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Comment by halo | Hacker News Reader

Dramatic headline with little-to-no information. Sounds like utter scaremongering.

I don't really see how Google can face an antitrust challenge over Chrome: they don't dominate the browser space, they aren't product-tying or doing anything that could be construed as abusive, they don't even force you to use their search engine within Chrome, and the entire source is offered permissively and they've encouraged other vendors to use it in their products. If anything they are /encouraging/ competition in the browser space.

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I agree. I don't think Google cares much about the browser market itself. They just want to be able to create really great web apps and they're frustrated by how slow the industry has progressed. Every web company will benefit if Chrome accelerates the pace.

I think they'd be perfectly okay with a version of Chrome they don't control becoming the most popular browser. As long as it continued to advance the state of web apps they will have succeeded.

I believe Microsoft has (mostly intentionally) slowed progress in web browser technology so they have time to figure out what the hell to do. Google is trying to break the stalemate. They're probably the only company powerful enough to have a real chance at forcing Microsoft to get off its ass. Firefox has mostly failed at this.

If they do a good job with Chrome it will be the healthiest thing to happen to the internet in many years.

I can't say that I understand the subtleties, but I imagine the case would need to be built on Google's monopoly in the search engine market, not the browser market.

I don't see how they have a monopoly on the search engine market. It is definitely the most popular and probably the best search engine, but there is definitely no limit on other adequate alternatives. A monopoly occurs when a company controls a product or service significantly enough to significantly control the terms people must follow access it. Google hardly does this. Most people might choose them, but they don't need to in order to access a search engine. For example, if tomorrow Google decided to start charging a buck a search, 99.9% of their users would instantly switch search engines with very little ill effects.

Heh, try this for size: "I don't see how they have a monopoly on the operating system market. It is definitely the most popular and probably the best operating system, but there is definitely no limit on other adequate alternatives"

Microsoft got into trouble because they leveraged the popularity of one product (Windows) to push another (IE). Google will be fine provided they never release a feature on their website that requires Chrome. At that point, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

But IIRC, windows/IE was different: how easy was it for the typical person to run a computer without windows as their operating system? Not very, unless they bought one brand of product (Apple). However, for every service google offers, there are multiple and easily accessible alternatives. With most ISPs, Google isn't even the default search engine out of the box.

Google wouldn't make a Chrome-only feature, simply because then it wouldn't be available to the massive user base which doesn't use Chrome. Which is most people right now, and will probably continue to be most people.

I think that depends. If Chrome actually enabled features otherwise impossible, they might. At least they'd have a rational reason too (as would all developers). Maybe Gears is more of a candidate for this.

That's not necessarily true. Look at GMail for example, it has two modes, a "basic" view for people who don't have/want all the fancy Javascript.

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