8 ms·

I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.

eru 2y ago
How is Chrome or Google a monopoly?
- rvense 2y ago
  Monopoly is probably not the right word. "Trust" (as in "anti-trust") is maybe better, but I'm not sure the last gilded age really had a perfect analogy to what's been happening in the tech services sector. The problem is these sprawling companies who make so many interrelated services and can suppress competition in one area (browsers, e-mail, video-over-the-internet) due to extreme profits in another area (ads).
- nicoloren 2y ago
  I think we can think in terms of market share. Google (the search engine) has a market share of over 85% worldwide. [0] Google therefore controls what can be found on the Internet for 85% of search engine users. Recent updates, or Core Updates, have demonstrated how easy it is for Google to put businesses out of business by removing their visibility. [1] It seems to me that this is a problem. Ditto for Chrome, which has +60% market share [2]. A failed or deliberate update could make a website inaccessible to 60% of the population. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [1] https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
  - eru 2y ago
    60% market share is big, but it's not a monopoly. Even 85% ain't.
    - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
      Don't get so hung up on semantics. Quote: The Supreme Court has defined (...) monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition". [https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...]
      - eru 2y ago
        They don't exclude any competition, and, well, browsers and web searches are free.
        nfw2 2y ago
        to be fair, free is a price, and one that is very hard to compete with, at that
        eru 2y ago
        Sure, but it's hard to argue that customers are overcharged by the alleged monopoly.
  - graycat 2y ago
    > update could make a website inaccessible There are billions of Web browser users and, from a fast Google search, 1.1 billion Web sites, still a large number if count only the ones that still have traffic. So, billions of listeners and many millions of talkers. Without good, stable, universal standards, we'd have the biggest "Tower of Babel" problem in history. Hypothetical examples: (1) Maybe Company A wants to change the standards so that Web sites will have to revise their code. Hmm!!! Many millions of Web site owners will say "no way". Company A just left the party. (2) Web site B wants to change their Web site so that only certain Web browsers will be able to use that site. Hmm!!! Site B won't get much traffic. Even if that site is Google -- people will use Bing, etc. (3) Maybe Google announces that as of July 1, 2025 the Google search engine Web site will work only with Google's latest Chrome Web browser. Hmm .... There are billions of people who will want a search engine that works with the old, standard Web browser they already have -- "billions of people"!! Sounds like, with Bing, Microsoft's stock just doubled! And July Google's searches per day fell by 50+%. E.g., I still like Windows 7 Professional. Occasionally I run Microsoft's Web browser Edge, and when I do there is a message that Windows 7 won't get updates for Edge and I should convert to Windows 10/11. I don't really want an update to Edge -- what I have does work; I don't like it; occasionally I use it to check some issues. Hmm!!!! Microsoft, one of your most important business assets is that old applications will still run on the latest versions of Windows. So, I run Kedit, Object Rexx, Firefox, VLC media player, PhotoDraw, Media Player, PhotoViewer, Sketchup, Office 20??, IBM's OSL (Optimization Subroutine Library and a certain Watcom Fortran compiler), LINPACK, etc., .NET 3??, and I do not want to lose use of any of those old programs. (4) Some company tries to have all the Internet ads flowing through their software, servers, etc. Hmm!! Sites have a file ads.txt that usually shows one heck of a long list of Internet ad brokers. Not easy for one company to dominate the ad market or even just the Web site ad market.
- pandem 2y ago
  I would expect the monopoly referred here to be the government.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  Allow me to break this down: * Google effectively holds a monopoly of the browser market (Chrome). Apple (Safari) only exists because of vendor lock-in, and Mozilla (Firefox) is a vassal state; all "other" browsers are Chrome. * Google shares a duopoly of the mobile OS market with Apple (Android vs. iOS). * Google holds a monopoly of the video streaming market (Youtube). * Google holds a monopoly of the malvertising market (Adsense, Doubleclick, et al.). * Google effectively holds a monopoly of the web search market (Google Search). * Google holds the vast majority of the email market (Gmail). * Google is the absolutely dominant player in the consumer cloud market (Google Drive). * Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the cloud photo market (Google Photos vs. iCloud Photos). * Google shares a duopoly with Microsoft in the consumer office software market (Google Docs vs. Office 365). * Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the digital wallet market (Google Pay/Wallet vs. Apple Pay). I can go on, but with this being said let me ask you: Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday?
  - portaouflop 2y ago
    Why not split Microsoft and Apple as well while we are at it? A bit unrelated but News Corp and Random House should also end up on the chopping block.
    - rvense 2y ago
      > Why not split Microsoft and Apple as well while we are at it? Indeed, why not?
      - izacus 2y ago
        Because they're better at bribing the government obviously. Duh.
    - jdub 2y ago
      Now you're getting it!
  - eru 2y ago
    Thanks. The summary seems to be: Google is a big player in many markets, but not a monopoly. You mentioned some as 'monopolies'. Let's go through them: Browsers: as far as I can tell, the other browsers that 'are Chrome' are Chromium at most. Eg Microsoft is surely capable of forking Chromium, if Google does anything untoward. Video streaming: I hear TikTok and Instagram and Netflix etc are popular for streaming videos, too? People also seem to be getting a lot of videos via telegram channels? (I don't know the exact numbers here. So I can't say anything definite.) Web search: Google used to be really dominant, but they are arguably on a downward trend without any government interference: more and more people are using the likes of ChatGPT to fill the same niche in their lives. > Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday? Presumably because there's a presumption of non-interference in the markets? The same reason the government doesn't just lock you and me up for no good reason, or confiscates our property.
- junon 2y ago
  Not sure if this is an innocent comment or not but I'll answer earnestly. They're not, technically. They're hegemons, which doesn't make them much better. In fact, I'd argue the situation is worse. Chrome predominantly owns the web at this point. There are few contenders, and making a new browser is a lot of work (see the Verso browser). Google has the arguably unearned luxury of dictating what APIs and protocols the nebulous "web" should use, can throw a bunch of money at adding them quickly, and leave competitors struggling to keep up, effectively buying chrome's guaranteed superiority. "But there are standards committees!" Yes, but it really doesn't matter when Chrome either uses its own APIs privately on its sites[0] or just adds new APIs without any committee consideration for people to use and fall in love with and demand that other vendors add them (or something similar, such as proposing a great idea at the committee, it's accepted, and the other vendors lagging for months or even years - see WebGPU as an example). One might think "it's just a browser". Yes, but browsers are -for better or for worse - the global defacto for sending and receiving almost all of our sensitive data. Even "desktop apps" like Whatsapp, Signal, and Bitwarden all either use or have used Chromium to display their contents (via Electron). Much of the community has asserted Google owns the web at this point, and I tend to agree. It's very, very hard for smaller vendors to have much of a day these days without Google getting theirs, too. [0] https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018 https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018
  - fifticon 2y ago
    It is not just 'a lot of work'. It is on the level where microsoft gave up..
    - pitkali 2y ago
      I mean, in the world where chromium exists, maintaining your own entirely independent codebase of a full web browser does not make business sense. It's better and easier to reuse what you can and build on top of that.
      - eru 2y ago
        Yes, and it's open source. So Microsoft can fork it, if they think Google is pulling a fast one.
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  I'm not claiming they are. But given their current market share and its trajectory, they're marching towards one. Furthermore, it's a clear mechanism for further monopolizing the search engine market (I'm more comfortable calling google a monopoly on this front). I'm a staunch capitalist and believe in the innovative power of competition, and monopolies ground that whole machine to a halt.
  - eru 2y ago
    Google is currently feeling the heat from people switching to the likes of ChatGPT for what they would have previously used Google Search for. In any case, it's really easy to use alternative search engines, if you don't like what Google offers. They are dominant, because people are happy enough with what they are getting.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  The Web is basically ChromeOS nowadays, if we ignore iDevice for a moment.
  - eru 2y ago
    Firefox works just fine for me.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Try to go here then, https://webgpu.github.io/webgpu-samples/ https://webgpu.github.io/webgpu-samples/ Or here, https://webusb.github.io/arduino/demos/rgb/ https://webusb.github.io/arduino/demos/rgb/ Or here, https://googlechromelabs.github.io/text-editor/ https://googlechromelabs.github.io/text-editor/
      - eru 2y ago
        I'm fairly sure there are also some websites that are Internet Explorer 6.0 only, but I don't have reason to go to them.
arlcode 2y ago
The EU uses better terms such as "dominant position" which deal with the fact that although a big vendor(s) can fully steer the market and has no meaningful competition while at the same time not "technically" being a monopoly / duopoly etc.
- moffkalast 2y ago
  coughs in Nvidia I should ask a doctor about that, it keeps happening.
  - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
    An incompetent company shouldn't be allowed to succeed through government pressure just because a competent company raced ahead. The direction of the tide has been obvious for 15-20 years and AMD fumbled it, they earned and deserve where they now sit.
    - mainde 2y ago
      I'm of the opinion that NVIDIA raced ahead thanks also to shady anti-consumer tactics (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/03/08/report-alleges-new-nvidia-program-engages-in-monopolistic-anti-consumer-practices/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/03/08/repor... https://youtu.be/H0L3OTZ13Os https://youtu.be/H0L3OTZ13Os) so..
      - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
        Find it strange to focus on what that article says when 10 years ago we were using CUDA in a professional context for real world work and AMD didn't have anything competitive at all in the field till very recently. If the tech was comparable maybe we could entertain the idea but Nvidia was just so absurdly ahead in tooling than AMD that the better dev team won.
        mainde 2y ago
MichaelCharles 2y ago
Monopolies are bad. Splitting up monopolies is good for the consumer. That doesn't mean this makes any sense. How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive codebase? What profit incentive is there in maintaining Chrome without Google's ad business? What about ChromeOS? How are they going to handle the extensions store and ecosystem? How is this going to impact web standards? There's just a lot of significant unknowns surrounding this.
- dijit 2y ago
  in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet No wonder nobody can compete, loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all. The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun. There are no browsers left except the artificial ecosystem of Safari. Firefox is not a blip on the radar. So, everything is chrome and chrome is the web standard. Having a single private company in charge of what is and what is not web standards is a little bit scary, as, like the cat, they don’t really need to see and serve the needs of the environment. They are fed at home.
  - graycat 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - zelphirkalt 2y ago
      > A Web browser is on the way to being similar, just a standard tool? I hope not, because then we get no choices regarding privacy and the most likely dominant player right now cares very much to not give you any privacy.
dataflow 2y ago
> I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers. Bad for consumers, how? Financially? How does that translate to the current situation? The average "consumer" here is paying $0.00 for Google, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Flights, Docs, Sheets, Chat, Meet, Books, Scholar, Shopping, YouTube, News, Groups, Voice... how are you going to argue that this "monopoly" (?) is bad for consumers? Do you imagine Microsoft or Apple would've created better search, email, news, etc., or that the mom & pop shop down the store would've done that? I can think of so many other arguments you could use to suggest the current situation is bad, but monopolies are bad for consumers seems like a really tough argument to apply here. Edit: You need to argue more than "the current situation is bad". Because that in itself does not imply "removing the 'monopoly' would necessarily lead to the better outcome in my imagination." Exhibit A is all the behemoths trying to compete against Google and still offering objectively worse products.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  The most obvious example is malvertising. Chrome is pushing ManifestV3 with extreme prejudice and Youtube pushes ever more malvertising by the day. Why can Google do this? Because there is no competition.
  - dataflow 2y ago
    > The most obvious example is malvertising. Chrome is pushing ManifestV3 with extreme prejudice and Youtube pushes ever more malvertising by the day. Why can Google do this? Because there is no competition. Malvertising? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising Also, have you missed how terrible e.g. Edge is for user privacy? It's trying hard as heck to compete, and even playing dirty to get there. What happened to competition making things better?
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      >Malvertising? Yes, malvertising. There is no such thing as non-malicious advertising in this day and age. >Also, have you missed how terrible e.g. Edge is for user privacy? I mean, Edge is Chrome. The only saving grace is that it all goes to Microsoft instead of Google, which probably isn't as damaging because if you're using Edge you're probably using Windows already anyway.
pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
This very site is an advertising arm of a venture capital fund. What did you expect? That capitalists condemn capitalism?
lucideer 2y ago
Seeing for years the views expressed here about Meta & TikTok, I think at least some of this must come down to a gap in understanding of web technologies. Meta & TikTok decidedly don't have monopolies, yet still come under fierce scrutiny for their pervasive handling of consumer behaviour & data. What seems to be less evident to people is that Google's monopolies give them far greater reach in these areas than either of the other two. The majority of that reach is entirely invisible to most: I think if this negative impact was more visible it might drive home the downside of these particular monopolies.
matwood 2y ago
Splitting off Chrome doesn't make any sense as a stand alone business. Anyone who could buy Chrome would immediately cause other anti-trust issues. This solution for Google is probably bad for consumers. What the DoJ should be pursuing is having Google divest YouTube. Now we're talking real change.
- forgotoldacc 2y ago
  And if they sold off Youtube, we'd have 500 comments saying, "This is a bad idea. They can't make a profit. They should divest from Chrome." Splitting Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc up all at once and into multiple separate pieces each would be great for consumers. But that's a huge undertaking, and the bigger the changes required, the less likely they are to happen. Taking it one step at a time, with the first step being Chrome and Google search (two products that strongly push users of one to use the other) being split up, is better than no progress at all. At the very least, the biggest force in killing adblockers (Google gradually gutting them in Chrome) will have fewer means to kill them in browsers. That's a win for consumers.
  - matwood 2y ago
    Not sell YT to another company, but split off likely in an IPO. The big difference is that YT is a stand alone business that could function on it's own.
    - sofixa 2y ago
      > The big difference is that YT is a stand alone business that could function on it's own. We (public) don't know that. Google never splits YouTube's costs out, only revenue, and the only reason I can think of is that it's losing money. IMO it's highly likely that YouTube costs a lot to run (just imagine the costs of storing zettabytes of videos, 99.9% of which will get watched less than 10 times ever, in 4K, and be ready to quickly stream them anywhere in the world) and Google lose money on it, but compensate with user data they use for their wider ad business. People complain about YouTube ads today, and how expensive Premium is; maybe a future independent YouTube can cut costs, shed some old/unwatched content, and become profitable.
dtquad 2y ago
>monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers Why? "Big companies bad" are one of those fundamental truthiness we are all supposed to believe for some reason but as a European I wish we had more US/Chinese-style megacorps who have dominant positions in some fields that allows them to innovate or provide free/cost-cutting products in other niches. Maybe we should reconsider what we consider monopolies in the 21st century. I'm already using ChatGPT and Perplexity more than Google.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  It follows from a few premises. The point of creating/allowing private companies to compete in a market and profit from doing so is to encourage them to innovate via competitive pressure. If you just wanted to produce well-understood goods or infrastructure then the most efficient way to do that is to pool resources and have the State do it, because they don't need to make a profit and, if not totally dysfunctional, are accountable to the people. If you let private companies consolidate power and influence then they largely escape competitive pressure and can streamline operations to maximize profits. That is, they benefit from the same efficiency the State does, but capture more of the value and remain unaccountable to the people, existing only to enrich their owners.
  - yakcyll 2y ago
    Many thanks for this level-headed response, I'll save that if you don't mind.
  - ropejumper 2y ago
    Yep. The issue with megacorps (and more generally monopolies) is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. You want capitalism but you also want to be the only one on the market. Pick a side.
    - antonvs 2y ago
      They do pick a side: success at capitalism implies outcompeting your peers. Without regulation, there will be winners, and they will tend to be monopolies. Marx pointed this out in his book “Capital” (Das Kapital) in the late 1800s. Capitalism without regulation can’t reach a stable equilibrium.
Ekaros 2y ago
Splitting monopolies is good. On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.
- m463 2y ago
  What if this browser killed lots of other viable browsers because it was "free" (yet supported by and supporting a monopoly)? You never get to compare the products that never got to exist. related, I think google supported firefox to have a "viable" competitor to chrome and prevent monopoly scrutiny.
  - eterevsky 2y ago
    It sounds like you want to artificially make the dominant product worse (i.e. non-free) just to make the life of competitors easier.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      And noting that Chrome doesn't have anything close to a monopoly - people can use any browser they like. Having >90% of the market doesn't make it a monopoly, it just makes it good. It is the last sort of product people should be attacking, Chrome is a free market success story and Google's strategy is an exemplar of good corporate citizenship.
      - croes 2y ago
        Didn’t Google change YouTube to hinder Edge? At first it was a free market success story, now it’s not
    - xdennis 2y ago
      Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing? That's what antitrust means. Chrome is free because it's unfairly subsidized by Google Search. Standard Oil was also cheaper because it was a monopoly.
bigs 2y ago
Google has a lot of employees and suppliers who have vested interest in their market dominance
TrackerFF 2y ago
There's a very vocal subset of people here that believe monopolistic entities arise due to how much better they are than their competition, and thus deserve to be monopolies. The very same users believe that such companies aren't "bad" yet, but in some kind of intermediate stage between successful startup and evil MEGAcorp. I don't know. I think it's the mix of nostalgia, and being too invested in their ecosystem/products. Fanboying, basically. When Microsoft did it 25 years ago, it was bad. When Google does it now, it's not bad.
- nfw2 2y ago
  The vast majority of people just like their free stuff and don't go on hacker news to discuss it
afh1 2y ago
There is no monopoly. There are a lot of other browsers. A lot of people use them. Most people use one of them. They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good. But no. There is a monopoly. It is bad for you. Only we the State can save you from it. A lie repeated a thousand times becomes truth.
- wiz21c 2y ago
  No, most user don't choose. Android doesn't provide a menaingful way to choose to the users, it pushes you to choose Google. That's a big difference. It would be a choice if, when you start android for the first time, it asks you which browser you want to use, in a list where all browsers are shown equal; not "hey you'll use chrome and you can change later any time you want". Ideally, it would provide an explnanation of each browser. That would be a better way to propose a choice. Would it make users smarter about their choice ? Probably not. But at least, they could smell there is an actual choice. Monopolies tends to maintain users in ignorance. This way, although they can look elsewhere, they won't feel the urge to do so. Users must be helped to make their own choice, not guided to make the monopoly's choice. And that must be done before the choice is made. As long as there will be monoplies, this tension will exist and people like me will continue to explain that the State is the best way to push the balance in favor of those who don't get the importance of the choice. The problem is not that there is a dominant player. The problem is the dominant player uses ignorance and subtle strategies to make sure users saty with it.
- hk__2 2y ago
  > There is no monopoly. There are a lot of other browsers. A lot of people use them. There is market dominance: Chrome has 65%, Safari has 18% but that’s because of iOS, and the few others have the rest. It’s false to say there are "a lot" of other browsers when nobody can enter the space anymore. > They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good. Most people don’t choose their browser, they just take whatever comes preinstalled. Even then, Google pushes you to use their browser every time you use their services: I know a lot of non-tech people who use Chrome on iOS not because they chose to, but because they got a pop-in on Google that told them to do so. > It is bad for you. The current situation is indeed bad for the consumer, even if it’s not a monopoly per se.
huijzer 2y ago
It's a balance. If you would dissolve anything that slightly looks like a monopoly, then there would be lower incentive for innovation. Even though there are many things wrong with venture capital, they do occasionally produce useful companies. Also let's not forget that Bell Labs was sponsored by a monopoly too. So I'm not saying monopolies are great. I'm saying that it's important to find a balance.
- solidninja 2y ago
  It's a balance but IMO there should be no realistic concept of "winning the market". If it gets to that point then sure the company is probably making a lot of money but they also have the power to squeeze as much as they can. The irony of posting this on a forum originating from VC culture does not escape me.
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
I'm not surprised at all, because I've used AirPods and AirDrop on an iPhone and MacBook. You have to have a much deeper understanding of tech to understand why they're bad, yet the examples of why they're good are obvious when a consumer stays within one ecosystem.
charlieyu1 2y ago
Splitting up is good except when it is bad. In UK you have to subscribe to so many channels just to watch football. Because apparently this would stop monopolies.
amusingimpala75 2y ago
Monopolies are not inherently bad. They are only bad when they abuse that position to retain a monopoly or allow a decline in product quality.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nfw2 2y ago
oh no, please don't give me any more free stuff, Google!

eru 2y ago

How is Chrome or Google a monopoly?

rvense 2y ago
Monopoly is probably not the right word. "Trust" (as in "anti-trust") is maybe better, but I'm not sure the last gilded age really had a perfect analogy to what's been happening in the tech services sector. The problem is these sprawling companies who make so many interrelated services and can suppress competition in one area (browsers, e-mail, video-over-the-internet) due to extreme profits in another area (ads).
nicoloren 2y ago
I think we can think in terms of market share. Google (the search engine) has a market share of over 85% worldwide. [0] Google therefore controls what can be found on the Internet for 85% of search engine users. Recent updates, or Core Updates, have demonstrated how easy it is for Google to put businesses out of business by removing their visibility. [1] It seems to me that this is a problem. Ditto for Chrome, which has +60% market share [2]. A failed or deliberate update could make a website inaccessible to 60% of the population. [0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [1] https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
- eru 2y ago
  60% market share is big, but it's not a monopoly. Even 85% ain't.
  - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
    Don't get so hung up on semantics. Quote: The Supreme Court has defined (...) monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition". [https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2 https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...]
    - eru 2y ago
      They don't exclude any competition, and, well, browsers and web searches are free.
      - nfw2 2y ago
        to be fair, free is a price, and one that is very hard to compete with, at that
        eru 2y ago
        Sure, but it's hard to argue that customers are overcharged by the alleged monopoly.
- graycat 2y ago
  > update could make a website inaccessible There are billions of Web browser users and, from a fast Google search, 1.1 billion Web sites, still a large number if count only the ones that still have traffic. So, billions of listeners and many millions of talkers. Without good, stable, universal standards, we'd have the biggest "Tower of Babel" problem in history. Hypothetical examples: (1) Maybe Company A wants to change the standards so that Web sites will have to revise their code. Hmm!!! Many millions of Web site owners will say "no way". Company A just left the party. (2) Web site B wants to change their Web site so that only certain Web browsers will be able to use that site. Hmm!!! Site B won't get much traffic. Even if that site is Google -- people will use Bing, etc. (3) Maybe Google announces that as of July 1, 2025 the Google search engine Web site will work only with Google's latest Chrome Web browser. Hmm .... There are billions of people who will want a search engine that works with the old, standard Web browser they already have -- "billions of people"!! Sounds like, with Bing, Microsoft's stock just doubled! And July Google's searches per day fell by 50+%. E.g., I still like Windows 7 Professional. Occasionally I run Microsoft's Web browser Edge, and when I do there is a message that Windows 7 won't get updates for Edge and I should convert to Windows 10/11. I don't really want an update to Edge -- what I have does work; I don't like it; occasionally I use it to check some issues. Hmm!!!! Microsoft, one of your most important business assets is that old applications will still run on the latest versions of Windows. So, I run Kedit, Object Rexx, Firefox, VLC media player, PhotoDraw, Media Player, PhotoViewer, Sketchup, Office 20??, IBM's OSL (Optimization Subroutine Library and a certain Watcom Fortran compiler), LINPACK, etc., .NET 3??, and I do not want to lose use of any of those old programs. (4) Some company tries to have all the Internet ads flowing through their software, servers, etc. Hmm!! Sites have a file ads.txt that usually shows one heck of a long list of Internet ad brokers. Not easy for one company to dominate the ad market or even just the Web site ad market.
pandem 2y ago
I would expect the monopoly referred here to be the government.
Dalewyn 2y ago
Allow me to break this down: * Google effectively holds a monopoly of the browser market (Chrome). Apple (Safari) only exists because of vendor lock-in, and Mozilla (Firefox) is a vassal state; all "other" browsers are Chrome. * Google shares a duopoly of the mobile OS market with Apple (Android vs. iOS). * Google holds a monopoly of the video streaming market (Youtube). * Google holds a monopoly of the malvertising market (Adsense, Doubleclick, et al.). * Google effectively holds a monopoly of the web search market (Google Search). * Google holds the vast majority of the email market (Gmail). * Google is the absolutely dominant player in the consumer cloud market (Google Drive). * Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the cloud photo market (Google Photos vs. iCloud Photos). * Google shares a duopoly with Microsoft in the consumer office software market (Google Docs vs. Office 365). * Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the digital wallet market (Google Pay/Wallet vs. Apple Pay). I can go on, but with this being said let me ask you: Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday?
- portaouflop 2y ago
  Why not split Microsoft and Apple as well while we are at it? A bit unrelated but News Corp and Random House should also end up on the chopping block.
  - rvense 2y ago
    > Why not split Microsoft and Apple as well while we are at it? Indeed, why not?
    - izacus 2y ago
      Because they're better at bribing the government obviously. Duh.
  - jdub 2y ago
    Now you're getting it!
- eru 2y ago
  Thanks. The summary seems to be: Google is a big player in many markets, but not a monopoly. You mentioned some as 'monopolies'. Let's go through them: Browsers: as far as I can tell, the other browsers that 'are Chrome' are Chromium at most. Eg Microsoft is surely capable of forking Chromium, if Google does anything untoward. Video streaming: I hear TikTok and Instagram and Netflix etc are popular for streaming videos, too? People also seem to be getting a lot of videos via telegram channels? (I don't know the exact numbers here. So I can't say anything definite.) Web search: Google used to be really dominant, but they are arguably on a downward trend without any government interference: more and more people are using the likes of ChatGPT to fill the same niche in their lives. > Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday? Presumably because there's a presumption of non-interference in the markets? The same reason the government doesn't just lock you and me up for no good reason, or confiscates our property.
junon 2y ago
Not sure if this is an innocent comment or not but I'll answer earnestly. They're not, technically. They're hegemons, which doesn't make them much better. In fact, I'd argue the situation is worse. Chrome predominantly owns the web at this point. There are few contenders, and making a new browser is a lot of work (see the Verso browser). Google has the arguably unearned luxury of dictating what APIs and protocols the nebulous "web" should use, can throw a bunch of money at adding them quickly, and leave competitors struggling to keep up, effectively buying chrome's guaranteed superiority. "But there are standards committees!" Yes, but it really doesn't matter when Chrome either uses its own APIs privately on its sites[0] or just adds new APIs without any committee consideration for people to use and fall in love with and demand that other vendors add them (or something similar, such as proposing a great idea at the committee, it's accepted, and the other vendors lagging for months or even years - see WebGPU as an example). One might think "it's just a browser". Yes, but browsers are -for better or for worse - the global defacto for sending and receiving almost all of our sensitive data. Even "desktop apps" like Whatsapp, Signal, and Bitwarden all either use or have used Chromium to display their contents (via Electron). Much of the community has asserted Google owns the web at this point, and I tend to agree. It's very, very hard for smaller vendors to have much of a day these days without Google getting theirs, too. [0] https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018 https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018
- fifticon 2y ago
  It is not just 'a lot of work'. It is on the level where microsoft gave up..
  - pitkali 2y ago
    I mean, in the world where chromium exists, maintaining your own entirely independent codebase of a full web browser does not make business sense. It's better and easier to reuse what you can and build on top of that.
    - eru 2y ago
      Yes, and it's open source. So Microsoft can fork it, if they think Google is pulling a fast one.
wesselbindt 2y ago
I'm not claiming they are. But given their current market share and its trajectory, they're marching towards one. Furthermore, it's a clear mechanism for further monopolizing the search engine market (I'm more comfortable calling google a monopoly on this front). I'm a staunch capitalist and believe in the innovative power of competition, and monopolies ground that whole machine to a halt.
- eru 2y ago
  Google is currently feeling the heat from people switching to the likes of ChatGPT for what they would have previously used Google Search for. In any case, it's really easy to use alternative search engines, if you don't like what Google offers. They are dominant, because people are happy enough with what they are getting.
pjmlp 2y ago
The Web is basically ChromeOS nowadays, if we ignore iDevice for a moment.
- eru 2y ago
  Firefox works just fine for me.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Try to go here then, https://webgpu.github.io/webgpu-samples/ https://webgpu.github.io/webgpu-samples/ Or here, https://webusb.github.io/arduino/demos/rgb/ https://webusb.github.io/arduino/demos/rgb/ Or here, https://googlechromelabs.github.io/text-editor/ https://googlechromelabs.github.io/text-editor/
    - eru 2y ago
      I'm fairly sure there are also some websites that are Internet Explorer 6.0 only, but I don't have reason to go to them.

arlcode 2y ago

The EU uses better terms such as "dominant position" which deal with the fact that although a big vendor(s) can fully steer the market and has no meaningful competition while at the same time not "technically" being a monopoly / duopoly etc.

moffkalast 2y ago
coughs in Nvidia I should ask a doctor about that, it keeps happening.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  An incompetent company shouldn't be allowed to succeed through government pressure just because a competent company raced ahead. The direction of the tide has been obvious for 15-20 years and AMD fumbled it, they earned and deserve where they now sit.
  - mainde 2y ago
    I'm of the opinion that NVIDIA raced ahead thanks also to shady anti-consumer tactics (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/03/08/report-alleges-new-nvidia-program-engages-in-monopolistic-anti-consumer-practices/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/03/08/repor... https://youtu.be/H0L3OTZ13Os https://youtu.be/H0L3OTZ13Os) so..
    - whywhywhywhy 2y ago
      Find it strange to focus on what that article says when 10 years ago we were using CUDA in a professional context for real world work and AMD didn't have anything competitive at all in the field till very recently. If the tech was comparable maybe we could entertain the idea but Nvidia was just so absurdly ahead in tooling than AMD that the better dev team won.
      - mainde 2y ago

MichaelCharles 2y ago

Monopolies are bad. Splitting up monopolies is good for the consumer. That doesn't mean this makes any sense. How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive codebase? What profit incentive is there in maintaining Chrome without Google's ad business? What about ChromeOS? How are they going to handle the extensions store and ecosystem? How is this going to impact web standards? There's just a lot of significant unknowns surrounding this.

dijit 2y ago
in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet No wonder nobody can compete, loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all. The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun. There are no browsers left except the artificial ecosystem of Safari. Firefox is not a blip on the radar. So, everything is chrome and chrome is the web standard. Having a single private company in charge of what is and what is not web standards is a little bit scary, as, like the cat, they don’t really need to see and serve the needs of the environment. They are fed at home.
- graycat 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    > A Web browser is on the way to being similar, just a standard tool? I hope not, because then we get no choices regarding privacy and the most likely dominant player right now cares very much to not give you any privacy.

dataflow 2y ago

> I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers. Bad for consumers, how? Financially? How does that translate to the current situation? The average "consumer" here is paying $0.00 for Google, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Flights, Docs, Sheets, Chat, Meet, Books, Scholar, Shopping, YouTube, News, Groups, Voice... how are you going to argue that this "monopoly" (?) is bad for consumers? Do you imagine Microsoft or Apple would've created better search, email, news, etc., or that the mom & pop shop down the store would've done that? I can think of so many other arguments you could use to suggest the current situation is bad, but monopolies are bad for consumers seems like a really tough argument to apply here. Edit: You need to argue more than "the current situation is bad". Because that in itself does not imply "removing the 'monopoly' would necessarily lead to the better outcome in my imagination." Exhibit A is all the behemoths trying to compete against Google and still offering objectively worse products.

Dalewyn 2y ago
The most obvious example is malvertising. Chrome is pushing ManifestV3 with extreme prejudice and Youtube pushes ever more malvertising by the day. Why can Google do this? Because there is no competition.
- dataflow 2y ago
  > The most obvious example is malvertising. Chrome is pushing ManifestV3 with extreme prejudice and Youtube pushes ever more malvertising by the day. Why can Google do this? Because there is no competition. Malvertising? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising Also, have you missed how terrible e.g. Edge is for user privacy? It's trying hard as heck to compete, and even playing dirty to get there. What happened to competition making things better?
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    >Malvertising? Yes, malvertising. There is no such thing as non-malicious advertising in this day and age. >Also, have you missed how terrible e.g. Edge is for user privacy? I mean, Edge is Chrome. The only saving grace is that it all goes to Microsoft instead of Google, which probably isn't as damaging because if you're using Edge you're probably using Windows already anyway.

pwdisswordfishz 2y ago

This very site is an advertising arm of a venture capital fund. What did you expect? That capitalists condemn capitalism?

lucideer 2y ago

Seeing for years the views expressed here about Meta & TikTok, I think at least some of this must come down to a gap in understanding of web technologies. Meta & TikTok decidedly don't have monopolies, yet still come under fierce scrutiny for their pervasive handling of consumer behaviour & data. What seems to be less evident to people is that Google's monopolies give them far greater reach in these areas than either of the other two. The majority of that reach is entirely invisible to most: I think if this negative impact was more visible it might drive home the downside of these particular monopolies.

matwood 2y ago

Splitting off Chrome doesn't make any sense as a stand alone business. Anyone who could buy Chrome would immediately cause other anti-trust issues. This solution for Google is probably bad for consumers. What the DoJ should be pursuing is having Google divest YouTube. Now we're talking real change.

forgotoldacc 2y ago
And if they sold off Youtube, we'd have 500 comments saying, "This is a bad idea. They can't make a profit. They should divest from Chrome." Splitting Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc up all at once and into multiple separate pieces each would be great for consumers. But that's a huge undertaking, and the bigger the changes required, the less likely they are to happen. Taking it one step at a time, with the first step being Chrome and Google search (two products that strongly push users of one to use the other) being split up, is better than no progress at all. At the very least, the biggest force in killing adblockers (Google gradually gutting them in Chrome) will have fewer means to kill them in browsers. That's a win for consumers.
- matwood 2y ago
  Not sell YT to another company, but split off likely in an IPO. The big difference is that YT is a stand alone business that could function on it's own.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    > The big difference is that YT is a stand alone business that could function on it's own. We (public) don't know that. Google never splits YouTube's costs out, only revenue, and the only reason I can think of is that it's losing money. IMO it's highly likely that YouTube costs a lot to run (just imagine the costs of storing zettabytes of videos, 99.9% of which will get watched less than 10 times ever, in 4K, and be ready to quickly stream them anywhere in the world) and Google lose money on it, but compensate with user data they use for their wider ad business. People complain about YouTube ads today, and how expensive Premium is; maybe a future independent YouTube can cut costs, shed some old/unwatched content, and become profitable.

dtquad 2y ago

>monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers Why? "Big companies bad" are one of those fundamental truthiness we are all supposed to believe for some reason but as a European I wish we had more US/Chinese-style megacorps who have dominant positions in some fields that allows them to innovate or provide free/cost-cutting products in other niches. Maybe we should reconsider what we consider monopolies in the 21st century. I'm already using ChatGPT and Perplexity more than Google.

idle_zealot 2y ago
It follows from a few premises. The point of creating/allowing private companies to compete in a market and profit from doing so is to encourage them to innovate via competitive pressure. If you just wanted to produce well-understood goods or infrastructure then the most efficient way to do that is to pool resources and have the State do it, because they don't need to make a profit and, if not totally dysfunctional, are accountable to the people. If you let private companies consolidate power and influence then they largely escape competitive pressure and can streamline operations to maximize profits. That is, they benefit from the same efficiency the State does, but capture more of the value and remain unaccountable to the people, existing only to enrich their owners.
- yakcyll 2y ago
  Many thanks for this level-headed response, I'll save that if you don't mind.
- ropejumper 2y ago
  Yep. The issue with megacorps (and more generally monopolies) is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. You want capitalism but you also want to be the only one on the market. Pick a side.
  - antonvs 2y ago
    They do pick a side: success at capitalism implies outcompeting your peers. Without regulation, there will be winners, and they will tend to be monopolies. Marx pointed this out in his book “Capital” (Das Kapital) in the late 1800s. Capitalism without regulation can’t reach a stable equilibrium.

Ekaros 2y ago

Splitting monopolies is good. On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.

m463 2y ago
What if this browser killed lots of other viable browsers because it was "free" (yet supported by and supporting a monopoly)? You never get to compare the products that never got to exist. related, I think google supported firefox to have a "viable" competitor to chrome and prevent monopoly scrutiny.
- eterevsky 2y ago
  It sounds like you want to artificially make the dominant product worse (i.e. non-free) just to make the life of competitors easier.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    And noting that Chrome doesn't have anything close to a monopoly - people can use any browser they like. Having >90% of the market doesn't make it a monopoly, it just makes it good. It is the last sort of product people should be attacking, Chrome is a free market success story and Google's strategy is an exemplar of good corporate citizenship.
    - croes 2y ago
      Didn’t Google change YouTube to hinder Edge? At first it was a free market success story, now it’s not
  - xdennis 2y ago
    Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing? That's what antitrust means. Chrome is free because it's unfairly subsidized by Google Search. Standard Oil was also cheaper because it was a monopoly.

bigs 2y ago

Google has a lot of employees and suppliers who have vested interest in their market dominance

TrackerFF 2y ago

There's a very vocal subset of people here that believe monopolistic entities arise due to how much better they are than their competition, and thus deserve to be monopolies. The very same users believe that such companies aren't "bad" yet, but in some kind of intermediate stage between successful startup and evil MEGAcorp. I don't know. I think it's the mix of nostalgia, and being too invested in their ecosystem/products. Fanboying, basically. When Microsoft did it 25 years ago, it was bad. When Google does it now, it's not bad.

nfw2 2y ago
The vast majority of people just like their free stuff and don't go on hacker news to discuss it

afh1 2y ago

There is no monopoly. There are a lot of other browsers. A lot of people use them. Most people use one of them. They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good. But no. There is a monopoly. It is bad for you. Only we the State can save you from it. A lie repeated a thousand times becomes truth.

wiz21c 2y ago
No, most user don't choose. Android doesn't provide a menaingful way to choose to the users, it pushes you to choose Google. That's a big difference. It would be a choice if, when you start android for the first time, it asks you which browser you want to use, in a list where all browsers are shown equal; not "hey you'll use chrome and you can change later any time you want". Ideally, it would provide an explnanation of each browser. That would be a better way to propose a choice. Would it make users smarter about their choice ? Probably not. But at least, they could smell there is an actual choice. Monopolies tends to maintain users in ignorance. This way, although they can look elsewhere, they won't feel the urge to do so. Users must be helped to make their own choice, not guided to make the monopoly's choice. And that must be done before the choice is made. As long as there will be monoplies, this tension will exist and people like me will continue to explain that the State is the best way to push the balance in favor of those who don't get the importance of the choice. The problem is not that there is a dominant player. The problem is the dominant player uses ignorance and subtle strategies to make sure users saty with it.
hk__2 2y ago
> There is no monopoly. There are a lot of other browsers. A lot of people use them. There is market dominance: Chrome has 65%, Safari has 18% but that’s because of iOS, and the few others have the rest. It’s false to say there are "a lot" of other browsers when nobody can enter the space anymore. > They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good. Most people don’t choose their browser, they just take whatever comes preinstalled. Even then, Google pushes you to use their browser every time you use their services: I know a lot of non-tech people who use Chrome on iOS not because they chose to, but because they got a pop-in on Google that told them to do so. > It is bad for you. The current situation is indeed bad for the consumer, even if it’s not a monopoly per se.

huijzer 2y ago

It's a balance. If you would dissolve anything that slightly looks like a monopoly, then there would be lower incentive for innovation. Even though there are many things wrong with venture capital, they do occasionally produce useful companies. Also let's not forget that Bell Labs was sponsored by a monopoly too. So I'm not saying monopolies are great. I'm saying that it's important to find a balance.

solidninja 2y ago
It's a balance but IMO there should be no realistic concept of "winning the market". If it gets to that point then sure the company is probably making a lot of money but they also have the power to squeeze as much as they can. The irony of posting this on a forum originating from VC culture does not escape me.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

I'm not surprised at all, because I've used AirPods and AirDrop on an iPhone and MacBook. You have to have a much deeper understanding of tech to understand why they're bad, yet the examples of why they're good are obvious when a consumer stays within one ecosystem.

charlieyu1 2y ago

Splitting up is good except when it is bad. In UK you have to subscribe to so many channels just to watch football. Because apparently this would stop monopolies.

amusingimpala75 2y ago

Monopolies are not inherently bad. They are only bad when they abuse that position to retain a monopoly or allow a decline in product quality.

deleted 2y ago

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nfw2 2y ago

oh no, please don't give me any more free stuff, Google!