And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.

Honestly, what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform. I really think anyone who has any sort of confusion about what I commented here to take a long, hard look at their worldview.

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dpark 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.

Is your proposal essentially that Mozilla defines web standards Google is legally bound to implement them?

> what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion

Not horrified, but asking what the alternative is. I don’t think you’ve actually got a sensible proposal.

Cooperation in the WHATWG is voluntary. Even if there were some workable proposal for how to drive web standards without Google having any decision making power, they could (and presumably would) decline to participate in any structure that mandated what they have to build in Chrome. Absent legal force, no one can make Google cede their investment in web standards.

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ocdtrekkie 7 hours ago | parent [-]

We have the legal force to do this. Google has already been determined to be abusing their illegal monopoly they have with Chrome. The penalty phase is ongoing, but consider that even forcing Google to sell Chrome was originally considered as a possible penalty.

Requiring Google implement the standards as agreed by Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft is not remotely outside the realm of the legal force that could be applied.

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dpark 7 hours ago | parent [-]

There’s something not quite right about saying one member of an oligopoly should be forced to follow the dictates of the other members of an oligopoly. I don’t feel like this actually solves anything.

I feel like Mozilla would end up being a Google proxy in this case as they fear losing their funding and Apple and Microsoft would be incentivized to abuse their position to force Google not to do the best thing for the public but the best thing for Apple and Microsoft.

	▲	moron4hire 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah, that feels like State-sponsored formalizing of oligopolies into a cartels. We'd like it if they went in the complete opposite direction of less power, not more.
	▲	ocdtrekkie 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I agree there's already a significant proxy risk with Mozilla (though Mozilla does consider many Google web proposals harmful today), but that is also no less true today, and in fact, today that means Google holds two votes not one. I would again agree Microsoft and Apple will heavily endorse their own interests, Microsoft much more so in terms of enterprise requirements and Apple much more so in terms of privacy-concerned consumers. The advertising firm influence will be significantly dimished and that is a darn shame.

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fngjdflmdflg 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform

They don't. In general browser specs are defined via various standards groups like WHATWG. As far as I know there is no standard for what image formats must be supported on a web browser,[0] which is why in this one case any browser can decide to support an image format or not.

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...