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Comment by cowl | Hacker News Reader

Bundling a browser with the OS that had 98% of all user share at the time. neither Apple not Google come anywhere close to that market domination with their iOS or Android systems. Also the case was much more broad that just the browser it was for software that runs on the OS. Antitrust is not just about what a company does but mainly about what other alternatives are out there. In Microsoft's case there were no other alternatives while today you can choose between several.

EDIT: One more thing that everyone seems to confuse is that antitrust cases should protect CONSUMER rights not PRODUCER rights. A case can be made that Google and Apple are hurting other companies by offering free services with their products but they ARE NOT HURTING CONSUMERS.

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Google only has about 85% marketshare in phones, 96% in Search, still problematic.

And Producer rights are affecting Consumer rights.

Without a free market, we're all worse off — the only justified monopoly is a governmental one.

Key word here is "phones". 85% of phones is still less than half of all users seeing as mobile just surpassed desktop use sometime in 2015. And no, producer rights are not affecting consumer rights since this is a free market. I don't care how many Russian search engines or vertical product marketeers go out of business. They are going out of business because they are not offering a good enough service and I don't want google or any other search engine to channel my experience in not good enough channels just to keep their business afloat. that is not free market. When I and a plenty like me like a service we keep using it no matter if Google promotes it or not. If google had the power you are fear-mongering about we would not have FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

> If google had the power you are fear-mongering about we would not have FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

All of them were started before Google even started competing with them.

Show me a company started after Google had already established a presence in a market that’s either competing with Google (and having a positive prediction) or that has thrown Google out of the market at all.

it doesn't matter is they are established before or after. all it matters is that users have the choice and choosing these (and other) products over the Google provided ones. Google has bundled a form of messenger app since forever with its services. People just keep choosing other better ones. Google has tried 2-3 time to break into the social scene but even though Google Buzz was bundled with gmail it was not used. although everyone with the gmail account had a G+ account it is not even close to FB or Twitter. The simple fact of bundling is not a problem when there are choices. Amazon even takes Android, takes out EVERY SINGLE REFERENCE to google services and uses it for it's own products. So android can not be considered in any form monopolistic because it offers choices does not block them.

> it doesn't matter is they are established before or after.

Yes, it does, that’s the entire point.

Will we still see as much innovation in 10, 20 years? For that, this part is very important.

> The simple fact of bundling is not a problem when there are choices.

Google forbids OEMs from selling custom Android forks. That’s not choice.

As said, both the EU and US consider this anticompetitive, and are investigating it. If you believe you – which apparantly are unable to use correct orthography – are more knowledged than the top lawyers of the two largest economies, then, sure, go on.

Even Google has admitted they are doing anticompetitive bundling, their defense is that it’s required to fund Android at all. That alone should say everything.

Google forbids OEMs from un-bundling it-s other services not android. OEMs have the choice to build an Android with no Google service whatsoever like Amazon or some Chinese OEMs are doing. What they can not do is offer an Android while picking what google app they offer. Google apps are take it all or leave it for OEMs. for users they can choose to install what they like. I do not believe that I am more knowledged that Lawers but seeing already in plenty other examples that EU is more worried about businesses than consumers I can say that these is just another misuse of the antitrust rules.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Google does not license the Google Play Services to be bundled by OEMs who sell custom Android forks?

Not really, because Google also retroactively removes the license for devices already in production if the OEM later on decides to sell forked devices, as was threatened with Acer.

Or even just delivers parts for such a device, as was threatened with SAMSUNG and Amazon.

I really don't want to defend Microsoft, but Internet Explorer won all that market share because back in the day IExplorer really was the best browser available. And given what happened next, I'm actually grateful for the IExplorer monopoly, because Firefox wouldn't have happened otherwise.

We tend to forget that even natural monopolies can be broken by new technology and innovation. And even big companies can be beaten by smaller ones. Microsoft tried to beat Google at search while Google was smaller and much less powerful than it is today. They couldn't, because big companies have a priority to protect their cash cows and don't necessarily have the talent or the focus required to tackle new markets (i.e. the innovator's dilemma). Google tried to beat Facebook at social. They also failed by being too conservative, while at the same time fucking their users. Can you spot a pattern?

I accept Microsoft followed many predatory and anti-competitive practices. They were a nightmare and deserved a good anti-trust kicking.

But hammering them for bundling a browser was just plain stupid. If they didn't bundle a browser, how would people download a competing browser? You'd have had to get hold of a browser on CD somewhere and install it manually just to use the internet. How would that have been an improvement for consumers? It was a misconceived, user-hostile decision.

By bundling competing browsers

    ftp ftp.netscape.com

You've convinced me. Ordinary consumers should be expected to know how to use command line tools and have memorized service addresses, without having browser access to look any of it up. That's clearly the answer to improve usability and expand consumer access in this situation. How could I not have seen it sooner.

Windows explorer supports ftp. Type ftp://ftp.mozilla.org into your run menu or explorer address bar and you'll get a folder view pop-up. From there it should be rather trivial to find Firefox from inside their ftp directory (not as simple as clicking a download button, but still). I'm not sure if getfirefox.com runs an ftp server.

I'm not aware of any popular OS that doesn't have ftp support on the main UI (except Android, which doesn't have a file management app anyways; not sure about iOS). Nautilus has ftp support. So does thunar, dolphin, konq, etc. You can type ftp addresses into the address bar in osx, iirc.

I recall a couple occasions:

- Didn't want to open a browser one day but wanted to download the latest version of FF. Thought I'd try FTP. Ultimately gave up on trying to find the right path and Googled it.

Another time (later), I vaguely recall being at a kiosk with IE disabled in various boring ways, and I tried to see if I could download FF (just to see if it was possible) after successfully managing to open the FTP site. I might be misremembering, but I think the only reason I was able to locate the dir properly was because I'd previously made a careful mental note where it was. (It downloaded, but executables were disabled. Those sysadmins did a good job.)

True story: Back when I was doing desktop tech support, downloading Ad Aware via command line FTP was a favored method of mine when the user's browser was so fucked by spyware that it was inoperative.

Life before bundled browsers and Google:

"Sue, how do I get that browser thingie?"

"Erm, Jane wrote it down for me... here's the Post-It"

"Thanks."

We survived OK.

At the time, before browsers were standard equipment, ftp was a normal way to obtain software. There were gui ftp clients available at the time, but I have no idea how people usually got those (whether dialup bbs, downloading with the bundled default ftp utility, passed on a disk by a friend, or bought on a disk).

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