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.
While Google failing would definitely cause a disruption, I don’t think they are too big to fail. I’ve done some experimenting with other search engines and Kagi & Duckduckgo are both sufficient.
Gmail is very popular, but everyone could find another email provider. Losing YouTube would hurt but we have other large sites with infrastructure that could cover. Facebook, Twitter, reddit, Instagram, tiktok, etc. Together I think they could take on the bandwidth
As for the browser, I’d be glad if Chrome died. We need more browsers. Chrome dying would force all of the derivatives to do something else. Vivaldi, edge, brave, etc would all need to either switch to Firefox or a project for a new browser would begin
I think while disruptive Google failing would ultimately be good. We have anti-trust laws for a reason and we need to actually use them. If we don’t enforce them, why did we pass the laws in the first place? The market stagnated and the consumers lose. Plus we fall behind pragmatic countries like China who are blazing forward full speed. Their government is more than willing to turn the $$$ hose to innovate in technology. Here in the US we rely on the market. But if we hamstring the market with a monopoly… just a recipe for disaster in my opinion
Anyone who hasn’t planed for this with an account on another service, at the very least like proton, kinda deserves whats coming due to the signs.
I’m no soothsayer and even I can see that Google is making enemies with governments, China, US, and Europe. You can survive one or two but not all three.
Losing gmail (which I didn’t even think of…) would be MASSIVELY disruptive. People would literally lose touch with family and friends, companies would go under, etc.
I am old enough to remember the times the same thing was said about Hotmail and other sites… people will adapt.
And no, social media sites can’t handle what youtube does. Even ignoring how laughable twitter currently is: at its prime, it STILL couldn’t serve videos reliably. Tiktok and Instagram have very strict limits on video uploads and the rest largely rely on youtube anyway. Yes, some people upload videos to facebook or choose to mirror them, but it is often still youtube links. Same with reddit.
Not one alone. But work will probably be split between more sites. And actual limitation are just decision that were made and can change.
As for the browser, I’d be glad if Chrome died. We need more browsers. Chrome dying would force all of the derivatives to do something else. Vivaldi, edge, brave, etc would all need to either switch to Firefox or a project for a new browser would begin
Firefox is currently kept alive by Google, which pays $500M/year to Mozilla in order to have Google Search as the default in Firefox and to not let Google Chrome become a monopoly on paper too. Break Google and it would probably die.
Creating “more browsers” (browser engines I would add, we already have enough browsers) is not an easy task. The specification that needs to be implemented is massive, and doing so efficiently is even more complex. It would be a waste of resources to have many browser engines, not to mention the confusion in the webdev community when you suddently have to work around many more bugs in the implementations.
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.
It seems to me that they sponsor Mozilla Foundation just to thwart accusations of monopoly and make it look like they got competition.
Would that really be that bad? Another browser will take its place, or Chromium will be forked. The worst thing would be YouTube going down, but even that is not that bad. Even so, I don’t think YouTube would necessarily disappear; it would probably be bought by some other company for pennies on the dollar. If that happened, I think it would be a mild inconvenience but nothing too crazy. In all, I say break it up!
Hold up… You’re not actually saying that Chrome and Chromium will die out within a decade, and not only that, but YouTube only has a year or less left? I do not believe that at all lol
how favorable the terms are for creators
If I’m not mistaken Youtube creators get something like 1/10 of a penny per view of a video. Is that really favorable for creators?
Well, NireRed also has NileBlue and a bunch of patreon supporters (over 2k, apparently getting 250k/creation, which is insane). He’s not living off NileRed videos alone
