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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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You love it?
I bet you hate Google doing self ads?
Yet this is also just a self ad. And spammy, because it pops open a tab, something browsers are supposed to suppress unless specifically enabled.
This is a false equivalence.
If Google advertises the merits of their browser within their browser, like Mozilla is doing here, then that's fair enough, I have zero complaints about that. Why not have a welcome page when you install the browser, highlighting the benefits of using your product?
If Google is utilising their other products to unfairly give themselves a leg up in advertising their browser, then yeah, I'm against that.
If I search on Google (the de facto standard), I shouldn't have popups telling me to use Chrome. If I watch a YouTube video, Google shouldn't be allowed to place Chrome ads there.
Same goes for MS relentlessly advertising Edge in Windows and forcing it into other Microsoft programs.
Those are examples of companies abusing their monopolistic market position to gain a business advantage, which is illegal. It's nothing like Mozilla having a Firefox ad within Firefox.
I tend to agree here. It's like Netflix showing banners of what content they have, on their own site.
"Here are some features of this product you have!" Intrusive, maybe, but not like they're directing you away to pay more money.
But what about Duckduckgo advertising its browser on its search homepage? Would that be a problem too? Or is it only because Google has a dominant position in search?
Would it be an issue for Apple to advertise its browser on macOS? Every time I get a system update on macOS, I get a "what's new" thing for Safari, even though I never use it (Firefox is my default browser on my work computer). Is that okay? Is it okay if Microsoft does it as well?
What about Mullvad advertising its browser on its webpage, which is selling a VPN service? Mullvad Browser integrates Mullvad VPN features, so it's directly related, kind of like how Chrome integrates Google Search features and Safari integrates macOS features.
I'm not sure where I stand here. Saying company X can't do what company Y can do just because company X has a dominant position just feels wrong. I'm all for attacking abuse of dominance, I just think this argument is a little weak.
The abuse of market position makes it far worse, and I'd argue illegal under existing competition law.
Your other examples are annoyances for sure, but not straight up anti-competitive/probably illegal.
The way you describe the MacOS one makes it sound like a system update change log, an entirely different thing.
Why?
One would be abusing monopolistic power, the other isn't.
Yeah, it's a "what's new" OS update, but that includes Safari features, which isn't strictly an OS thing. Microsoft got a lot of flak for including IE with the OS (well, a bit more than that, they tried to block Netscape from accessing "private" APIs that IE had access to), and it seems to follow that Apple should get a similar amount of flak for having an unfair advantage with Safari having access to OS features before anything else.
Is advertising "abusing monopolistic power"? I get Microsoft getting hit with anti-trust because they actively prevented competition, but both MS and Apple advertise their other products through their OS (e.g. IE and Safari, Office 365 and iCloud, etc).
Google should absolutely get hit with anti-trust when they are shown to make their sites perform worse on other browser engines (happens a lot w/ Firefox, where just changing user-agent improves perf). But I'm not so sure that they should be hit with anti-trust for advertising their other products, because that's an establish practice.
A changelog is a changelog. If safari updates are in OS updates, then yeah that's where the changes will be listed.
In a completely different market.
At the time, browsers were sold as standalone software. MS including it was an unfair advantage in that context.
Nowadays browsers aren't distributed in that way, installing another browser takes seconds and they're free. It's nowhere near as anti-competitive.
Please don't distort my words. I never said that. You know exactly what I said and the meaning behind it.
Google using their position in Search and on YouTube and Gmail to push you to install Chrome is an abuse of market position.
I never said advertising is an abuse of monopolistic power and you know that.
I don't know why you're being so needlessly combative here?
I'm not trying to be combative, just wondering what the policy would look like.
Sure, and I would expect to see the Safari changelog when I launch Safari. But I get it when I upgrade my OS, and Safari (in my eyes) isn't an OS feature. I don't use Safari, so seeing Safari changelog is an ad. Likewise for Edge on Windows, I don't use Edge, so seeing an Edge changelog from an OS update is an ad (not sure if MS still does that, I haven't used Windows in years).
Google advertises its products on its search page. Microsoft advertises its products on its OS (initial run, pretty much every update). Apple does the same with macOS.
So what exactly is the proposed change? Do we block advertising for other products if you have a certain share of the market? Or does it come down to the manner of advertising?
In my mind, "monopolistic behavior" means doing something to undermine competition. If you're merely pushing your own services and not interfering with other options, I don't think that's anti-competitive. For example, is Valve's pushing of its Steam Deck on their store anti-competitive? Valve is dominant on the PC gaming market and I wouldn't be surprised if they're dominant in handheld PC gaming as well (e.g. compare to Ayaneo, Asus ROG Ally, etc). That sounds similar to how Google is dominant in both search and browser market share. I don't think Valve should be treated as a monopoly though since they're not really doing monopoly things (no exclusives except a handful of Valve-made titles, no special discount for using Steam Deck, etc).
I get it, Google is bad, but what exactly are they doing that's bad that should be restricted? What exactly should the law look like? We can't punish companies because we feel they're doing bad things, we need a system of laws that specifically lays out what's not okay. AFAIK, Google doesn't meet the current standard, so what exactly should that standard be?
But if its updates are packaged with the OS updates, it makes sense for its changelog to be shown alongside the rest of the OS update.
Yes. And the percentage of the market share is already defined in antitrust law.
Such as using your monopolistic position in Search to push your browser?
How isn't it? How is that fair competition?
Perhaps. But it's also worth remembering that Steam is literally Valve's store, of course they sell steam decks there.
People go to storefronts with the explicit intention of buying things. I don't go to a search engine or email client with the expectation of having popups telling me to install a browser.
If I went onto Google's storefront, I wouldn't be upset about them selling Pixel phones there. I'd expect that their store would have their products for sale.
Nonono. No. I know your angle here, and it's a clever one, but I'm not falling for it.
Don't attempt to reduce my argument against abuse of market position to being some kind of fanboyish "hur dur Google bad, amirite guys?" - that's not my argument. I've explained what my argument is.
As stated, they're abusing their monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage that cannot be achieved by their competitors.
The same as it is now, just actually enforced.
There you go again. Trying to reduce my argument to being reactionary and feelings-based. I've explained my view multiple times, and it has nothing to do with my feelings, and everything to do with abuse of market position.
They definitely do, and they've got in trouble in the EU over it multiple times. Laws aren't always followed, and they're not always actually acted on by governments. Warranty void if removed stickers aren't legal, yet pretty much all devices have them, for example.
Tell me about it. I use nothing but Firefox right now and I hate these intrusive ads. Of course, thereβs no built in way to disable it, when it could very easily be a toggle.