| ▲ | Hansenq 2 days ago |
| This seems like a very sensible and logical conclusion by the judge to me. An exclusive contract with Apple/Samsung isn't great, but even Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine because everyone else was worse. You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law--if Apple wants to make Google the default, they should be allowed to do so! The ban on exclusive contracts makes sense though; they should not be allowed to use contracts to furthur their monopoly position. And similarly with Chrome; it made no sense to bring Chrome into this equation. Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today NOT through exclusive contracts, but because Chrome is just a better product. Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company. With the rise of ChatGPT (I barely use Google anymore) and AI search engines potentially shifting the search landscape, who knows if Google will still be a monopoly 5 years from now. Software moves fast and the best solution to software monopoly is more software competition. |
|
| ▲ | pinkmuffinere 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best? |
| |
| ▲ | ehsankia 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | 1. It might not be the best across all metrics today, but it definitely was a few years ago. 2. While it's true that other browsers like Firefox have been catching up to Chrome in speed, it's still true that Chrome help lead the way and if not for it, the web would've likely been far slower today. 3. There has been an explosion in other browsers in the past few years, but admittedly they're all chromium-based, so even that wouldn't have been possible without Chrome | | |
| ▲ | nwienert 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Safari has been better for going on 5 years now, funny thing is it was worse for long enough that it seems everyone, even to this day, refuses to believe it. Faster in basically every dimension. Supporting way more than FF in terms of specs. Way more efficient on battery. Better feeling scroll, better UI. | | |
| ▲ | lnenad 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Any source for that? https://www.browserating.com/ doesn't put it in top5 on any non-ios platform? | | |
| ▲ | nwienert a day ago | parent [-] | | Chrome caught up in the last year or so, but also speedometer is also fairly arbitrary. Open/close, tab open/close, tab switch, scroll, initial load, resizing all still far better. Actual app performance depends on the app but for a few years Safari was clearly better. | | |
| |
| ▲ | holografix 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Agreed. Only thing lacking is the multi Google account/profile support | | |
|
| |
| ▲ | overfeed 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best? As a former Firebug fan: Chrome/Chromium has had superior browser dev-tools experience for over a decade now. | | |
| ▲ | pfg_ 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Whenever I use chrome, I'm missing the style editor and multi-line repl mode from firefox. When I switched to firefox from chrome, I didn't miss anything. There might be new features chrome has added since that I would want if I knew about them | | |
| ▲ | TJSomething 2 days ago | parent [-] | | While I agree on those counts, the debugger in Chrome handles large files of minified code, deep framework stack traces, and stopping in dysfunctional code better. | | |
| ▲ | unilynx 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Except for infinite loops in JS. Firefox still handles those better. |
|
| |
| ▲ | dawnerd 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You should try out Firefox’s if you haven’t. It’s pretty good now and I haven’t found something that I’ve been like damn wish it was there. Lighthouse testing I guess? | | | |
| ▲ | righthand 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Firefox dev tools tell me why my requests and scripts fail because of CORS or blocked by a plugin or what have you. Chrome doesn’t remotely even provide that info. I honestly have never seen a Chrome dev tools feature that was better or necessary for good web development that Firefox didn’t already have in the last 15 years. Yet I always see this bizarre sentiment of how the dev tools were better “just because”. |
| |
| ▲ | tgsovlerkhgsel 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Anecdotally, I've seen many geeks (who certainly don't make their browser choice based on an annoying popup, and are generally more on the anti-Google side) use Chrome rather than Firefox, at conferences etc. (but this is mostly 5+ years ago). Not the majority, but plenty of well-informed opinionated people. I believe especially back then, Chrome performance was significantly better than Firefox. On Android, Firefox was so slow and unpolished that the ad blocking couldn't make up for it (and even that wasn't available from the start). | | |
| ▲ | inetknght 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > Anecdotally, I've seen many geeks use Chrome rather than Firefox, at conferences etc. Have you asked them why? I'd be willing to bet that it's because of vendor lock-in if you boil down to it. Lots of things only work on Chrome. Video calls are especially prevalent right now, but there's a bunch of bot detection shit that only works on Chrome too. | | |
| ▲ | tgsovlerkhgsel a day ago | parent [-] | | Yes and IIRC it was not due to any forced factor, just because they considered it better. |
|
| |
| ▲ | dabockster a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Chrome is the "best" because all of the other browsers continue to fail at real world marketing. The best ads and marketing continue to be real life stuff - billboards, bus signage, people handing out flyers, etc etc etc. You can't just hype a browser on social media or web forums, and you can't hype it solely to those who are tech savvy. A solid example of this right now is all of the Mullvad VPN ads I've seen on the Seattle Light Rail lately. Google used to have ads everywhere for Chrome. The only time I saw Firefox stuff was the rare t-shirt at a tech conference. | |
| ▲ | avrionov 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Brave is based on Chrome (Chromium). | |
| ▲ | shadowgovt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | When Chrome started, it was the best because it introduced the process-partitioned model that allowed it to completely avoid a common failure-mode among its peer browsers at the time: one bug in the processing of one tab would crash the entire browser (a problem exacerbated by the existence of a now-defunct plugin ecosystem where third-party code was running inside the browser process; we basically don't do that anymore). That was becoming brutal on users as more and more of the work they did every day transitioned over to web-based. The other browsers have picked up the partitioning since then as a feature so the playing-field is far more level. |
|
|
| ▲ | Stratoscope 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How is Chrome a better browser than Edge? They are both just custom builds of the underlying Chromium browser. I switched from Chrome to Edge on my Windows machine a couple of months ago for the embarrassing reason that I had so many tabs open that Chrome slowed down to a crawl. (Yes, I'm one of those lazy people who uses old tabs as if they were bookmarks.) Of course I eventually opened enough tabs in Edge that it slowed down too! So I finally bit the bullet and started closing tabs in both browsers. Otherwise, I hardly notice any difference between the two. There are bigger differences on my Android device. Edge supports extensions! (Yay!) But it lacks Chrome's "tab group carousel" at the bottom of the screen. Instead, you have to tap an icon to open the full-page list of tab groups, then tap the tab group you already had open, and finally tap the tab you want from this tab group. (Boo!) So I went back to Chrome on mobile but still use Edge on desktop. |
| |
| ▲ | LeoPanthera 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > How is Chrome a better browser than Edge? I thought this too, until I actually used Edge. It's quite shocking how much advertising there is in it. The default content sources contain an extremely high proportion of clickbait and "outrage" journalism. It genuinely worries me that this is the Windows default. It's such an awful experience. | | |
| ▲ | Stratoscope 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That's a fair criticism, but aren't you just talking about the http://www.msn.com/ default home page? That's easy to change. The first time I opened Edge, I opened Settings, typed "home" into the settings search box, and changed the "Home button" setting to "New tab page", which gives a nice simple page with a search box, like Google. Is there other advertising you've seen in Edge that is different from Google? | | |
| ▲ | LeoPanthera 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes, it has all sort of weird promotional things in it that keep popping up. Price comparisons. Coupons. Things like that. |
| |
| ▲ | fakedang 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Microsoft is so frickking dumb they still haven't managed to grasp why the Google experience was better than the MSN/Bing experience. |
| |
| ▲ | caminanteblanco 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Have you used edge recently? It feels as bloated and ad-filled as yahoo news. I would take Chrome anyday, and I used to be a proud member of the edge fanclub. | |
| ▲ | hackinthebochs 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Tabs Outliner is my solution to having an absurd number of tabs open. Should be paired with Tabs Session Manager as Tabs Outliner does occasionally lose all your sessions (like once every couple of years). | |
| ▲ | nine_k 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Tangentially, there are extensions, such as "Auto tab Discard", that unload tabs from memory, thus avoiding slowdown or memory exhaustion. It allows to keep bunches of tabs as contexts / bookmarks. | | |
|
|
| ▲ | raincole 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Users can switch to Firefox/Safari (Mac default)/Edge (Windows default); they don't because Chrome is better. Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company. Yeah. People on HN just don't use Windows, at least not a freshly installed one. Windows does nudge you to use Edge [0]. On PC, Chrome is not just competing fairly: it's competing at a disadvantage! Yet it just keeps winning. [0]: https://x.com/frantzfries/status/1628178202395873286 |
| |
| ▲ | sumedh 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > they don't because Chrome is better. That was because of marketing not because Chrome was better. The Google.com homepage telling you to use Chrome is one of the best marketing campaign in the world. | | |
| ▲ | shadowgovt 2 days ago | parent [-] | | No doubt that Google using their mainpage as a megaphone for the first time in the company's history made a difference. ... but that only got people in the door. What kept them in the door was this image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg... ... or, rather, the word-changing technology underpinning that image: the ability to sandbox individual page rendering instances into subprocesses so that a failure on one page didn't crash the entire browser. I think people sometimes forget how fundamentally unstable browsers were in 2008, and how easy it was to trip over one bad page that would bring down your bank tab, your email tab, your document tab, the three tabs of source code you had open, the seven tabs of unread blogposts... Hugely disruptive. Just didn't happen in Chrome. Firefox popularized tabs, Chrome let us have a hundred of them open. |
| |
| ▲ | OvbiousError 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The regularly flood youtube with advertisments for chrome, I've yet to see my first youtube ad for firefox. | | |
| ▲ | cvhc 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I have quite opposite experience. I've never seen ads for Chrome but frequently see Apple (including Safari). And when I search for "chrome" or "browser" in Play Store, Firefox/DDG/Opera come before the true Google Chrome: https://imgur.com/a/LJiUX4m I just don't think Mozilla have spare money to film a nice commercial... | |
| ▲ | shmeeed 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's an interesting observation. If they don't even use it for advertising, what _IS_ Mozilla doing with all those Google millions? JK, we all know what they're doing with them... | | |
| ▲ | deruta 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm honestly out of the loop, what are they doing? | | |
| ▲ | maxfurman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Paying their executives exorbitant salaries | | |
| ▲ | shmeeed 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | $6.9M to the CEO, to be precise, which is roughly the same amount as the total of all private donations, grants and government funding they receive. It's bizarre. Meanwhile they're cutting down on devs, killing products like Pocket and Fakespot, ignoring user feedback, driving strange and off-putting community engagement, and introducing eye candy BS nobody asked for. In short, they appear to be doing anything but advancing the brand and actually, you know, competing in the browser market. Note that I'm not shitting on the poor devs, I still think they are delivering a great core product despite it all. But market shares and even absolute user counts keep dwindling. What is management doing about that? And all this would seem like a case of simple mismanagement, if one weren't to reflect the fact that the overwhelming majority of their income comes from Google. The way they're behaving is suspiciously convenient to the entity that is their main revenue source. One could resonably suspect they serve primarily as an antitrust litigation sponge. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | swiftcoder 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Google started, developed, and built Chrome This is perhaps a tad ahistorical. Google forked Blink off from WebKit around 2013 - it owes a lot of it's early success to the same technical foundations as Safari (which in turns owes the same debt to Konqueror...) |
| |
| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That's the rendering engine, which was one part of their early success; the other part was the V8 Javascript engine which was miles ahead of the competition in terms of performance. |
|
|
| ▲ | coliveira 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > but even Apple testified Of course, Apple didn't want to lose its part in the ilegal scheme. |
| |
| ▲ | scarface_74 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Bing - you know the search engine by the struggling Trillion dollar market cap company - is free to match Google’s offer. | | |
| ▲ | benoau 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Except Google's offer is funded by their (court-ruled) advertising monopoly... which neither Bing nor all other competitors combined can compete with. | | |
| ▲ | JustExAWS 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | During the Ballmer era, Microsoft wasted billions on mobile via acquisitions of Danger and Nokia and their internal efforts to make Windows Mobile a thing. I’m sure they could have found the money from somewhere. | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You really think Microsoft, a company worth $3.8 trillion, doesn't have enough money to pay for placement? | | |
| ▲ | benoau 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Bing by itself reportedly doesn't even gross that much, overall $20 billion represents about a quarter of Microsoft's entire annual profit. Microsoft already decided it wasn't viable to spend that much to compete, and the rest of the search market (including AI) need not apply. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | But the point is that's Microsoft's choice. They have the money to compete and jumpstart Bing with default placements and reap the ad dollars and build Bing into a serious competitor. If they don't want to compete because they think investing money in Xbox will have a higher return, that's their decision (and maybe their mistake). It's not Google's fault. | | |
| ▲ | keeda 2 days ago | parent [-] | | What is missing in this discussion is the fact -- explicitly called out by the court in the opinion, see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45109999 -- that Google Search is so good because it gets so much search traffic and, critically, user interaction data such as clicks, dwell time and even hovers on search results, which it mines to figure out better rankings. Unless competitors get that kind of traffic AND user behavior insights, their results will always be worse. And as long as their results are worse, 1) their revenues will always be worse, which will 2) make it prohibitively expensive to even try to bid for such placements, which in any case 3) would be shot down by Apple because their results are not "good enough". It's a Catch-22 from which the only escape is making a risky 20-billion-per-year traffic acquisition bet (on top of the billions already being invested) that they can get all that traffic and user behavior data and improve their search engine quickly enough to make the results good enough to drive enough revenue, all the while fighting the tendency of people to use Google anyway simply out of habit. I don't think it's much of a choice. The proposed remedies do talk about sharing search and user interaction data though, so if that survives appeals, it might help level the field a bit. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > that Google Search is so good because it gets so much search traffic and, critically, user interaction data If Bing's market share is 4%, then Bing still gets tons of user interaction data. Bing gets something like 100M queries per day. That's more than enough data. Microsoft has all the choice. They have the money. They can invest, like Google has invested and continues to invest. You don't get these things for free. So yes, it is absolutely a choice. A small startup may be disadvantaged. But not Microsoft with over 15 years of user data from Bing. | | |
| ▲ | keeda a day ago | parent [-] | | > That's more than enough data. Is it? I'm no expert, but while it may seem enough in absolute numbers, I can imagine more nuanced criteria like diversity of queries, results and users may matter more than just volume, and that kind of signal only comes from truly ubiquitious data collection (like say being default on the most popular browser AND on the duopoly of mobile platforms -- which, by the way, also collect tons of location data about the users that is not available to anybody else.) But as I'm no expert, all I can do is look at the circumstantial evidence: 1. Google paid about 54.9 BILLION in 2024 -- "traffic acquisition costs" or "TAC": https://abc.xyz/assets/77/51/9841ad5c4fbe85b4440c47a4df8d/go... -- to hold on to that traffic and data. The 20 billion going to Apple gets a lot of airtime but it does not tell the whole story. 2. As somebody else said in this thread, MSFT did burn billions on their attempt at smartphones and other markets, so it's not like they're afraid to pour money into big, risky bets. That really tells us a lot about the realities about the search market. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo a day ago | parent [-] | | I don't know what your point is. Maybe it's not enough data to make search results 100% as good as Google's, but enough to make them 95% as good? And everyone on HN complains about the quality of Google results, so surely there are algorithmic opportunities for MS to do better, right? All we know is that Microsoft has decided not to compete seriously in search, but compete at a minimal level. There are a hundred different strategic reasons why they might have chosen this. But this in no way indicates it would be somehow impossible for Microsoft to compete there if they wanted. They could spend the tens of billions in traffic acquisition just like Google does. The fact that they aren't doesn't mean they couldn't. There are no "realities about the search market" that mean Microsoft could never become a serious competitor. Your unfunded startup can't, but Microsoft could. Microsoft has all the data and money required. They've just chosen not to, the same way Apple has chosen not to enter AAA gaming, Google hasn't entered general-purpose desktop operating systems, and Amazon hasn't entered VR headsets. | | |
| ▲ | keeda a day ago | parent [-] | | My point is they did choose to compete, and still are. Bing is literally the only real competitor to Google Search. Your point seems to be they didn't spend enough money to be competitive. My point is, it simply did not make business sense to do so. Let's put some simplified numbers out there to illustrate. MSFT has spent 100 billion over the years on Bing. And Google spent more than half of that amount in 2024 alone on traffic acquisition costs. Which it can afford to do because it has a monopoly. Which it has because it produces better results. Which it does because they have all the data. Which they ensure only they can get because they pay for it (and the cycle repeats.) For comparison, Microsoft's cash reserves are 96 billion. So their choice really was to spend more than half of their cash reserves in one year just to compete only on traffic acquisition costs in the distant hope of getting enough data to break that cycle. Which is likely still not enough data because they don't have the browser monopoly or mobile presence to harvest user data on an industrial scale. So, no: Microsoft does not have all the money or data required. I would say the more realistic story is that Microsoft knew, as proven by the trial, that the deck was anti-competitively stacked against them (and who would know better than Microsoft?) and simply did the best they could to compete to the point of positive ROI. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo a day ago | parent [-] | | You're missing the part where the money Google spends comes back to it in even more ad revenue. Google doesn't pay Apple for access to data. They pay it for traffic that makes them ad money. If Microsoft spent those billions, it would be receiving ad revenue too. It's not money thrown down the drain. And it's not for "data". There's nothing anticompetitive here when it comes to Microsoft choosing whether or not to enter the market. It's not about acquiring some magic level of data. A startup doesn't have data. Microsoft does. It's not an issue. | | |
| ▲ | keeda a day ago | parent [-] | | At this point we are just re-litigating all the things that came out in the trial. Yes, traffic comes with ad revenue, but it also comes with user interaction data which helps it improve its results and maintain its monopoly. Without this data, a competitor cannot offer competitive search results and hence will not be able to command the same ad revenues and hence cannot sustain the level of traffic acquisition costs that Google's monopoly profits can. Google has built an amazing self-reinforcing money-generating flywheel which is effectively a chicken-and-egg problem for everybody else. Again, the court specifically called this out as a key pillar underpinning Google's monopoly, and this is why the proposed remedies, such as they may be, are all around sharing search and user interaction data. I'm not sure on what empirical basis you keep asserting that Microsoft has the necessary money and data, but the court's findings, based on tons of evidence, indicate otherwise. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | I've clearly explained the empirical basis of Microsoft's existing massive data and traffic and money in absolute terms. I don't know what further explanation you want. The court is right that search startups are at a massive data disadvantage. Microsoft unquestionably is not with their massive traffic in absolute terms over a decade and a half. But the judge can't really say Google has to share data with smaller search companies but not Microsoft. You're confusing startups with one of the largest, richest companies in the world. | | |
| ▲ | keeda 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Simply pointing to large absolute numbers does not address the fact that all this was brought up during the trial, and it was shown that even Microsoft -- the largest, richest company in the world, with all that data and multiple billions of dollars -- could not compete meaningfully with Google. The ruling has many data points showing those absolute numbers are meaningless compared to the scale of Google. If you want to talk money, MSFT was willing to offer Apple more than 100% of their ad revenues but still could not get the deal because Google could pay so much more. If you want to talk data, some of the findings: - Thirteen months of user data acquired by Google is equivalent to over 17 years of data on Bing - (98.4% of unique phrases seen only by Google, 1% by Bing; 99.8% of tail queries on Google not seen at all by Bing) - "The disparity is even more pronounced on mobile. There, Google receives nineteen times more queries than all of its other rivals put together" The idea that Microsoft simply decided not to "try hard enough" is countered by the fact that the court found that they did try and still failed, which was actually key proof that Google ran an anti-competitive monopoly. You're welcome to disagree with the courts' findings, but ideally you'd do so after considering all the evidence that turned up at the trial ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | JustExAWS 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | And how will it ever if Microsoft won’t invest in it? Microsoft has wasted billions of dollars in other verticals to open revenue streams. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | jajuuka 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Who needs it marketplace when you have two trillion dollar companies to pick from. Am I right? |
|
|
|
| ▲ | attendant3446 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Most popular != the best. The days when Chrome was the best browser are long gone. |
| |
| ▲ | Cthulhu_ 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It depends on the criteria for "best" though, to be pedantic. Chrome and Edge are for example "the best" in synthetic benchmarks. | | |
|
|
| ▲ | trymas 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Regarding Chrome - don’t forget Google used it’s market leading position of their products to block other platforms/browsers (from the top of my head - Windows Phone). Or develop their web apps (or browser APIs) deliberately in such a way that they work best only on Chrome. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=windows+phone+google https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... |
|
| ▲ | makeitdouble 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Apple testified that they would not have accepted any other searcch engine "We only accept bribes from other monopolies" |
| |
| ▲ | SllX 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This shit is just revisionist. The first time Apple and Google signed a contract to integrate Google into Safari, Google had ~32% of the search engine market, less than Yahoo! at the time, and they kept renewing that deal for over 20 years. |
|
|
| ▲ | dartharva 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I just wish that also included Google Play Services. Google has a chokehold on all Android manufacturers preventing them of even thinking of using AOSP without Googleware |
|
| ▲ | tgv 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > You can't make restrictions on what Apple is allowed to do because Google violated some law I think you can, under the assumption that Apple's decision wasn't independent/voluntary. At least, that seems how it works for people in cases of coercion, conspiracy or impairment. |
|
| ▲ | komali2 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Forcing Google to give up one of its best products is effectively eminent domain by the government to a private company. What's wrong with that? |
| |
| ▲ | Ray20 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > What's wrong with that? The absence of a clear objective boundary of what can be taken and what cannot. And without such a boundary, such a practice could be quite widespread, with the poorest and smallest actors being the first to be subjected to it, simply because it is easier to take from them and they do not have sufficient influence on the distributing bodies. This is like theory of building socialism 101 | | |
| ▲ | komali2 a day ago | parent [-] | | > The absence of a clear objective boundary of what can be taken and what cannot. I don't understand why this is an obstacle - this issue already exists with writing laws and various countries have different solutions, all of which seem to be working kinda ok. There's the USA's constitution which isn't working so well in most cases but working great in others (free speech for example, though this is now failing), whereas other countries depend on histories of case law for example (UK). It seems to me that if a government specifically sought to target the largest and richest actors it could avoid the issue you're speaking of. Of course this would require removing the ability of capital to influence politics, maybe that's the issue you mean? | | |
| ▲ | Ray20 a day ago | parent [-] | | >free speech for example, though this is now failing I don't quite understand what you mean. The great advantage of the American constitution in terms of freedom of speech is that it sets a relatively clear boundary. And it is obvious that in this regard the constitution copes with its task perfectly: freedom of speech in the USA is currently protected better than in any other country. It is so well protected that Americans were able to elect Trump as their leader, despite the fact that more than 80 percent of the mainstream media openly opposed him, and the government tried to shut the mouths of all his supporters under the guise of fighting dis- and misinformation (regardless of how we feel about his personality and presidency). So if we look at the freedom of speech in the current US on a historical scale, we see exactly the opposite of what you saying: we see how freedom of speech in the US has once again stood firm despite the strongest opposition. > Of course this would require removing the ability of capital to influence politics You describe it as if it is something ordinary, not something catastrophic. Just to understand, if the government gets enough power to deprive capital of ability to influence politics - we get Nazi Germany or Russia. In the best case. At worst - the USSR, North Korea or Kampuchea | | |
| ▲ | komali2 a day ago | parent [-] | | > freedom of speech in the USA is currently protected better than in any other country. I don't know every country so I'm not sure if this is true, but it seems to me free speech was decently well protected up to a certain point and so long as you didn't threaten American hegemony. For example there was a long era where you were able to be jailed for being a communist or speaking out against American wars. Or often speech as protest, such as during the civil rights era, was violently put down. Aesthetically Americans seem to enjoy decent free speech but only so long as it doesn't meaningfully challenge the government. Protests are almost always violently suppressed in America it seems. Recently the Americans' free speech rights seem to be degrading even further with media being ejected from the press room or sued by the president. Not to mention the chilling effect of calls by prominent politicians to do violence (typically deportation) to various dissidents such as anti Israeli voices. Other countries elect unpopular politicians, that's not really unique. The American right to call for violence or use slurs against minorities is I suppose unique, I'm not sure why someone would be proud that that right remains unsullied when the bits of free speech that actually matter are being stripped away but so it goes. > Just to understand, if the government gets enough power to deprive capital of ability to influence politics - we get Nazi Germany or Russia. In the best case. At worst - the USSR, North Korea or Kampuchea I find this very interesting because you're the first person I've met to openly defend corruption, or the American word for it, lobbying. Most neoliberals want to "keep the good parts of capitalism" but argue that money shouldn't be able to influence politics. Or maybe you draw the line somewhere between corruption and not corruption, when discussing money influencing politics? If so where's that line for you? The PRC for a while had virtually 0 influence of capital against their government and now they're the second most powerful country on earth - arguably the most powerful, if we compare the ability of either executive leader to control the military (the parade comparison is... embarrassing to say the least). Of course capital still has some influence in the PRC but seems to be not as much as the USA given the PRC will happily nationalize things to this day, or chuck billionaires it doesn't like in prison. Taiwan seems to have less corruption the USA. The KMT are obscenely wealthy and yet still struggle to get their policy through, and have had a couple of their media stations pulled off air for corruption. The EU seems to often act against the interests of capital, as well as member nations to a certain degree. I'd be surprised if you denied this since capitalists often use this as evidence FOR the superiority of capitalism against socialism, since America's gdp is so high and businesses prefer to incorporate there. So it seems to me that Nazi Germany, Russia, USSR, North Korea are more political failures than economic ones. The Soviet Union after all did industrialize the entire empire and was the only serious challenger to American hegemony for decades. Not that I'm a fan but it was hardly a failure until it dissolved - a fate which may befall the United States after all. |
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | myko 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > With the rise of ChatGPT (I barely use Google anymore) This is interesting to me in that I find Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude much better for coding / planning work than ChatGPT |
|
| ▲ | chneu 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >built Chrome into the best browser available today haha what? Not even close to true. Chrome is a locked down money maker for Google. It is primarily a data-collection tool for Google. No way is that possibly the best browser available today. |
|
| ▲ | skinnymuch 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Vast majority of users are not technically literate enough to know what is a good browser. They would have no clue why Chrome is better or not. They definitely don’t know what Blink is. |
| |
| ▲ | dwoldrich 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Blink and you'll miss it! | |
| ▲ | eclipxe 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why does that matter? | | |
| ▲ | skinnymuch 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Consumers aren’t using chrome in 2025 because it’s the best. Not that the vast majority of people would know minor differences. This isn’t when Chrome came out and the differences between other browsers was large. Monopolies usually don’t maintain their status because they are “the best” and as if consumers also are informed enough to know that. Similar arguments can be made to allow basically all of big tech. In a better system instead of talking about allowing everything as if corporations are precious individuals, the govt should be creating funded competitors and being much more firm with monopolistic behavior (even if they aren’t legally monopolies) |
| |
| ▲ | doug_durham 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What is your point? | | |
| ▲ | tgv 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That the argument "Chrome is better because so many people use it" is, frankly, bullshit. Which it is. |
|
|
