I don't see what the problem with this ruling or forced divestiture is.
Starting a new browser today is a massive, nearly impossible task made harder by the fact that the few browsers we do have continue to push through new specs and features. Sure that's good for consumers, but its bad for competition.
If those new specs and features are only possible because Google is artificially propping up the few browsers we do have, that reeks of an antitrust violation.
We will almost certainly see a slowdown in improvements to the web and browsers if this goes through, but we'll also see the door finally open to potential competitors that want to start a new browser engine rather than just put some paint on chromium and call it a browser company.
> Sure that's good for consumers, but its bad for competition.
So we want competition that's bad for consumers?
I have to admit I get the logic of the remedy being proposed, but something seems off to me and I can't put my finger on it. It seems different from the days of Microsoft, not just technically but in terms of the economics and consumer choice.
There's definitely stagnation in search, but I'm not convinced it has anything to do with Google paying browsers per se.
Part of me feels like there's kind of a shadow competition (in terms of browser market) that's really between Apple and everyone else, that's not being recognized by the DOJ in this. It's not this browser vs that browser, it's how you access the internet in mobile versus another way of doing so, and who controls that.
Maybe. I can't quite figure out what I think about all of this.
I could have clarified there. Google propping up a few browsers is good for consumers in the short term.
In the long term I'd argue that less competition will be a bad thing, and that we have already seen that when it comes to browsers.
For years Google made a habit out of ignoring the spec process in favor of designing their own web specs and shipping them in Chrome. That's ultimately bad for developers who have to code for different browsers like we're back in the IE days, and it being bad for developers leads to it being bad for users.
More importantly, the few browser vendors we do have can take all this Google money and use it to subsidize features that are bad for privacy, or further anticompetitive behaviors in related fields like AI. Without the Google funding we could end up with new browser competitors that are at least on a more level playing field.
All that said, I'm not actually a fan of government intervention and am torn on that front. If we do have a government tasked with protecting markets from anticompetitive behavior, though, they should enforce it.
Starting a new browser today is a massive, nearly impossible task made harder by the fact that the few browsers we do have continue to push through new specs and features. Sure that's good for consumers, but its bad for competition.
If those new specs and features are only possible because Google is artificially propping up the few browsers we do have, that reeks of an antitrust violation.
We will almost certainly see a slowdown in improvements to the web and browsers if this goes through, but we'll also see the door finally open to potential competitors that want to start a new browser engine rather than just put some paint on chromium and call it a browser company.