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Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their brow

Google is offering a free browser, while making a good browser costs money. They are subsidising that by their huge ad-business. And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. That browser is competing with someone like Opera (used to be a paid for product) and Mozilla in an unfair way, because Google is killing others by making it free and taking the loss.

tim333 2y ago
Yeah but there's no great shortage of competing free browsers.
sushid 2y ago
But Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well. I agree with the parent commenter that its not exactly a monopoly in the traditional sense. It's not even the default browser on Mac or Windows.
- dwattttt 2y ago
  > Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well And yet browser development costs money. If browsers cost money, you could make a better product and compete by selling it, but when an incumbent is giving theirs away for free?
  - xp84 2y ago
    Yes! The situation that has been our world since MSIE went free over 25 years ago.
  - sahila 2y ago
    How does your rationale explain Internet Explore/Edge and Safari which both have abundance of money and still can’t outcompete Chrome? This goes back to the original point about Google search being superior to Bing, and not just because it’s free.
    - dagmx 2y ago
      Differing priorities. Edge is based on blink now anyway , so as a core browser engine they’re roughly the same. It’s the higher level UX that is differentiated. Safari has largely caught up now for web standards and mostly only lags behind in experimental features that are largely driven by Google anyway. But Safari has better battery use and privacy. Chrome is good because Google see it as their play at a web OS. That’s why they shove everything and the kitchen sink into it. So it’s just different priorities and the resulting differentiators. I don’t think any major browser is actually significantly better anymore today.
      - katbyte 2y ago
        I would love to use safari but for years now it will randomly just start refreshing pages. I have no idea why or even where to begin to debug it so on chrome I stay. Removing manifest v2 might be the kick to try Firefox again but I’d still like to fix safari
      - tracker1 2y ago
        The irony there is for a while, I considered Blink based Edge better than Chrome. The issue is they added what are basically a bunch of pre-installed extensions to Edge that I really hated and kept making the UX worse to me. Honestly if there was a set of plugins that would sync my bookmarks toolbar links I'd have less issue switching browsers and trying others more.
    - dwattttt 2y ago
      > How does your rationale explain Internet Explore/Edge and Safari which both have abundance of money and still can’t outcompete Chrome? How do I explain groups that attempt to compete and don't overthrow an incumbent? How much explanation does that need? That's literally the default, most attempts to overthrow the king fail.
      - 3000browsers 2y ago
        And when a king does fall, it's never a guarantee who gets to stay in that throne. Even in actual political overthrows, there is no profession more dangerous than being the guy who led the revolution, and we can count in less than half a hand how many humans in history actually got the spot, got struck down and then made a legitimate democratic comeback afterwards. More often than not, when a product is replaced, the growth of the replacer is a steady way upwards from 0. Not a meandering stable placement that suddenly shuffles around. I dunno what's the reasoning for that phenomena, I just chalk it up to people refuse change without perceived innovation. But point is, experience states that none of the browsers should be doing too much more than what they already do - the only likely path to victory is waiting for others to fuck, and not even Twitter, a shithole, could do that to themselves.
- bradknowles 2y ago
  Opera is based on Chrome, and therefore does not belong in this comparison. Safari would be a better example.
xp84 2y ago
> last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking Make no mistake, all that original plan was about was about applying pain to everybody else in the advertising world, while their replacement for cookies would have been satisfactory only at Google's scale. The whole thing was Google astroturfing, taking advantage of everyone's ignorance of how the Internet works to further entrench their advertising monopoly. I don't know why they aborted the plan, but I suspect regulators had caught on that it wasn't altruism but Anti-competitiveness that motivated it.
nine_k 2y ago
There was exactly the same kind of lawsuit in France some years ago: free Google Maps insidiously put paid cartography companies without any special features out of business. The antitrust legislation protects consumers, not businesses. If Linux provides for free what a proprietary software offered for money, it's a net win, even if that company goes out of business. The problem with Chrome is not that it's free. The problem is that it develops more and more anti-customer traits, like making it hard to block ads, and uses its market share and compatibility issues to force these on customers. The problem with google search is that Google integrates it with Chrome and Android, and buys the default search engine slots in other browsers, so that many customers are not even aware of other options. Sadly, Bing and DDG are not clearly superior, and, say, Kagi is paid. (Kagi is a good example of a paid product that's significantly better than the common free alternative.) Ironically the default search engine deals is how Firefox acquires most of its funding. I don't see an easy way to find Google guilty of hurting customers through monopoly power in search or browsers: free products, a few alternatives, trivial cost of switching, no price gouging possible. Same with dumping: products start and remain free, most of Chrome is open-source and competitors reuse that same code, and customers are free to use these derivates, or adequate independent browsers and search engines. It's a bit like coca-cola: alternatives abound, downsides are known, but people just seem to weirdly prefer it.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  > Ironically the default search engine deals is how Firefox acquires most of its funding. Note that this also makes Chrome look like it dominates the market less which is presumably why they keep spending this money on FF.
- bradknowles 2y ago
  But there is no Pepsi cola to compete with it. And there’s the problem.
voxic11 2y ago
Making a good OS costs money also but linux is given away for free. Is linux unfairly competing with Microsoft and Apple?
- Teever 2y ago
  You have to look at this on a case by case basis. It's not hard to see that the browser market has suffered from the actions of Google, while the operating system market has not suffered from the actions of Linux. If anything antitrust action against Google might give Microsoft another kick at the mobile can and they can take on the Linux-based android OS that Google distributes.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Taking IBM as an example, they were one of the first in 2000 to make Linux business a reality, because in doing so, it makes their own Aix development costs lower, and eventually played so well that they own Red-Hat, without which, many key projects like GCC and GNOME would lose their main source of income. The other UNIX vendors that went out of business thanks to Linux's free beer, or Microsoft and Apple's issues trying to sell licenses for their OSes on the server room, both now supporting Linux VMs as "The Year of Desktop Linux", are good examples that when it is free, everyone takes it no matter how it goes.
dwaite 2y ago
> And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. Oh they didn't abandon the plans, they chose something worse. They are going to make it a user decision. Advertising companies can still gain some value for people who have third party cookies enabled, applications which aren't well-maintained enough to remove a reliance on third-party cookies will fail (sometimes), and users will be pushed by things like work SaaS apps to re-enable third party cookies (as a global setting) to be able to use required services.

tim333 2y ago

Yeah but there's no great shortage of competing free browsers.

sushid 2y ago

But Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well. I agree with the parent commenter that its not exactly a monopoly in the traditional sense. It's not even the default browser on Mac or Windows.

dwattttt 2y ago
> Opera and Firefox and others are all free browsers as well And yet browser development costs money. If browsers cost money, you could make a better product and compete by selling it, but when an incumbent is giving theirs away for free?
- xp84 2y ago
  Yes! The situation that has been our world since MSIE went free over 25 years ago.
- sahila 2y ago
  How does your rationale explain Internet Explore/Edge and Safari which both have abundance of money and still can’t outcompete Chrome? This goes back to the original point about Google search being superior to Bing, and not just because it’s free.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    Differing priorities. Edge is based on blink now anyway , so as a core browser engine they’re roughly the same. It’s the higher level UX that is differentiated. Safari has largely caught up now for web standards and mostly only lags behind in experimental features that are largely driven by Google anyway. But Safari has better battery use and privacy. Chrome is good because Google see it as their play at a web OS. That’s why they shove everything and the kitchen sink into it. So it’s just different priorities and the resulting differentiators. I don’t think any major browser is actually significantly better anymore today.
    - katbyte 2y ago
      I would love to use safari but for years now it will randomly just start refreshing pages. I have no idea why or even where to begin to debug it so on chrome I stay. Removing manifest v2 might be the kick to try Firefox again but I’d still like to fix safari
    - tracker1 2y ago
      The irony there is for a while, I considered Blink based Edge better than Chrome. The issue is they added what are basically a bunch of pre-installed extensions to Edge that I really hated and kept making the UX worse to me. Honestly if there was a set of plugins that would sync my bookmarks toolbar links I'd have less issue switching browsers and trying others more.
  - dwattttt 2y ago
    > How does your rationale explain Internet Explore/Edge and Safari which both have abundance of money and still can’t outcompete Chrome? How do I explain groups that attempt to compete and don't overthrow an incumbent? How much explanation does that need? That's literally the default, most attempts to overthrow the king fail.
    - 3000browsers 2y ago
      And when a king does fall, it's never a guarantee who gets to stay in that throne. Even in actual political overthrows, there is no profession more dangerous than being the guy who led the revolution, and we can count in less than half a hand how many humans in history actually got the spot, got struck down and then made a legitimate democratic comeback afterwards. More often than not, when a product is replaced, the growth of the replacer is a steady way upwards from 0. Not a meandering stable placement that suddenly shuffles around. I dunno what's the reasoning for that phenomena, I just chalk it up to people refuse change without perceived innovation. But point is, experience states that none of the browsers should be doing too much more than what they already do - the only likely path to victory is waiting for others to fuck, and not even Twitter, a shithole, could do that to themselves.
bradknowles 2y ago
Opera is based on Chrome, and therefore does not belong in this comparison. Safari would be a better example.

xp84 2y ago

> last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking Make no mistake, all that original plan was about was about applying pain to everybody else in the advertising world, while their replacement for cookies would have been satisfactory only at Google's scale. The whole thing was Google astroturfing, taking advantage of everyone's ignorance of how the Internet works to further entrench their advertising monopoly. I don't know why they aborted the plan, but I suspect regulators had caught on that it wasn't altruism but Anti-competitiveness that motivated it.

nine_k 2y ago

There was exactly the same kind of lawsuit in France some years ago: free Google Maps insidiously put paid cartography companies without any special features out of business. The antitrust legislation protects consumers, not businesses. If Linux provides for free what a proprietary software offered for money, it's a net win, even if that company goes out of business. The problem with Chrome is not that it's free. The problem is that it develops more and more anti-customer traits, like making it hard to block ads, and uses its market share and compatibility issues to force these on customers. The problem with google search is that Google integrates it with Chrome and Android, and buys the default search engine slots in other browsers, so that many customers are not even aware of other options. Sadly, Bing and DDG are not clearly superior, and, say, Kagi is paid. (Kagi is a good example of a paid product that's significantly better than the common free alternative.) Ironically the default search engine deals is how Firefox acquires most of its funding. I don't see an easy way to find Google guilty of hurting customers through monopoly power in search or browsers: free products, a few alternatives, trivial cost of switching, no price gouging possible. Same with dumping: products start and remain free, most of Chrome is open-source and competitors reuse that same code, and customers are free to use these derivates, or adequate independent browsers and search engines. It's a bit like coca-cola: alternatives abound, downsides are known, but people just seem to weirdly prefer it.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
> Ironically the default search engine deals is how Firefox acquires most of its funding. Note that this also makes Chrome look like it dominates the market less which is presumably why they keep spending this money on FF.
bradknowles 2y ago
But there is no Pepsi cola to compete with it. And there’s the problem.

voxic11 2y ago

Making a good OS costs money also but linux is given away for free. Is linux unfairly competing with Microsoft and Apple?

Teever 2y ago
You have to look at this on a case by case basis. It's not hard to see that the browser market has suffered from the actions of Google, while the operating system market has not suffered from the actions of Linux. If anything antitrust action against Google might give Microsoft another kick at the mobile can and they can take on the Linux-based android OS that Google distributes.
pjmlp 2y ago
Taking IBM as an example, they were one of the first in 2000 to make Linux business a reality, because in doing so, it makes their own Aix development costs lower, and eventually played so well that they own Red-Hat, without which, many key projects like GCC and GNOME would lose their main source of income. The other UNIX vendors that went out of business thanks to Linux's free beer, or Microsoft and Apple's issues trying to sell licenses for their OSes on the server room, both now supporting Linux VMs as "The Year of Desktop Linux", are good examples that when it is free, everyone takes it no matter how it goes.

dwaite 2y ago

> And by no surprise, their browser is the only major one that has no privacy protection features and last month decided to abandon the plan to deprecate cookies and tracking. Oh they didn't abandon the plans, they chose something worse. They are going to make it a user decision. Advertising companies can still gain some value for people who have third party cookies enabled, applications which aren't well-maintained enough to remove a reliance on third-party cookies will fail (sometimes), and users will be pushed by things like work SaaS apps to re-enable third party cookies (as a global setting) to be able to use required services.