Maybe we should not let companies to work in a lot of areas. For example Amazon, SaaS IaaS Paas Ecommerce, ARM processors, among others. Maybe we should contain megadiversified enterprises??
Not sure why ARM is on your angry list. They are more than happy to sell rights to other manufacturers. As far as I can tell, they have not done anything wrong, yet.
Edit: Funny how I was replying to a comment with examples of companies that wish they had 70% of the market under their control yet people didn't disagree with OP but bringing up Valve? Oh man, Gaben can do no wrong! 70% of the market under the control of a company owned by a single man? No problemo!
I agree, sort of. People may be right to point out that it's not only about a dominant position but also about abusing that market power to lock people in. Still I think our entire platform-economy is a little problematic. People want one-stop-shopping because it's really convenient, and people tend to go to platforms where others already are. So most people stick with Steam, Spotify, Uber, Whatsapp, etc. I don't think this has to be a problem, if indeed these platform are in a way neutral, free, not abusing their power. Sometimes these platforms already behave in responsible manner, but there really is no guarantee that this will stay that way. Everything with a dominant position can be enshittified, including Steam. What we need are FOSS decentralized platforms! Platforms where everyone comes together are so important, that they shouldn't be left to for-profit companies, people should come together in public squares.
Steam? Really out of all these, the the one that treats it's customers properly and gives them any and all tools needed to make a proper purchase decision with many big sales consistently. Great call
You can't break up steam and improve the market in any particular way. Since they're not really big on exclusivity agreements, there's also very little a court order would do to make the market more competitive.
This is a big deal, but just a reminder that this is the District (trial) court, so the next step would be the Circuit Court of Appeals, followed by an appeal to the Supreme Court. There may be some intriguing injunctions that come out of this, but we're years away from a final disposition.
For the curious, this one came out of the DC Circuit, informally known to be the most technically and administratively savvy circuit, as it deals with a LOT of nitty gritty stuff coming out of Federal agencies.
In a healthy market new browsers need to be able to enter.. but browsers are so complex from the reckless, endless feature creep that creating a new browser securely (or at all) is unreasonable. (Luckily they are open source and can be forked but the changes are minor compared to the base. A Chromium for is still Chromium at the end of the day).
Browsers end when the last remaining one makes it so profitable for the creator at the users' expense that using smaller, individual apps for parts of browser functionality overcomes any convenience they once had.
Supporting the ad-driven internet is contrary to what is wanted by many users of Firefox/flavors and there is no alternative. It was said that they would destroy the Sith, not join them.
Its seriously absurd. I hate ads, but there's realistically not a better option to profit when providing free software and services like Mozilla is doing. Investing into ads that don't violate your privacy is a great decision. I don't know what the hell people want from them.
People don't seem to realise that developing a browser (a real one, not Chrome with a different paint job), web rendering engine, having the top-notch security expertise that building a modern web engine requires, plus being on the board that decides web standards is expensive.
It's honestly at a similar scale and complexity to OS development.
We're talking hundreds of millions a year to do the work that Mozilla needs to do. People who say "oh I'd chip in a dollar or two, but only if they get rid of all other funding" as if it's feasible kind of get on my nerves because they clearly don't see the big picture.
Any time Mozilla tries to diversify their income while still being broadly privacy-respecting they're branded as evil or too corporate. Any time they ask for donations they're being greedy beggars. When they take Google's money they're shills for big tech. They can't win. People want Mozilla to work for free.
They should do it like Signal: accept donations. Signal is doing just fine. But Mozilla cannot legally do that as they are a for-profit company. And Mozilla Foundation won't do that either because they are funded by Mozilla and under their command.
we have so many freaking monopolies now a days. we really need to keep companies from owning so much. bring back the media limits and no company should be able to own multiple areas of healthcare and such.
Will this mean that no one will be able to pay to be the default search, or just that Google will no longer be allowed?
Honestly, Google is still the best free search even though it isn't as good as it used to be... and if this ruling means that no one can pay to be the default then Google will still win based on name recognition and performance. Plus they will save money by not needing to give it to Apple.
The real loser here is Apple who is going to lose a fairly large revenue stream.
I imagine that, if regulators go hard enough, it'll make sweeping changes company-wide. Google does a lot of anti-competitive behaviors that don't involve money and are very sneaky, and as a result, we might see a lot of features be changed in the long term.