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Comment by ryanolsonx | Hacker News Reader

> In the same way, part of building a web browser is having the ability to render web content. If Google can block your custom browser from rendering content, then for all practical purposes they are blocking your ability to build a browser.

Eh.. in a way, but not really. It can still work as a web browser but a web site can still render however they'd like based on your user agent.

If I made a site today, I could add the same functionality if I wanted to. Since I own the site, that's my choice.

I completely agree that Google should _not_ block their content based on your custom web browser. That is evil.

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I would still claim two differences on the user agent side of things:

First, any browser can report any user agent they want. There are a number of examples of browsers faking or changing user agents to get around sites that try to differentiate based on those strings.

Second, while any individual web site can implement logic based on the user agent, that's the sole choice of the web operator. By restricting Widevine access, Google is blocking rendering of content on other people's domains.

The non-ISP, in-browser analogy I would use would be if Google decided that in order to render an AMP page in your new browser, you first needed to get their permission. They're not just blocking their own content, they're blocking an entire category of technology.

It's also worth mentioning that even under the user agent analogy, if this headline was, "Google uses user agents to block Firefox from accessing Youtube", pretty much every person on HN would call that anti-competitive behavior worthy of regulation.

Right! And when the headline was Google uses user agents to block Windows Phone from accessing Google Maps (along with reports that changing the user agent made the software work fine), we all agreed on swift and decisive action against Google /s.

https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/

Oof, rereading this article in the present just hurts.

To be fair, the 2013 ecosystem was a lot more Google friendly than the 2019 ecosystem is. I'm sure the average non-HN reader still wouldn't care today, but I would at least hope HN itself would have a different reaction.

> By restricting Widevine access, Google is blocking rendering of content on other people's domains.

This isn't good, but it's not arbitrary control. These companies chose to implement widevine, so they chose to allow Google to dictate who gets to legally use WV.

The point isn't that the control was granted arbitrarily - as you note, the granting was explicit. The point is that as a result of that, we have arrived at a situation where Google is now capable of arbitrarily exercising control over this subset. This wouldn't be a problem if that subset was small, but it's not - it's huge, and ever growing.

But times change and today playing videos (including DRM protected ones) is no longer a feature but a required part of a browser. A requirement which likely will get stronger with time.

(Sure some "special purpose" browsers get away without, but they also only Target a very limited audience)

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