlaw-chrome-antit...
ei23 2y ago
Got me suspicious, why google advertises chrome even heavily with TV ads. At least in Germany.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

101 points by wouterjanl 2y ago

wouterjanl 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

candiddevmike 2y ago

US v Google antitrust trial is scheduled for September 9: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2023... (in case this article made you wonder what is happening with it)

sebazzz 2y ago

It is just genius. After actually building a better browser, just implementing web standards while they are still on the standard track - or even before it - forcing competitors to implement them and also slowing them down in the process.

troupo 2y ago
Chrome often only pays lip service to the standards process. They often spit out a semblance of the spec, and enable it by default almost immediately. See, e.g. most of the hardware and PWA/related APIs.
- wbl 2y ago
  How else do you get to learn what works in the real world? Saying "you can't make a feature until everyone agrees" is a recipe for stasis.
  - harles 2y ago
    > you can't make a feature until everyone agrees Except that’s exactly how the web is supposed to work and the reason Google was able to build a giant search business in the first place. This is absolutely them shitting in the punch bowl. We made plenty of progress without fragmentation.
    - strongpigeon 2y ago
      In a sense though, the WHATWG was fragmentation and was what helped move the web forward after the W3C got too slow and hard to get anything through… Requiring consensus to add anything to the web is how progress will slow down to a crawl and we have precedent for this. The current process seems pretty good IMO
      - zer00eyz 2y ago
        The whole point of a slower moving standard is that you are less likely to fuck yourself. Plan Ahea d At some point whatwg is going to jump the shark. They are going to feature paint themselves into a corner and have to make the choice of "cut off some chunk of the web" or "go forward on a new stack". The all gas no brakes add features like were a start up forget about thoughtful or engineering is a bad way to sustain something.
        talldayo 2y ago
        > They are going to feature paint themselves into a corner Has the web not done that, several times over at this point? We've lost too many online standards to count, from all of the FAANG vendors. > The all gas no brakes add features like were a start up forget about thoughtful or engineering is a bad way to sustain something. If native smartphone runtimes were not complete dogshit, I'd probably agree with you. Without the industry's cooperation though, expanding the lowest-common-denominator platform was an inevitability. People want emulators, game streaming, proper download management, the real features that the OEMs are too afraid to publish. If they won't provide that, then their users will find another way. And so, these "all gas no brakes" features are a product of legitimate demand. It's sad, yeah; but what's even sadder is the miserly behavior from companies like Apple that market user freedom as a security apocalypse. The openness of the web has finally caught-up with it's most-restricted users.
- pgeorgi 2y ago
  There precedence: https://www.powermapper.com/blog/web-standards-implementation-process/ https://www.powermapper.com/blog/web-standards-implementatio... says draft spec, then candidate recommendation (unstable), then 2 independent implementations, then recommendation (== spec in w3c terms) It's still in their docs, too: https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#implementation-experience https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#implementation-exp... "are implementations publicly deployed?"
  - troupo 2y ago
    "Implementations publicly deployed" is widely understood as "released behind a flag to gather feedback and work out issues", not "release without a workable spec"
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I struggle to think of any piece of software or any group on the planet that has better commitment to transparency & doing it right. Who do you think does a better job, and how? https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#new-feature-process https://www.chromium.org/blink/launching-features/#new-featu... shows the process followed. Creating an explainer comes first, which is to be presented immediately to an incubation venue like WICG. Prototype behind a feature flag. Then widening review further, getting request for positions. It's recommended to start an origin trial which will run for a quarter or more. If everything is going fine, then one can start the intent to ship process. Looking at https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev paints such a picture of slow, controlled evolution. It's absurd to me this kind of flak blasted in the air trying to shoot down something that is generally so measured & controlled & steady in releasing. No one else has anything half this controlled. Who else does Intent to Experiment or Intent to Prototype? Few software has such a model where it's so clear what's coming, what's happening, where change & evolution is done in a controlled, slow, deliberate fashion, where prototypes are worked on & tested in the field for a significant amount of time before coming back to shipping. Few other softwares have such an extreme responsibility in going to working bodies, in soliciting requests for positions, where all manners of discovery are done. > See, e.g. most of the hardware and PWA/related APIs. Unclear what specific specs you are trying to throw under the bus here. PWAs took a long time to cook, in my view; hardly did they seem rashly done. A lot of people are really offended the web has MIDI & Gyrometer & other support, to the degree that they wouldn't let others enjoy this.
  - troupo 2y ago
    > shows > paints Exactly. You can show and paint all you want. And then there's reality. > Unclear what specific specs you are trying to throw under the bus here. Almost all the hardware specs (most of which are "not on any standards track", shipped in Chrome), things like Backround Fetch and Background Sync (same). There are also others that Google shipped even before there was consensus and there were glaring issues in the spec (like Constructible Stylesheets) > A lot of people are really offended the web has MIDI & Gyrometer & other support, to the degree that they wouldn't let others enjoy this. To call this a misrepresentation of reality is a gross understatement
- winter_blue 2y ago
  > They often spit out a semblance of the spec, and enable it by default almost immediately. On the flip side, standards committees can be painfully slow. Can anyone explain why DOM access from WebAssembly hasn’t even been specced out yet (let alone even implemented) despite years and years (approaching a decade) of discussions around this? Like, seriously, what is going on with this?
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talldayo 2y ago
To me, the genius part is how they've forced the industry's hand. There's demand for cloud gaming, USB APIs, Bluetooth functionality and graphics libraries, but many OEMs don't implement it on their system. Chrome tells them that they either brush-up their native APIs, or lose their users to an arena where their browser is more capable than their smartphone. That part I fully support, and it's Google's "die by the sword" answer to Apple's stubbornness. Google's AdSense abuses are a horse of a different color though, and absolutely deserving of antitrust remediation. The impact of AdSense has been so harmful that I genuinely fail to imagine a "solution" to the scale of it's harm. Alongside the Apple case, it's a posterchild for "Things the DOJ Should Have Done Years Ago" in this industry.
- a_wild_dandan 2y ago
  How does Google abuse AdSense? And why is finding a solution difficult? I'm ignorant here.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    Too many ways to count, really. It's an enormous system and I'm not qualified to explain it in detail, nor am I a customer of their products. The long-and-short of it is that Google wields undue monopoly power by mediating their competitors in online advertising, and abuses that control to manipulate ad rankings and kneecap paying advertisers. They do this in several ways, like changing the font/frame/location of the advertisement and fixing it's ranking relative to Google's own products. This is the main argument against them, though there are tons of little inconsistencies that many highlight as salient.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    There’s an argument to be made that it is abusive by simply existing. It’s a business that is built on network effects since it is a multi-sided auction (people offering ad space and people bidding to show ads in those spaces). There are massive barriers to entering the ad network space as a result, which lets incumbents get away with whatever they want. In my opinion, markets that are inherently not competitive, like ones reliant on network effects, need regulation and forced competition. But more specifically, it is things like Google forcing site owners to enter anti-competitive agreements (see https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=216769 https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&do...). As part of the agreements Google required, site owners had to preserve the best ad space on pages for Google’s ads instead of ads from rival networks, they were not allowed to insert ads from rival ad networks on the pages that Google search results link to, and they had to get permission from Google before changing how rival ads were displayed on pages where both existed (allegedly). Note that even if site owners found these clauses problematic, in a practical sense they have no choice but to just say “yes”. They need ad revenues to survive in today’s economic environment. And for them, the risk of not having ad revenue is existential while Google doesn’t have anything to lose by being aggressive. It’s an uneven situation where there isn’t really choice for anyone except Google.
NotSammyHagar 2y ago
Part of it is that they are just way better at building a web browser that works really well and advances fast and fixes security issues fairly quickly. There's an open source variant (it's degoogled). Google loves this because they have a lot of tracking for their ad platform, but also it works really well. I know that Google also provides a lot of important services like noting dodgy websites and (too late sometimes) noticing dangerous extensions, all the way though, tracking most people all the time for serving them ads. Tesla is a little bit of the same thing with their superchargers. Tesla has done the amazing thing of building them in lots of areas with enough superchargers that they are usable. But the thing that Tesla did that the entire rest of the dcfc industry can't do is just - fix them when they break. It's just stunning that more than a dozen companies can't do this this (EA is the one that really wasted billions, there are known reasons). Tesla is in line to be the predominant EV gas station for the future. Maybe they had some early mover strategy, but as someone who had both a Tesla and a ccs car, there's little comparison. Now that Tesla opened their sc to ccs cars (first with an adapter, later by incorporating that plug in the car directly if wanted), they are likely to control that market. This is incredibly powerful and will set them up to be really successful. Similar things with the Tesla vehicles having fantastic drive trains. Musk is ruining their reputation with his X related comments - but earlier he started ruining Tesla vehicles by removing turn signal stalks, removing drive train stalk, removing physical sensors (for things like curb and rain) and replacing them with poorly working "ai" things. But to get to their predominant positions, I really think Tesla and Google got there by making better mouse traps, which of course also helped their other businesses incredibly. This is way too long but I also wish there was a 100% capable de-googled chrome browser.
pompino 2y ago
Chrome is not a better browser because of the various ways it spies on you. It's essentially a keylogger for Google.

cratermoon 2y ago

The title is a nod to https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-parado...

capital_guy 2y ago
Which was written by Lina Khan, (now) the current chair of the FTC. Very pointed.

haburka 2y ago

Can’t actually view the paper without making an account apparently, does anyone have a link?

forgotpwd16 2y ago
The page asking to make account also has a "download without registration" box. Can click and gives link that starts the download.
ziddoap 2y ago
With NoScript blocking everything, I hit "Download This Paper" and it downloaded -- no account needed.
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keeganpoppen 2y ago

can we keep chrome and just stop the goddamn incessant messages every time i use a google property while not in chrome? it is sickening.

leosanchez 2y ago
Every other website I visit asks me to log in with a Google Account using a popup. I feel very uncomfortable with Google's grip on the Web.

gundmc 2y ago

One of the authors of this paper works at Duck Duck Go. This was conspicuously not mentioned in the header information.

mda 2y ago
I wonder what other conflict of interest other authors have.
boomboomsubban 2y ago
Anastasia Shuba, to save others the hassle of checking. https://nshuba.github.io/ https://nshuba.github.io/ I agree that it probably should be mentioned, but not enough to make me really doubt the rest of their paper.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Idk, I've recently gotten a popup shilling their version of chromium. I wouldn't be surprised if these are both a part of some PR campaign to push it.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    When people here linked to the “pwease implement rcs so we can get adoption on our proprietary encryption extensions and become iMessage 2.0 but with google” page don’t you think maybe google might have had a PR campaign going on too? Kinda odd this uniquely gets pointed out when it’s someone pushing back slightly on google, everyone is first in line to declare the player with 40% global market share anticompetitive and doesn’t even make a peep about google, even shouts down the attempts to bring the issue forward… …tell me again why this isn’t just lawfare from android fanboys trying to get their choice of OS legislated? People dumped on me when I said that knocking out safari would rapidly lead to a browser monoculture and anticompetitive usage of that from google. The excuse was “if that happens we’ll regulate that too”. Unsurprisingly, kinda seems like people don’t want that to actually happen now that it’s becoming an issue - you’re pushing back on it. See also: the "maybe a chrome monopoly is really better for consumers" downthread, gross. Now, why is that, I wonder??? Maybe because it was just all an attempt to legislate a solution to google v apple after all? Again: google and Tim Sweeney and netflix and facebook and Sony don’t care about you at all, and their goals don’t align with yours. The end state here isn’t user freedom, it’s iMessage with google banners instead. The hope was that you could hitch a ride on google’s PR effort until it was convenient and then discard them/override their wishes, instead it's the other way around. This has always been a choice/anti-choice issue: for some people it's not enough that they personally can choose android, the option for walled-gardens needs to be removed entirely for everyone else too. And now you're seeing things move into the next phase, as they are discarded and google starts to flex the monopoly power that you lobbied to give them.

strongpigeon 2y ago

Having just read the paper, I find their case for separating out Chrome pretty weak. A lot of their points have nothing to do with Chrome being part of Google really. The failure of the (really weak) DNT standard had nothing to do with Chrome. While I get that Google is an advertiser, Chrome did implement DNT and wasn't even as big of a player back then. Then they talk about Widevine DRM which, say what you want about DRMs, is something media platforms actively asked for due to their licensing. But in anycase, I don't see how this has anything to do with the fact that Google owns Chrome? They also talk a lot about self-preferencing, meaning putting pop-ups to install Chrome on a bunch of Google properties (most notably on search). While I agree that this behavior should be condemned and is anti-trust related, it's mostly about Google leveraging their dominant position in search to gain an edge in the browser space, not the other way around... Barring Google from doing this is what needs to happen, not separating Chrome in a different company. They talk a lot about how Chrome is strategically important for Google, which it is. Chrome is a pure strategy play from Google. But that doesn't mean the industry is suffering because of it (in fact I'd argue Chrome helped the industry tremendously). Until Google abuses their position with Chrome, which the authors haven't made a good case for, I don't see why Chrome should be the target they make it to be.

whimsicalism 2y ago
The FLoC (related to DNT) is absolutely Google leveraging their market position with Chrome to improve their advertising
- itopaloglu83 2y ago
  This is an interesting point. Could you elaborate please?
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    Google creates and implements its own privacy solution in its browser. Once released, other advertisers are behind and no longer have access to their tracking -> Google dominates the market because it delivers better ROI for advertisers because it knows how to track on Chrome because it built the privacy solution.

retskrad 2y ago

Can you imagine the Mac without Chrome? The mainstream population would simply use Safari and a default Windows browser. The productivity of the Mac in particular would be downgraded to iPhone and iPad levels because everything we do nowadays is web based. Mail, Docs, storage, research, listening to Music, watching content. Chrome's domination has been nothing but positive for the consumer because it's in Google's best interest to keep it as user-friendly as possible to keep its customer loyalty. When the browser is user-friendly, Google makes money. Let's compare it to Safari on iPhone and iPad where Apple is deliberately crippling it so the open web doesn't take a cent away from their App Store model. If we didn't have Chrome, then what you'll get is a world where Apple cripples the open web and Microsoft on the other end only caring about their corporate-world interests. Google is the only company that is keeping the web open and consumer focused.

sneak 2y ago
I use a Mac daily without Chrome. Firefox and Safari work great (the latter works even better if you have an iPhone and iPad and use iCloud, yet another antitrust issue).
AlexandrB 2y ago
I use Mac Safari exclusively except for a few sites (usually Google's products) that run terribly on it. There's nothing "iPad and iPhone" level about desktop Safari. It also happens to be much easier on the batteries than the Chrome resource hog. > When the browser is user-friendly, Google makes money. Nope, not at all. Google makes money when users view ads. As long as they have competition, they can't go hog wild with it but changes like those in manifest V3[1] show that ad blocking is their natural enemy - regardless of what users want. [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-limit-ad-blockers-starting-june-2024/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/google-chrome-will-l...
dmbche 2y ago
Can you name me one thing chrome does that can't be done in safari or firefox?
gwbas1c 2y ago

fUCp62 2y ago

Deeming a product with only ~65% market share as an antitrust issue feels wrong and reductive of actual market monopolies. I like Khan and what the FTC has been up to lately, but the contemporary antitrust school of thought feels diluted and overreaching as applied to tech companies

gwbas1c 2y ago
> ~65% market share Careful there: A lot of competing browsers are based on Chromium.

shadowgovt 2y ago

Worth noting whenever you read about antitrust: is the writing coming from Europe or the US. European law grounds antitrust in whether the marketplace is harmed. In that context, something could be an antitrust violation if it's hard to compete with, even if that circumstance is better for users. US antitrust is grounded in consumer harm. One could, hypothetically, have an ecosystem where there is one browser and it's not an antitrust situation because the benefits to consumers outweigh drawbacks to competitors (for example, if users perhaps benefit more from an ecosystem with fewer browsers than more browsers, because the odds of any given website working on their browser are higher if web devs don't have to test against dozens of bespoke partially-compliant implementations). Microsoft ran afoul of antitrust because of the consumer harm demonstrated in bundling its browser (which, notably, was a bit of a bug-ridden mess at the time) into its OS (which made the whole experience worse). But nowadays? Everyone has bundled a browser into their OS. (None of this is to say that the US or European model is better, just that it's always important to code-switch when comprehending arguments regarding antitrust coming from the two regions).

comex 2y ago
True, though don’t forget that the US consumer welfare standard dates only to the 70s, is rooted in judicial interpretation rather than explicit statutory wording, and has been challenged in recent years. In fact this is brought up in section 2.2.2 of the paper. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_welfare_standard

nonrandomstring 2y ago

There is still the non hexavalent [0] version [1], although it is strewn with blobs [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexavalent_chromium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexavalent_chromium [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob

rockskon 2y ago

I don't like Google being able to unilaterally dictate major internet standards in opposition of just about every non-Google group.

AlexandrB 2y ago
The manifest v3 stuff might be a sign of things to come if someone doesn't slap down Google's near-monopoly. Google has every reason to make ad-blocking difficult and ineffective.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  Not just blocking but most of the Web<insert some device technology here> "standards" Google champions have little actual utility outside of better fingerprinting. Everything attached to the computer the browser can enumerate will be used to fingerprint individuals no matter their cookie settings or tab sandboxing.
- izacus 2y ago
  The manifest v3 stuff was first brought onto the web via Safari and the HN defenders seemed happy about that. Why the double standard now with Google and blaming Google like they're the first?
  - rockskon 2y ago
    Why reframe the topic to something irrelevant? What the standard started out as is not what it ended as. The final result is the only thing that matters.
    - izacus 2y ago
      What's not relevant about Google not being the one that created that kind of extension standard? "slapping down their near monopoly" is nonsense when the other browsers also follow the same extension approach.

skybrian 2y ago

Here’s what they claim to be “dark patterns:” * Prompts to install Chrome and make it your default browser. (Safari and Edge do the same; this is a tactic that’s been common since the browser wars between Netscape and IE.) * The built-in password manager and synchronization using a Google account. * Ads on Google Search for Chrome. * Built-in DRM and the companies like Spotify that require it. * Some Google services like Google Meet and Google Earth were implemented for Chrome first. * Advertisers can place ads using AdWords on Google Search and this is first-party, rather than third-party advertising, which matters when third-party cookies are blocked. * Google Ads provides Google with insight into the popularity of other websites. (As does running the most popular search engine, I will add.) * Chrome’s long-delayed blocking of third-party cookies is finally happening, but first-party cookies are unaffected. * Moving Google services from other domains to google.com subdomains means that they can share cookies without being affected by third-party cookie restrictions. That’s quite a long list of competitive advantages! And there are more! It’s good to be a big tech company that most people use. They aren’t dark patterns, though? None of this seems surprising? I still think Chrome blocking third-party cookies will be a good thing. I guess that’s the paradox, what’s better for privacy isn’t good for competition.

reaperducer 2y ago
Prompts to install Chrome and make it your default browser. (Safari and Edge do the same Where is it that people get nagged to install Safari? When visiting Apple's web site? Since Safari is my primary browser, I don't get prompted to install it, so I'm genuinely curious.
- vundercind 2y ago
  No way they’d do it on ordinary Apple.com. They don’t give enough shits about people using their browser that’s only available at all if you already gave them money to let that interrupt any part of the process of giving them more money. Maybe on the iCloud website? Which I never visit on Apple devices anyway because there are apps for everything…
  - 2y ago

andrewla 2y ago

The sticking points for me are just the integration of Google services into Chrome itself. I should be able to log into a website (say Google Docs) and have the browser be blissfully unaware of the semantics of being "logged in". It should do all the cookies and local storage necessary for this, but under no circumstances should this be part of the browser UI itself. The side panel for "google search results" is worse in some ways, better in some. It's an optional feature, so that's better. But it does not allow you to disable the functionality. If people love it, sure, I don't mind Chrome adding support, but I should not have to have a non-removable "side panel" button in the main browser chrome. The rest of the complaints here don't really bother me. Third-party cookie blocking by default would be great, but you can enable it now and I've been doing that for ages anyway, even though it sometimes breaks things.

gwbas1c 2y ago

I've done front-end web development on-and-off for about 20 years. One thing I've observed in the past few years is that Chromium (Open-source base of Chrome,) has come to dominate the browser platform: HTML has turned into a boondoggle where everyone's pet use case is integrated into the browser; and curiously, everything works first on Chromium. This makes it prohibitively difficult for competing browsers, (Mozilla, Safari,) to keep up with the evolving web standard. As a developer, it "smells" like the Windows monopoly all over again; except this time, because Chromium is open-source, and there are plenty of Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, and Chrome,), it's less obvious.

iamthirsty 2y ago
> except this time, because Chromium is open-source, and there are plenty of Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, and Chrome,), it's less obvious. Wouldn't this be actual market forces at work then, since it's open source? Anyone can use it (as the examples you mentioned). It doesn't meet the monopoly standards since it's not in the exclusive possession/control of Google. It was extremely smart to make it open source, and very similarly so with AOSP.
- MBCook 2y ago
  No, because they just repackage the engine. The driving force of the core development is still Google and their whims.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    I think the real market failure is that you can't not do what Chrome does. Having Chromium doesn't mean much if when you diverge from Chrome sites will break. Having a standard rings hollow when a standard generally means having two browsers implement a feature and Firefox gets their money from Google. And to developers a standard means "works on Chrome $current - 1." It's hard to say that any of this can be pinned on Google like they're somehow to blame but at the same time we've nonetheless found ourselves in a market where users and developers have very little choice and this currently benefits Google quite a bit. Good engineering discipline I think would ask major browsers to break themselves purposefully by randomly disabling any features that are browser specific or outside of some "core" standard saying you must only use these opportunistically but that's not a law you can write.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Direct link to PDF: https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~zubair/files/jetlaw-chrome-antitrust-paradox.pdf https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~zubair/files/jetlaw-chrome-antit...

ei23 2y ago

Got me suspicious, why google advertises chrome even heavily with TV ads. At least in Germany.

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