US Court Rules Google a Monopoly in 'Biggest Antitrust Case of the 21st Century'.

Would be nice if we didn't let them kill off so many other businesses first before doing something about it.

Too big to fail financial industry should go first.

I still don't understand how the Californian government bailed them out when they were bankrupt, yet they were allowed to remain an independent company? Why didn't the government take full control?

Electricity in cities in the Bay Area that have their own municipal power company (like Palo Alto and Santa Clara) is literally 1/3 the cost of PG&E.

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.

Their market dominance isn't because of anticompetitive practices, it's because of customer-friendly practices. People like it, so people use it.

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

Steam isn't actually a monopoly in a meaningful way

Where companies with monopolies are found to gain that title by ousting competitors and brutal buyouts and tactics literally every time, Valve exists. Literally. They just exist. Big difference between a monopoly and the best.

Other companies also exist. In fact there are several launchers and two other digital distributors, and several websites, where one can purchase games. There are some things Steam is shit on. The still feels old interface as a broad example. Competitors could push in, like Epic. Instead, they manage to create the next step up from a gold-tainted dung pile, shit on their own launcher or store stability and performance, and create an experience so bad that Steam is able, through the fuckups of their rivals, maintain a market majority.

Huh.

Maybe it's just the games I play, but I mostly hear people in MMO's ranting about steam and swearing they'll never use it (or never use it again). At least some of these people have seemingly zero personal issues with Amazon gaming, arc, epic, gog, and a few other steam clones.

I realize that by the numbers, steam is probably still the biggest, but unlike that early half-life debacle, most games are on multiple platforms now. Steam being bigger isn't what I'd call monopolistic anymore, it's just good sales on games and inertia.

Given epic's often BETTER sales, despite the fact that I really dislike the layout and functionality of the epic client, most of what steam has going for it is the deck and inertia.

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.

SHHHH!!!

Monopolies and authoritarians aren't bad as long as people like them! Hadn't you heard?

depends on when it hits the supreme court, for sure.

didn't someone just say google was 'very bad' and should be 'shut down'? ...someone that helped stack the court to its current composition?

Stop making me sad, sir!!!

They want them to meet all of their impossibly high and contradictory standards at the same time. For free. What's so hard about that?? /s

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.

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.

I don’t know what the hell people want from them.

these people are probably already using forks anyway

Supporting the ad-driven internet

The thing is that there's not really a good alternative. There's real costs in running a service - servers, bandwidth, staff, etc. Either you pay for content directly (subscription services), someone else pays for you (which is the case with many Lemmy servers where admins are paying out of their own pockets), or ads cover the cost for you. People want to use the web for free, so ad-supported content is going to be around for a long time.

Throw in a 4 wheeler and you've got a deal

Shit, Google would probably offer a private jet fuck an RV.

one can hope lol

The example is Amazon who have their own ARM CPUs for their datacenters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWS_Graviton

Yeah it is a french expression, the english equivalent is " a long harvest for a little corn "

Here is a link to read about it, its meaning and use and its equivalent in other languages : link

you need to get checked out, every fediverse user knows that means Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Yeah but they ended up investing in apple to avoid more serious antitrust litigation from becoming a complete monopoly, and Linux ruined their chances of dominating the server maketshare.

Google just took it and did it more discretly over a longer period of time.

I'm not talking about replacing your VHS collection but buying DVDs in addition. You would still watch both. Maybe buying a DVD player was a barrier. But it wasn't that you owned VHS.

Because they're engaging in harmful behaviors and need to be broken up and regulated.