Now from a technical perspective, more diversity in browser engine might be nice, but this doesn't really contribute to the competition discussion.
(my opinions, not those of my employer)
Chromium/Blink being FOSS with Google also by far being the most dominant contributor essentially allows them to wield the same sort of power over the web that Microsoft once did, except this time it’s been whitewashed with an “open” gloss that helps keep the regulators off their backs.
I think it'd make a bit of a difference, because Microsoft would now have the threat available of changing rendering engines and taking all their users with them (via Windows automatic updates). It'd be expensive and risky, so they wouldn't really want to do it, but they'd have it as leverage against any Google decisions.
If Safari had 90% market share because it was a great browser available on every OS promoted on some of the most visited websites (which, in this thought experiment, would be owned by Apple), while people were able to choose their browser on iOS, and browser vendors were able to choose the browser engine and if a version of Safari without sync were open source, that would make a difference.
WebKit has always been and still currently is a standalone browser. WebKit even has a standalone browser version for Linux too.
I see a thriving third-party ecosystem around push notifications as a marketing channel. Yes the low level APIs end up going via the central platform, but they are remarkably low level, and the business value comes from the automation, easier integration, tracking, rich notifications, etc. Companies like Urban Airship have been around for well over a decade doing this.
Are these central platforms holding you back? If so I'm interested to know what you're unable to do that you would be able to do better.
(This is all my own opinion, mostly from developing for iOS in a previous role, not that of my employer where I'm nothing to do with push)
In practice, even the US DOJ holds back, for fear their lawyers won't be as good as Apple's (or other company's). Which, on one hand, shows the relative impartiality of the court system. On the other hand, it means that just as much as a corporation would likely loose a lawsuit against a tech giant, the US government also fears that outcome.
Also, unlike a civil matter, losing an antitrust case could be disastrous for the government. The Microsoft case, for example, was a technical victory, but a practical loss that put fear in the government to use antitrust action for almost 2 decades. From their perspective, it way too much work (5 years of litigation) for too little an outcome (yay, we've decoupled Internet Explorer and got a few concessions). And the main reason why, was because the judge squawked and broke ethics rules, which was awfully unpredictable and unpreventable.
The general policy of the FTC from the 1980s until about 2020 was that mergers and market concentration are good for consumers and the economy as a whole. Just to take one example, Facebook buying Instagram 100% should have been blocked, but the DOJ under Obama, carrying on the policies of Reagan, Clinton and Bush, decided not to pursue it.
On what grounds? Instagram was a small startup with about 30M users when Facebook proffered a deal. People legitimately thought they were overpaying at the time and while it was a hot app, it became the cultural phenomenon it is today under Facebook’s stewardship.
The antitrust division of the DOJ only got $255m last year, not just to fight Apple, but to fight _all_ antitrust cases and run the division.
Apple made $97b in profits last year, and reportedly had a legal budget in excess of $1b as of 2017.
So yes, Apple's legal resources for this case are effectively infinite compared to the DOJ's.
Yes, you technically can - but your users will complain: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41511475/android-push-no...
> It's definitely possible -- you don't have to use Firebase to deliver push notifications. You can roll out your own notification solution or consider a paid product such as Pushy (pushy.me) which does not rely on Firebase Cloud Messaging. Full disclosure - I am the Founder & CEO at Pushy.
So clearly someone else has done it and built a business around it.