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Comment by Ygg2 | Hacker News Reader

> Yes, Google promoted themselves on their own services, what's the problem with that? > And yes, Google's products and services work best inside Google's browser.

So, you're saying that you think what Internet Explorer is a great browser? Because everything Google did, Microsoft did (modulo monopoly lawsuit) back in its day.

Back in its day, IE was the freshest kid on the block. Now the history repeats itself with Chrome. And I won't be surprised if in ten-twenty years Chrome will be treated like IE today.

> You're free not to use chrome or any of Google's services, there are other options, so Google is not a monopoly.

This doesn't make a monopoly. A monopoly doesn't need to own 100% of the market. What defines a monopoly is omnipresence and leveraging existing market imbalances to expand into other markets.

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Back in its day, yeah. Then Microsoft got sued for providing it free with their OS instead of people having to wait for a long download or buying a browser. Internet explorer didn't keep up, so now it's not as good as it could be. Things change over time and that doesnt change the monopoly issues.

This is the definition used by regulators so they can leverage government regulation against companies, pretty much because monopolies don't exist. The actual definition of a monopoly is a company that has exclusive control over a supply of a commodity or service, which Google doesn't have.

Leveraging your existing, earned, market power isn't bad and wont work if the product it's being leveraged for isn't fit for purpose. Google's omniprescense has been gained by providing a service that everyone likes and wants to use. I don't see what's wrong with any of that.

> The actual definition of a monopoly is a company that has exclusive control over a supply of a commodity or service, which Google doesn't have.

By strict economic definition yes, but not in terms of legality. Sometimes it's enough for a company to have 35% of the market, for it to consider to be in a monopolistic position or to wield monopolistic power.

Also, Google has definitive monopolies when it comes to services such as video hosting, phone OS, email and even commodities such as a browser. A monopoly doesn't need to provide a service or a commodity at high price for it to be considered as abusing its position.

> This is the definition used by regulators so they can leverage government regulation against companies, pretty much because monopolies don't exist.

It is not. If that was the case, Microsoft couldn't be sued for anti-trust because it didn't own 100% of either desktop or web browser.

While Quora isn't a perfect source, I'd consider it more authoritative than your opinion. https://www.quora.com/When-do-you-consider-a-company-a-monop...

I mis-worded my comment there so this misunderstanding is my fault. I meant the definition you provided is used to leverage government regulation and in fact your Quora link is exactly what I meant. It's used as a legal definition because otherwise they wouldn't be able to use the monopoly excuse for regulation. Either way this is only semantics and not particularly productive.

I'm yet to get anything substantial explaining why Google shouldn't be allowed to push chrome on their web search page or only allow YouTube from inside chrome. These services are their property, so they have the right to do whatever they like with them.

There are lots of email services that aren't Google, Apple are directly competing with android for phone OS and there are definitely other video hosts. Just because they're not popular doesnt mean they aren't competing. It just means Google is winning. Even in search there's competition, it just isn't as good as Google is.

> I'm yet to get anything substantial explaining why Google shouldn't be allowed to push chrome on their web search page or only allow YouTube from inside chrome.

Because it's leveraging huge existing monopolistic power. I'm not a lawyer, but it's the abuse of power that's the problem.

What's the problem with that? Simple, let's say you dislike <X>. Now Google wants <X>, but knows some or even most consumers don't like it. All Google needs to do is implement <X>. Disliking <X>, you switch to Firefox.

Google now has <X> and sites start using it. Suddenly, sites that require <X> don't work in Firefox. Firefox loses market share because it doesn't support <X>, Firefox now implements <X>.

Disliking Firefox, you change to IceFox++, which dies after it's lone maintainer dies in a sky diving accident.

Enjoy your options.

> There are lots of email services that aren't Google

Sure, and if you don't have a Gmail address and send it to a Gmail address, good luck getting past the Gmail filter. Why not join Gmail, for the supreme mail experience? Sure you can use FastMail but your friends all use Gmail.

Why worry whether your mail will get a pass from Google. Just join it. It's the optimal choice. In fact, it will soon be your only choice.

Can you name an actual example of this happening or are you stuck with hypotheticals? Because my version can go very different to yours and with no concrete examples that your hypothetical is based off there's no moving forward except in our imaginations.

E.g. Chrome implements x and prevents things from working as they should, chrome starts hemorrhaging users because people really hate x, chrome reverses the change or loses its market share.

If people don't like it enough, people stop using it. If people are willing to out up with it, it's obviously worth the inconvenience to them. So even if it goes your way, I still think that's fine, because the people who don't like it enough to stop using it will create a market for browsers without x.

As for your email problem, I've never had a problem receiving mail from non gmail addresses and if I did, I would switch mail provider. As would a lot of people.

Yes. The example is based on how Chrome dealt with DRM.

As for email, there was a story on Hacker News how maintaining mail server is getting harder and harder, since Gmail filters grow more and more zealous.

In the case of DRM, chrome is fulfilling a market desire that firefox had to follow suit with once the companies that adopted it realised their desire could be fulfilled. This is an issue with the companies implementing the DRM, not chrome saying "Yes we can meet that need that no one else is providing for". Also firefox still allows you to disable that feature, so you still have that choice not to allow DRM content.

All of this though is still based on the premise that leveraging their market influence is a bad thing, I just don't see it as an issue. If they use that influence to push a product or service that people don't like, people will not use the product and they'll have lost influence.

In the example of mail servers being "harder to maintain" because of over zealous gmail filters all I have to say is: Tough. People like not getting spam and having over zealous filters is a method of achieving that. If you want to be able to send mail to Google's mail service, you'll have to meet their rules.

I'd actually be very surprised if the filters are intentionally ruling out alternative mail because that would hurt the marketability of gmail.

In fact, that's the crux of it. That's why the legal definition doesnt match the reality of monopoly, because in order to be a monopoly you have to be providing the best on the market and if you're not, a competitor will and you stop being a monopoly.

> In the case of DRM, chrome is fulfilling a market desire

If by market you meant content creators? Then yes, yes it did.

It was a top-down decision made between RIAA, MPAA and some content providers like Netflix. Firefox was sure that Google (not being evil) would stand up to the DRM, and basically, not accept it. With Flash dying, the content providers would have to create their own browser addons and add a stumbling block for DRM. But nope, Google decided DRM was Good™ and blessed the black blob of code residing in every browser. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/mozilla-and-drm

Sure you can disable the option but your unaudited DRM blob is still in Firefox. You'd have to manually extract that piece of code and recompile the browser. And if you think that's a reasonable effort for average consumer, then we have nothing to discuss.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean, they're part of the market whether you like it or not and so they created a market desire for DRM in browsers. DRM isn't inherently evil, it's an attempt to protect the property rights of the producers of downloadable content. Granted sometimes this attempt is disastrously bad (e.g: any attempts at DRM before steam in the realm of video games) but as far as I can tell this browser DRM hasn't caused issues and it hasn't certainly hasn't been intrusive for me.

That's not a reasonable effort for the average consumer but then the average consumer also probably doesn't care about DRM that much, the whole computer is a giant black blob of code to them with no clue what it's actually doing. The average consumer likely just wants to be able to access their content via the internet and the DRM facilitates that by giving the option to companies that would be unwilling to distribute their content without it.

> So, you're saying that you think what Internet Explorer is a great browser? Because everything Google did, Microsoft did (modulo monopoly lawsuit) back in its day.

But not vice versa, which is among the reasons the analogy is flawed.

> a monopoly doesn't need to own 100% of the market. What defines a monopoly is omnipresence and leveraging existing market imbalances to expand into other markets.

No, that's wrong. What defines a monopoly is absence of competition in practice (the common test for which is pricing power, which demonstrates whether the market sees “competitors” in a named market segment as actual competitors or players in isolated adjacent markets), not mere omnipresence. The leveraging you refer to is abuse of monopoly if a monopoly exists, not part of the what defines a monopoly.

> No, that's wrong. What defines a monopoly is absence of competition in practice (the common test for which is pricing power, which demonstrates whether the market sees “competitors” in a named market segment as actual competitors or players in isolated adjacent markets)

Are you saying in practice Chrome has competition? Safari doesn't count by your definition since it's essentially an isolated adjacent market (with is also shrinking due to Android expansion).

> Are you saying in practice Chrome has competition?

Well, pricing power is a hard test, even in principal, to apply in a category of free products, but it does appear on first blush that feature changes between Chrome and it's competitors do induce movements of users between them, in both directions, so it does appear that there is competition in both directions even if Chrome over time is generally, on balance, winning. Actual competition analysis, though, would take lots of work.

What I was saying upthread, however, was not anything about UI a conclusion on whether Chrome has competition, but just a correction to the inaccurate definition of monopoly that was proposed.

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