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In light of articles all over Lemmy about Google pushing ManifestV3 onto Chrome and the majority of web users, isn't that an antitrust violation? (www.ftc.gov)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

126 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Firefox has never been slow and clunky. If anything, that was Chrome because it runs so much fucking bloat to scrape your data.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.