The main problem I have with the predominant discussions around antitrust in contemporary internet software is that they largely ignore one quality that truly makes something a monopoply. That is, truly onerous monopolies don't just own a vast majority of some market share. They hamper the ability to switch to another product. Facebook, Google Search and Chrome, the most discussed products in current antitrust discussions all have viable quality alternatives.
Don't like Chrome? Pick up Firefox, it's quick and easy to change. And it's the best product it's probably ever been.
Don't like Google search? There's Bing, there's DuckDuckGo and more.
Don't like Facebook? Try any of the bajillion other social networks. Hell, quite social networks and call your grandma instead. It's better for ya.
Antitrust isn't supposed to be a bludgeon to knock whoever is on top off the top. It's supposed to be a tool to break open markets where companies have successfully closed off competition and made it impossible for opponents to succeed. I just don't see that in the web right now. There is no conceivable reason Facebook couldn't be replaced and there's ample research showing that young people are already making that transition to other platforms.
Meanwhile, industries like internet service, cellular and in some places water provision, leave consumers with essentially no alternative and no choice. I see this wave of anti-web 2.0 furvor as people championing a good cause, antitrust, in utterly the wrong place for our time.
> That is, truly onerous monopolies don't just own a vast majority of some market share. They hamper the ability to switch to another product.
The article explains how Google through Chrome's dominance is doing and did exactly this via webstandards for DRM despite most of chrome being completely open-source via chromium.
Because Chrome has such a large footprint, it become much easier for google to make a non-standard feature become part of the standard. As long as there is a thoroughly unencumbered but still practically reasonable way to implement that standard everything is great.
But that falls apart for the DRM that enables browsers to play video files. Sure, google is willing to license that code to you, but that means you have to pay or play by their rules in order to keep being able to make a competing browser. And no, you can't just make your own version of the DRM: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/29/hoarding-software-freedom....
That's bad enough for hampering the ability for people to switch products, because it means that people can't make a practical chrome competitor without becoming a google vassal, which defeats many of their reasons to making a competing browser. But it gets worse.
If google makes a change to chrome that people dislike, say hampering ad-blocking via some as-yet-unstandardized change or pushing through a standard that most people dislike, they can then tie the licensing of the unrelated feature to implementing this other thing that people dislike.
For example, Google could refuse to license the DRM code to any browser that interferes with or modifies the playback of the DRMed video stream. Then, they could define modification and interference to include removing ads from the stream.
> The article explains how Google through Chrome's dominance is doing and did exactly this via webstandards for DRM despite most of chrome being completely open-source via chromium.
Yes, but it also fails to make much of an antitrust case about this. I mean, is Widevine licensing anticompetitive? Discriminatory? Surely it would be hard to make a competitor for it. But at the same time Apple and HBO seem to be streaming a ton of content without it.
The harm to open source media playback is real, but that's not an argument about market health. Frankly I'm pretty doubtful much antitrust hay can be made about this. We watch Microsoft choke Netscape to death in the 90's, and at the end of the day nothing happened. Maybe Google will be forced to spin off the Widevine IP to a separate company, I guess. No one is going to kill Chrome for you.
Come on, HBO is literally listed on widevine.com as a user of the product (this asset is like halfway down widevine.com: https://www.widevine.com/assets/img/logo-hbo.png), and there's an iOS sdk for widevine as well, so iOS apps are using widevine too, so no, neither is streaming a ton without it, unless you mean how Apple themselves went and made an entire competing ecosystem that depends not just on a competing DRM standard (Fairplay), but competing apps and playback devices. That's not a great argument for Google to make that they don't have a monopoly status for web streaming: "No, you honor, it's simple. You can't totally make a competing browser to stream media. You just have to make an entirely separate device with a custom OS using customized hardware and a customezed digital store for people to browse to using your code. Simple!"
I didn't argue widevine licensing was anticompetitive on its own. I said how Google grants licenses and the terms of the license is part of a larger strategy on Google's part to hamper the ability of consumers to switch away from Chrome.
> Apple themselves went and made an entire competing ecosystem that depends not just on a competing DRM standard (Fairplay), but competing apps and playback devices.
Yes! Exactly. And the fact that Apple was successful doing that is sort of a killer argument against an antitrust case.
Look, antitrust isn't about enforcing your personal idea of a perfect browser ecosystem. It's about protecting the competetive efficiency of the market by guaranteeing that new and smaller players (and new technologies) don't see an unfair barrier to entry.
Your argument is just that Chrome is an unhealthy monoculture ecosystem. I even agree. But that's not an antitrust case and you need to stop pretending that someone is going to come around and rule Chrome illegal for you. The arguments I've seen are all very narrow and will have very narrow remedies.
The unfair barrier to entry is that in order to compete at making a browser the competitor has to build much, much more than just a browser. The fact that it was apple that was successful in building an also-ran competitor isn't helpful for google, because Apple's size allows other companies to argue that unless they are as large as google or apple, they cannot compete at all, which means new or smaller players can't fairly compete.
If the goal is to build a browser, then everything else (the alternative ecosystem, the alternative OS, the alternative hardware, the custom chips for the hardware, etc.) not required for the actual browser is waste. That's the exact opposite of efficiency.
The issue isn't chrome's ecosystem. The issue is that Chrome is being used to create unfair barriers of entry for Chrome competitors which then allows Google to use Chrome to harm consumers because there are limited competitors for consumers to switch to.
Kinda? There's other patent issue with HLS that keeps it mostly Apple only since Apple foots the costs on apple products, which can be similarly argued creates/continues an unfair barrier of entry: http://www.overdigital.com/2012/04/17/the-hidden-licensing-c...
But being required to license anything in order to implement what is a supposed to be an open standard is already a problem for a standard that's supposed to be open, even if it's not an antitrust issue.
> Can people use or license Apple's version of DRM instead?
There's no public mechanism for doing so. If Apple would do so to people it liked is not known.
You could license PlayReady from Microsoft though, and lots of people do for various implementations. There are also a few other companies that do similar modules, mostly aimed at the global pay TV market.
The terms would be fairly painful for a free browser vendor I expect, but "I priced my product at a level where I can't afford to buy in the things my users want from any of the independent vendors" isn't really an anti-trust concern.
Absurd. Apple is the #2 biggest company in the world, the fact that they are build their own parallel system is in no way proof that it isn't an unfair barrier to entry to "new and smaller players".
You're hanging that "absurd" entirely on my use of the word "smaller" and ignoring the first clause of that sentence.
The simple truth is that an antitrust case needs to show some kind of harm to consumers, not to browser vendors. Again, I cite the fact that MS straight up murdered Netscape and got away with it (though it was scary for them for a bit).
Secondly, the issue isn't that google added DRM to chrome, it's that the DRM was pushed into an ostensibly open standard, but the implementation of that open standard is locked behind a licensing agreement with Google because it's illegal to make a compatible client under the DMCA, since that would be considered copyright circumvention.
If instead google and HBO had made a specialized browser app to handle the DRM or even just a browser extension that enabled the browser to understand a nonstandard html tag, then the argument that Google is using Chrome's footprint to to modify open standards to make it harder for people to compete with them starts to fall flat on its face (cw. no one is complaining that an HBO app for android and iOS is a monopoly that needs to be broken up). But doing it that way makes it much harder for HBO to acquire customers, because it requires customers to install a new app on their PC or an extension in their browser.
> Secondly, the issue isn't that google added DRM to chrome, it's that the DRM was pushed into an ostensibly open standard, but the implementation of that open standard is locked behind a licensing agreement with Google because it's illegal to make a compatible client under the DMCA, since that would be considered copyright circumvention.
It's not locked behind a licensing agreement with Google. It just unambiguously isn't. Google's own implementation is, but they aren't even the majority provider of EME CDM modules in the market, and there are several competitors, as well as an entirely free specification for one.
The problem for these smaller browser vendors isn't building their own EME modules, it's convincing major content streaming websites to trust their modules, which they don't. And that really isn't any different to the fact that if they were to start running their own certificate signing authority there's no reason why lots of sites would start trusting them either.
The MS settlement with the DoJ was reached in 2001, about three months after the release of IE6. If anything I think history shows the opposite occurred. Internet Explorer continued rapidly evolving during the antitrust case and its development "grounded to a halt" after the government let Microsoft off the hook.
Which makes enough sense. MS always viewed the web as an enemy and wanted people on windows apps as their primary gateways. They needed a browser until they won, then they tried to kill it. Ultimately it was Apple who succeeded at that vision, obviously.
Browsers with Widevine support, according to [1] and [2]:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Brave (Chromium fork, built in ad blocking)
- Opera (Chromium fork)
- Roku
- Samsung Tizen smart TVs
Browsers which support a similar selection of streaming providers through different DRM solutions:
- Edge (Chromium fork)
- Safari
Just because you can't get a license for "my personal open source browser" doesn't mean there's a barrier to serious competitors here. (At least, not at present.)
> Just because you can't get a license for "my personal open source browser" doesn't mean there's a barrier to serious competitors here. (At least, not at present.)
There is no way to know if not one of those "personal open source browsers" they blocked would have become the new chrome. The shared video playback experience of the one they sabotaged sounded neat.
It's not about adblocking, the article gets that wrong. If Chrome limits adblocking there are a bunch of alternatives that allow it. But the DRM control position they lobbied themselves into is in my eyes a barrier of entry to a relevant part of technological projects and something an antitrust case could address.
Yes, there are a few other browsers that can do the same, play DRMed videos. That makes the case harder. But why should Google have the power to control who can build browsers that support streaming sites? All while having economic interests to limit the competition? I think that's still a trust issue.
But I'm absolutely biased. I hated the DRM decision and would love it if it has dire consequences.
>Facebook, Google Search and Chrome, the most discussed products in current antitrust discussions all have viable quality alternatives.
People need to stop thinking of Google and Facebook as if they offer consumer services. They don't. Their product is their ads, and their consumers are corporate marketing departments, and through this lens they are both thoroughly monopolists. Or at least "duopolists".
That's a take I hadn't considered. Google's danger as a monopoly comes more from the situation in which you have to pay them to sell anything on the web. That's a much more interesting argument.
And one that the GOP will actually care about. Truth be told the GOP doesn't care about the average American locked into 1/2 ISPs available to them, but when businesses are the ones being price gouged you can bet the GOP will be the one to save the day by regulating big tech.
> "...one quality that truly makes something a monopoply... hamper the ability to switch to another product."
substitutability isn't often discussed because it's a minor symptom of monopolies and wholly insufficient by itself to prove monopoly power, as every monopolist will have some competition and substitutes. it's unrealistic to expect a monopolist to own 100% of a market (have no competition). it's even more unrealistic to expect no substitutes on top of no competition (a substitute is using an adjacent-market product).
That's exactly my point though. Marketshare isn't necessarily a good indicator of a problematic monopoly.
Imagine three companies dominate a given market. In most geographies, say 75%, the two larger companies company with each other and a few other stragglers. But in 25% geography a single company dominates. Who is the problem? The larger companies, competing in their broader market or the smaller company?
As an example, Amazon is dominant in the online retail sphere. The have an incredible market share. But I've never once had this create a significant problem as a consumer. Why? Because the cost to me as a consumer to use something else is tremendously low. I can use Walmart.com which has gotten quite good. Or I can go to a physical store.
Meanwhile, people must tolerate anything Comcast pulls, though they certainly have a smaller share of the personal internet service provision market than Amazon does of the eretail marlet.
To me monopoly is not dangerous because of marketshare. It's dangerous when the bulk of its customers cannot switch to another service. Particularly so if the market is difficult for new competition to enter.
I get all the open internet gripes about Google and what they've done with Chrome. And that thing could become a monster. But the reality is that you can switch today with minimal impact to an excellent alternative browser.
People buying a drug like HUMIRA are not so lucky.
>Meanwhile, people must tolerate anything Comcast pulls, though they certainly have a smaller share of the personal internet service provision market than Amazon does of the eretail marlet.
People have Satellite, Cell providers, and usually a DSL option to choose from if they don't like Comcast. Those aren't particularly good options, but realistically neither are the other browsers besides Chrome. Plus, the only other browser that people choose to use is Firefox and that's primarily funded through a deal with Google.
The problem is that Google has laid waste to many potential markets by giving products away for free to protect their ad monopoly. How can you start a competing company in Maps or Browser or mobile OS when your competitor is willing to spend billions to make their product and then give it away for free? The conundrum is is it harmful to consumers? Google gives away a bunch of high quality products for free but ultimately they all serve the Ad master.
I understand this is a highly subjective distinction but having to use Edge, Safari or Firefox in place of Chrome is not nearly the same as the decrease in experience quality as switching from cable broadband to DSL, cellular or satellite.
I’ve been trying to switch off of chrome/search/gmail/AdWords for a few years now and it’s not easy. And I stand up servers and write scripts.
Gmail doesn’t conform to email standards and eats random emails. Chrome ignores DNT and other things. Search pushes chrome, etc.
It’s a soft lock in compared to Microsoft’s 90s “bundle IE or we break you” deals with PC manufacturers, but it’s definitely not easy to move away from them. And this makes all the other anti-competitive things compoundedly bad.
Independent forums and self-hosted blogging. They are about content and real connections with like-minded people. Instead of mindlessly posting little updates throughout the day just for the sake of posting updates, people should save it for when they actually have something to say.
My social circles consists of ~6 different cliques of people with no intersection between them. I'm not going to move them all to one forum. Nobody will want to cross-post their life updates in 6 different forums.
> Instead of mindlessly posting little updates throughout the day just for the sake of posting updates, people should save it for when they actually have something to say.
Forums solve the posting part of Facebook, but don't solve the other, even more important part - the reading part.
I derive more value from reading what my friends post, then I do from posting myself. The UX for me getting this information through forums/self-hosted blogging is horrendous (And my aunt is not going to figure out how to self-host her own blog, either.)
Forums and blogging are for internet strangers; Facebook is for your real-life community. While you of course accept some risk of Facebook content becoming accidentally public, there is little to no intersection between the content I would intentionally share on Facebook vs. HN or a blog.
At minimum, blogging would need a universal federated identity system with reciprocal ACLs, which is already starting to sound a lot like Facebook.
More to the point on antitrust, the quality alternative to Facebook that most of my peers are now using is Instagram, which Facebook conveniently purchased.
For people who grew up before the Internet, the idea of needing to share everything with everyone you know isn't a necessity. Some things were better before the Internet. My real-world social life improved after I left Facebook. The quality of the information that enters my mind on a daily basis also improved. I don't read timelines or experience life by constantly thinking about whether I should post the current moment online. There are other ways to stay in touch with people.
My personal opinion is that there isn't a quality alternative. I don't think that these platforms are the least bit beneficial to the well-being of their users. It's a very unfortunate fact that I don't see them going anywhere anytime soon, the idea of online 'social networks' is firmly entrenched in modern culture and has become ubiquitous in our daily lives. I think that antitrust should be just the beginning, I feel that more needs to be done at a legislative level to set reasonable limitations on the invasiveness of the companies behind such networks. Part of this would be closing the legislative gaps that make regulations difficult to enforce against such companies.
My understanding is all kids moved to Instagram / Snapchat as soon as parents started using Facebook too, and now parents are on Instagram too so I expect kids are already using something else.
It's full of instances with definitely illegal, and possibly borderline-illegal content, and even worse - spam. You have to extensively, and aggressively blacklist, to avoid getting flooded in this crap. (And unless you want to wade knee-deep through that dreck, what you do, is to just copy & paste a blacklist some other poor bastard curated. I'm sure there's no vector for abuse, or censorship there...)
Mastodon also fails to solve the harassment problem. Facebook and Twitter do a piss-poor job of it, but Mastodon takes it to another level.
> The attack vector looks like this: a group of motivated harassers chooses a target somewhere in the fediverse. Every time that person posts, they immediately respond, maybe with something clever like “fuck you” or “log off.” So from the target’s point of view, every time they post something, even something innocuous like a painting or a photo of their dog, they immediately get a dozen comments saying “fuck you” or “go away” or “you’re not welcome here” or whatever. This makes it essentially impossible for them to use the social media platform.
> The second part of the attack is that, when the target posts something, harassers from across the fediverse click the “report” button and send a report to their local moderators as well as the moderator of the target’s instance. This overwhelms both the local moderators and (especially) the remote moderator. In mastodon.cloud’s case, it appears the moderator got 60 reports overnight, which was so much trouble that they decided to evict Wil Wheaton from the instance rather than deal with the deluge. [1]
The problem is that Mastodon conflates identity, and community. You will get moderated by third parties for belonging in a particular community, if that community is poorly moderated. Because the definition of poorly moderated is universal, you get a balkanized, political nightmare, where half the toots half the world sends are unreadable to the other half, even if the sender is not personally violating any rules of either community.
For a social network in 2019, this is unacceptable.
Oh, and if you're one of those people who cares about privacy, the only reason Cambridge Analytica, and its ilk aren't harvesting data from Mastodon, is because it's irrelevant. Yes, you can have private conversations with a particular group of users on it, without leaking data. Guess what? You can do that through e-mail, too. As soon as your toots are public, they can be scraped, your social graph can be re-constructed, packaged, and sold to the highest bidders.
If you want to make a browser and show any content encrypted with Widevine (which is the majority of DRM content), you need a Widevine license, and they straight up refuse to issue those. How are you supposed to compete with Chrome when Google prevents you from playing Netflix and Spotify?
Now I'm not sure what your argument is. When the problem is "they refuse to issue Widevine licenses", it doesn't really matter that a browser as huge as Firefox managed to get one.
It wasn't "if you want to use Linux", it was "if you want to make a browser".
Also the Widevine authorized for Linux is only 720p on Netflix.
Okay, but I'm not sure how well I can reconcile "you don't need it in the browser at all" and "it was considered important to force it into a browser standard".
I tried switching to Edge because it has better touchscreen support, better battery life and some other niceties. But the number of websites that only test in Chrome is... not small.
Interesting how you left out the biggest issue at hand and didn't mention it once: Android
> Without Google Services and the Google Play Store, it’s a brick. They’ve mastered separation of the strategic openness of Android with the accompanying strategic closed-ness of everything that runs on it and makes it actually worth something.
I think it is prudent if we are constantly vigilant and detect monopolistic behaviors ASAP. Why wait till the entity truly becomes a monopoly and has enough power to topple governments?
Agreed. I wish there was better antitrust controls across the economy. Unfortunately the way the U.S. government enforces antitrust measures is incredibly pick and choosey. Therefore there's an opportunity cost to focusing on certain companies.
one of the markers of monopoly is that you can use your dominance in one industry to move into other industries and achieve dominance there. Sound like anyone you know?
That has ceased to be a serious consideration for American antitrust enforcement for decades. That almost literally describes every company in the S&P 500.
Don't like Chrome? Pick up Firefox, it's quick and easy to change. And it's the best product it's probably ever been.
Don't like Google search? There's Bing, there's DuckDuckGo and more.
Don't like Facebook? Try any of the bajillion other social networks. Hell, quite social networks and call your grandma instead. It's better for ya.
Antitrust isn't supposed to be a bludgeon to knock whoever is on top off the top. It's supposed to be a tool to break open markets where companies have successfully closed off competition and made it impossible for opponents to succeed. I just don't see that in the web right now. There is no conceivable reason Facebook couldn't be replaced and there's ample research showing that young people are already making that transition to other platforms.
Meanwhile, industries like internet service, cellular and in some places water provision, leave consumers with essentially no alternative and no choice. I see this wave of anti-web 2.0 furvor as people championing a good cause, antitrust, in utterly the wrong place for our time.