So as I understand it, Google’s using it’s monopoly market position to force web “standards” unilaterally (without an independent/conglomerate web specification standards where Google is only one of many voices) that will disadvantage its competitors and force people to leave its competitors.
I’m not a lawyer, and I’m a fledgling tech guy, but this sounds like abuse of a monopoly. Google which serves 75% of the world’s ads and has 75% of the browser market share seems to want to use its market power to annihilate people’s privacy and control over their web experience.
So we can file a complaint with FTC led by Lina Khan who has been the biggest warrior against abuse by big tech in the US.
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation
We can also file a complaint with the DOJ:
https://www.justice.gov/atr/citizen-complaint-center
And there have to be EU, UK, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese organizations that we can file antitrust complaints to.
I’m not sure that can really be considered antitrust even though it is an issue. Even if Chrome adds new features for themselves, the specs are open and there’s nothing preventing competitors from implementing them, unlike IE back in the days with ActivX applets and all the proprietary undocumented Windows-only features. Those were intentionally designed to be proprietary and hard to match by competitors. Many Chromium derivatives will also keep manifest v2 alive as well.
It would be antitrust if they made sure that you have to use Chrome for sites to work, like many sites would only work on IE back then and not even IE-compatible implementations. Google’s been pretty reasonable implementing fallbacks for their own services, everything Google works just fine on Firefox. Sometimes not optimally, but they do make an effort to at least keep it fairly compatible and they don’t do user agent tests, they do feature tests so competing browsers are never outright excluded. And nothing stopping developers from making sure everything works fine on Firefox for their own website.
And unlike IE, Chromium is open-source. Competitors can easily take Chromium and change it to their liking like Microsoft did with Edge. The engine has market share dominance sure, but there’s no locking down forcing you to use Google Chrome specifically. You can use Brave, Edge, Bromite, Opera and any other Chromium forks if you want and give nothing to Google.
Otherwise Windows is a much worse antitrust violation purely for being the most popular OS and therefore people write software mostly for Windows. Some would argue it should, and I would agree, but again there’s nobody forcing you to make your software Windows-exclusive other than laziness.
ManifestV3 is unpopular and probably evil, but I agree that is not Antitrust. It’s simply modifying their own product to maximize profit of another product. It is very easy for consumers to switch to a competitor (Safari/Firefox) if they don’t like it.
It would be antitrust if they made sure that you have to use Chrome for sites to work
I think the new Web Environment Integrity (WEI) proposal gets much closer to Antitrust behavior. From what I’ve seen, it could make it very easy for sites to refuse traffic from non-trusted applications, and who decides who is trusted or not is still under development.
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So we should probably get started sooner than later. Especially while we have folks like Lina Khan in office.
Even if alternatives die though, we could force google to sell off portions of itself to up and coming orgs/options like they did with AT&T. Or put in privacy protections that will allow alternatives to begin again and grow.
I don’t understand the ins and outs of it all but we can’t let fear of it taking too long or alternatives dying stop us from fighting monopolies and privacy protections.
P.S. If any lawyers and people really knowledgeable about web technologies and standards here on Lemmy can get together and help us draft something together that we can all send in, that would be amazing.
P.P.S. If we can’t find a Lemmy lawyer, I’m proposing we take this to the EFF and Louis Rossmann (who has experience lobbying for right to repair and trying to get legislation passed) for their help.
Everyone should go over to Firefox as well as advocate against this.
This is what I did when this story came out. In used different browsers in different places, but I switched to Firefox anywhere that’s windows or Linux.
You’re right - this is very reminiscent of the Microsoft Antitrust suit of 1998. Technically, per that ruling, Google could be subject to an AT&T style breakup. However, it’s pertinent to note that on appeal, the Justice Department chose to settle with Microsoft on the issue of splitting the company rather than go back to trial.
Clearly, in the real world, the ruling didn’t stick, as today Microsoft, Apple, and Google all package their browsers on their operating systems. As such, I don’t think it likely that enforcing an API standard would exceed the current antitrust abuses that we’ve come to accept as a fact of daily life, and highly unlikely to attract a serious case from the Justice Department.
That being said, I fully support your effort - we’ve needed stronger antitrust enforcement for a long time, and AT&T shouldn’t have been the high watermark of the Justice Department’s efforts in this arena.
The FTC couldn’t stop the Microsoft Activision acquisition, the largest tech acquisition in history, even though it was blatantly anticompetitive, and even though the FTC chair and the judge were both Biden appointees (although the judge was both incompetent and potentially biased towards Microsoft, but still)
My point being, what are the chances they’ll be able to stop something like this? Antitrust enforcement is dead in this country. The megacorps won.
I am so disappointed. With that attitude, we can’t accomplish anything. With that attitude, our ancestors would have accomplished nothing
Yeah, Lina Khan lost that fight. But he’s not the only judge out there. And the United States isn’t the only country Google and Chrome are responsible to.
Didn’t the UK block the acquisition?
Their entire argument was about cloud gaming’s future and no one gives a shit about cloud gaming.
Maybe they should have gone after mergers/buyouts that matter more, rather than trying to stop sony’s feelings from getting hurt?
How was the Microsoft Activision thing “blatantly anticompetitive”? Neither Microsoft nor Activision are even remotely close to holding any monopoly, neither combined nor on their own.
For eu users : https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust/procedures/complaints_en
However not sure how it works, if you need to be directly affected as a company of user, or if you need to be a citizen to file a complaint.
I don’t have the necessary detail and information to be able to file the complaint.
If you give the detail on how it works and why it affects competition I may be able to file a complaint.
Howerver from what I saw in news the EU and US are already collaborating in an investigation against Google. Not sure if it’s true, current and on what exactly.
They hate the idea of a free and open web.
hah, this person thinks antitrust legislation is actually enforced
the EU actually does quite often, not that Americans would notice much of it. EU courts are the reason why Microsoft need to offer multiple browsers on install and why the N category of windows existed
They also where the first to approve the Microsoft/Activision merge tho so it’s better than in America but often very hit or miss too! :/
Not exactly the same situation, Sony is the market leader here and the FTC was only able to show that the merger may harm Sony, not customers. The EU got many remedies for the Activision and Microsoft merger that doesn’t exist today like Activision games on more platforms which will be beneficial to consumers.
True, that was a bad example but it really is more hit or miss than proper enforcment a lot of the time.
Microsoft/Activision merger doesn’t pose any threat. Sony is the market leader in console gaming and Steam is the leading platform in PC gaming. Activision is also on its last breath and if it wasn’t for Microsoft, someone else would buy it a couple of years later. There are literally no reasons to block this merger.
The only reason US is against is because sweet Sony money.
True, that was a bad example but it really is more hit or miss than proper enforcment a lot of the time.
antitrust legislation is actually enforced
One could look at DoJ v Microsoft and how little was done despite it being SO bad that the DoJ actually sued the first technical company since AT&T for antitrust.
But that’s more a factor of inspections and investigations, and in a small-government setup there’s just no people for that. Sorry.
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Yes, the two options: rely on the committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie to stop the capitalist exploitation, or roll over and die.
Sure, but you still need judges who will actually do something and a DOJ who actually goes after these people
Louis Rossman did a video recently and I completely agree with him. He said that regulars/normies especially 9-5s won’t use Firefox as long the changes dont affect them personally.
TLDR,: We’re fucked
Firefox gets most of it’s funding from Google. Mozilla is playing politics, which is self-defeating. Louis is becoming the next Alex Jones. When it comes to tech; FOSS can typically run years behind, especially for large, complicated programs like web browsers. The search engine revenue is what’s keeping them afloat. Our primary goal should be to get people off the Google search engine, which is the moneymaker. It would be nice to have an ad blocker that only blocked Google Ads too.
You can’t have antitrust and capitalism, they are fundamentally opposites. And only one has actual enforceable power.
I never left Firefox, and I will never understand, why people were so quick to adopt Chrome which was Google controlled from the start. Google was already an obvious problem at the time (2008).
Google never had an interest in building the best browser for users. They are not a browser company, they are an advertiser. What they wanted is the best browser for Google, meaning the best browser for delivering advertising. They only made the best browser to attract users with no political foresight. That is becoming more and more obvious. Google has been trying to kill Firefox for a while, by making parts of their services not work quite as intended. While if you changed your user agent, it would work fine!
Another place here today, we can read how Google is trying to kill Jpeg XL or JXL, which is a superior graphics format to JPG PNG and GIF wrapped into 1. https://lemmy.world/post/2059816
Firefox really helped protect the Internet and Internet users from the shenanigans of Microsoft. It should come as no surprise, that Google wants to control the Internet, just as much as Microsoft did, from a pure business perspective, that’s an obvious move, and our best defense is still Mozilla and Firefox and lawmakers that aren’t corrupt. So don’t elect trump to get another Ajit Pai who has no bigger wish than to kill net neutrality.
This Manifest V3 business with Chrome is going to be the trigger for me to jump ship.
If we spin up the way back machine, Chrome became popular as a competitor to Internet Explorer. Even though IE had the vast majority of market share it was a truly awful product. It was slow, unreliable, and insecure. Chrome resolved those issues and it was the reason I went with it at the time. Basically I was just looking to dump IE.
At the time Firefox was clunky, unpopular, and did not have good compatibility across all sites. Now that Chrome is less desirable we’re left with Firefox as the best alternative. It’s come a long way since IE and Chrome went head to head. It’s a much better product now with a bigger user base.
Firefox has never been slow and clunky. If anything, that was Chrome because it runs so much fucking bloat to scrape your data.
I disagree. I remember Firefox since the days it was called Phoenix (I even remember its grandad - Netscape Navigator) and it ALWAYS was very slow and buggy. Until very recent times when they did a big rewrite.
At the time Firefox was clunky, unpopular, and did not have good compatibility across all sites
Firefox was an excellent, fast, highly compatible, alternative to Internet Explorer. It was already winning when Chrome came on the scene. However, Firefox actually got more clunky and slower over time, so Chrome was a breath of fresh air in comparison. People like me who used Firefox back from version 0.6 jumped to Chrome because it was doing what Firefox used to do. Chrome was a genuinely better product for a long time, but then like Firefox, it too got slower and more clunky. Meanwhile, Firefox saw what they were up against and went back to their roots. Firefox has gotten a lot better in the last couple years.
Google also significantly pushed Chrome adoption by encouraging people to download it in Google search and Gmail.
That’s probably true, but when I bailed on IE I tried both and Chrome was the better. I must have missed that early Firefox beats Chrome era. Even so I do remember having compatibility problems with Firefox on some sites and I simply couldn’t stand the settings interface. In any case the current awfulness of Chrome removes any question. Chrome is only going downhill and it will probably pick up the pace.
Firefox compatibility got worse as Chrome became more popular. There was a time when Firefox was the standard that everyone developed to. I’m talking like 2003-2004 period. Case in point, to this day Chrome identifies itself as Firefox to websites to get the “Firefox” version of a webpage as opposed to the Internet Explorer version.
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So a bit of speed short term, is enough to sacrifice your freedom long term?
Obviously I know it was faster, what I don’t get is that people had no principles, and was ready to give everything up to a company clearly trying to control the Internet.
And that was even so shortly after we had similar problems with Microsoft, that we have now with Google.
i’m not sure you quite remember the leap in performance that chrome was… it was night and day, and literally ushered in the era of performance being an actual concern for browsers
as much as i hate google, you’ve gotta credit them with starting that
and at the start, many (myself included) believed that googles motivation was to make the web fast to compete with native apps (they wanted the web platform to be what everyone used on their phones), because google can serve web ads across all platforms on the web, but native they mostly only control android
that still might have been the entirety of their original intent too! but now they have that dominance, they’re being evil with it
I could understand your argument if we’re talking about the choice today but don’t act like Google 15 years ago was the same as it is today. They are vastly different companies.
And people conveniently forget: The Mozilla Foundation is a warm and fuzzy non-profit. The Mozilla Corporation, where significant portions of the foundation’s money comes from, is a company that acquires other services (like Pocket) and mostly monetizes through search engine royalties and the like.
Yes, MzF has great foundational principles and MzC has yet to be demonstrably evil. But remember when one of Google’s core principles was “Don’t be evil”?
At the end of the day: We as people want there to be variety in browsers (unless you are a web developer at which point you want to shove a fork in my eye for even saying that). If everyone had just leapt to Firefox then, odds are, we would be in a similar mess right now with people smugly accusing everyone of “sacrific(ing) your freedom long term” for not siding with Google.
Firefox used to be very slow, very buggy and full of memory leaks.
I was a Firefox user until they started releasing major versions every few days which broke addons. Not sure how it is today but it was a hassle for a few weeks at least. I switched to chrome because it was the next best option back then.
Yes that was stupid, I don’t deny Chrome could easily be seen as the better browser in some respects.
But it was still pretty obvious that we were on our way to the exact same problems we had with Internet Explorer, and Microsofts attempt to control the Internet, through extensions only available on IE, that were necessary to use several Microsoft technologies, when Microsoft had a monopoly.
So would you say Firefox has settled down in the last years? I don’t like where chrome is going (not only privacy, the “dumbing down” sucks too) and tempted to switch back again. But it requires a bit of work
I’d say yes, there are still frequent upgrades, but IMO add-on breakage is not common anymore in my experience.
I have to admit though, that I’m not using nearly as many add-ons as I used to. uBlock Origin is my most important add-on, and Dark reader, and bypass paywall are also always on add-ons, and they have all worked flawlessly for years.
I’m on Manjaro Linux, so I get updates very frequently and early, although most are probably security updates. So I’m probably near max exposed to breakage, and haven’t had problems with it since years ago, when an add-on for splitting windows into panels broke after being unmaintained for quite a while.
Alternatively, you might want to try Chromium, which allegedly should be like Chrome but without the Google shenanigans.
Personally I prefer to not use that either, because it’s still heavily influenced by the development of Chrome, but I guess it’s better than Chrome from a freedom perspective.
why people were so quick to adopt Chrome which was Google controlled from the start.
Because for a long time Chrome was just much faster. It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that Firefox started becoming performant enough for me to use as a daily driver. Even then, there’s still issues with how slow it takes Mozilla to implement new web technologies like WebGPU, etc.
Yes because a bit faster short term, is worth sacrificing you freedom long term?
I will never get people like you.
Most people have no idea or don’t care at all about privacy on the internet. Google has a solid set of “free” services that work well and a good enough reputation to convince them.
Wow you got 2 downvotes for stating an absolutely true statement, that describes a HUGE problem.
For us to lose all our rights and freedoms, it only takes enough people not to care. And that’s the problem.
Google apps are a huge surveillance machine that absolutely threaten our freedom. Most people just don’t give a shit, because it’s convenient.
because a bit faster short term
Waaaaaaay more than “a bit”. Like “imperceptible render time” vs 2s for firefox. That adds up a lot.
is worth sacrificing you freedom long term?
What freedom did I lose? I used chromium mostly.
Firefox has performance now, where it did’t in the past. So I don’t use chrome now.
See, I use the best tool for the job I can find, and that changes over time. For a while the was Chrome.
What freedom did I lose?
It’s impossible to know which freedoms we have lost due to Chrome dominance. But from an ecosphere view point, you can see it very clearly on for instance iOS, where you can’t sideload apps, and Apple for years prevented subscriptions to papers if they had any kind of nakedness. We only register those limitations when compared to options that don’t have them.
On Gaming you have consoles, that are also somewhat closed ecospheres, where you cannot develop freely like on PC. Games that exist on both console and PC, often have way more options like downloadable mods often user generated. Those do not work on consoles, because the control from the owner of the platform has not allowed/facilitated it.
In the same way there are closed Google/Alphabet ecospheres like Android, Google search and YouTube, which together with Chrome browser dominance can be used to achieve competitive advantages that keep out competition.
The fact that they may not have succeeded, does not mean there was no danger. But there is evidence that they tried. For instance they tried to kill Firefox, by making services like Google maps not work 100% with Firefox. We now see Google has removed Jpeg XL support from Chrome. So your freedom to use that format has been taken away. They are preventing adblockers from working with a double sided strategy, on both Chrome AND Goggle services. So they are trying to take your freedom to use adblockers away too.
I bet there are 100s cases we don’t know about, because mostly such things are done stealthily, some times they may not even be on purpose, but more for practicality. But the end result remains the same. Creating a closed ecosphere with very dominant control by one player, is almost guaranteed to limit your options long term. And limiting options is equal to taking away a bit of freedom.
It’s easy to forget now, but IE was such absolute dogshit for years that literally anything else was better
Back in the day Firefox delivered the same look and feel with a better experience than IE did.
You have to realise that to most people, Google is not seen as a bad company - quite the opposite in fact. They have all these “free” products that do everything you need them to, so they’ve built-up a huge amount of trust with the general population.
Google is obviously trying to take over the web, but the regular person doesn’t see this as they don’t follow any of this news, nor do they actually care. Google has good, fast, free products, that’s all people care about.
You have to realise that to most people, Google is not seen as a bad company - quite the opposite in fact.
You are right, maybe I tend to forget that is not obvious to everybody. But it’s not like I believe Google is inherently bad or evil, they just have an enormous amount of power that I think very few people realize. Google search alone or YouTube alone can make or break companies, can shift elections, can shift popular opinion in general. That’s to much power IMO.
Power corrupts as we know, and although Google is not worse than most, they aren’t better either, and they are using their power in subtle ways, to promote their own interests.
As someone deeply immersed in libre software and the Free Software Foundation, it pains me that my conversations are likely always going to be the first time people have actually seriously thought about their software freedom. It’s really difficult unwinding decades and billions of dollars of corpocratic propaganda without resorting to shock and scare tactics.
I’m still going to do it because there’s nothing else better to say. :D
Big corporations have been battling for control of the internet through browser market share since day one. We can’t let any one corpo gain control because it will destroy it with proprietary standards, it’s already suffered untold damage. MS almost got control when IE reached a vast majority of market share. Google is in the same place now with Chrome.
As consumers we have some control over market share through product selection. Of course an anti-trust lawsuit will help the cause as it did when MS was in position to take control. Time for Firefox to take the stage now, it’s ready.
look, there has to be some other privacy respecting browser out there!
Firefox?
No, it needs to be Chromium based!
Corporations are finding that the vocal minority is small enough that they can let them complain all they want, and nothing will change. There are now enough users out there that it just doesn’t matter what how much we complain online. They just have to wait it out since the silent majority just don’t care anymore.
Reddit, Netflix, Spotify, and now Google. It’s happening everywhere lately.
This generation of the internet is doomed if we let it keep going in the direction it’s headed.
