this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
721 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

59299 readers
4990 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Web browsers are a critical infrastructure. Linux too, is very complex and requires lots of development and standards. But we have companies that spend the resources because it's necessary for their bottom line. Servers all run on Linux.

Similar thing I think would happen with web browsers. Many companies would have incentive to develop web browsers - Facebook for example would want people on their site and that requires a web browser.

My question is if this would simply result in another company taking Google spot in the market or there would be a new open source collaborative effort by many companies like Linux? I'm not really sure. Like you said, the specifications are massive and basically shape and mold the internet as a whole. So it's not a simple task.

Also just because Google funds Mozilla through search does not mean Firefox would immediately die should Google go under. Consider that Firefox would be only 1 of 2 browsers left alive. They could presumably make a deal with Bing or Duckduckgo or something and would be able to make up the lost income in spades because of sheer volume of users.

There was a time Firefox was actually the most popular browser.