Comment on Arch Linux and Valve Collaboration
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 month agolike Microsoft with Apple in 1997
wccftech.com/microsoft-invested-150-million-in-ap…
Google with Mozilla today
That’s funny because this is the opposite of what you seem to be suggesting. This is not helping their competition, this is paying another company hundreds of million dollars to be anticompetitive against their competition. They paid Mozilla (and dozens of others) to be the default search engine. Its the exact anticompetitive behavior that caused them to be legally classified as a monopoly.
Google has multiple ventures: advertising, search engine, email, web browser, cloud storage, cloud infrastructure, etc.
I’m not saying they don’t get any other benefit from paying Mozilla. I’m saying that one of the reasons Google shovels money in their direction is to stop regulators from having a reason to take a closer look at Chrome’s dominance.
In terms of browser engines, we have: Blink (Chromium), WebKit2 (Safari), and Gecko (Firefox). WebKit2 is exclusive to Apple devices, which leaves Blink and Gecko as the only two browser engines available on Windows and Linux. If Mozilla went bankrupt and stopped developing Gecko, Google’s Blink engine would have no competition on non-Apple platforms, which would invite some regulatory scrutiny.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Didn’t know about the MS/Apple thing, thanks.
I hardly think this could be considered “helping” Apple.
I really don’t think they do. And the contracts reflect as much.
Regardless, none of this has anything to do with my point that no companies have an obligation to help their competition, which you’ve already agreed with, so maybe I’m missing your point.
pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 month ago
No, yeah. We both agree here. Zero obligation for a company to help it’s competition, and the likely reason they would ever do it is either to profit or avoid regulatory scrutiny.