Comment on Google criticizes Europe's plan to adopt free software

pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• johncandy1812@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In a lot of cases (like Mozilla), they supported these efforts to legally maintain their monopoly over digital services.

  Google is an ad company, they are using their size and influence to redesign the rules of the internet to ensure their presence can’t be bypassed or controlled by the end user.

  They want all internet traffic to pass through them.

  Burn Google to the ground I say.

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  • hector@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So they supported open source just enough to say there is competition and their products are the most popular because they are superior and not because of our anti competitive behavior? And they supported mozilla at one point? Too bad mozilla is going to hell now too I might have to switch.

    Do you have any good reading on this? I would be interested in learning the details of google supporting open source as a foil to accusations they are an illegal monopoly/trust and whatever else.

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    • johncandy1812@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The EU currently has stronger Anti-Trust laws than the North American countries so most a lot of what is public comes from their courts.

      This wiki is a good start.

      en.wikipedia.org/…/Antitrust_cases_against_Google…

      The case with Mozilla is the most obvious in terms of funding direct competition to maintain the semblance of competition with Chrome. Google really dislike adblockers so they’ve been throwing their weight around with Mozilla and the HTML5 protocols (as best I understand it) to prevent people from using adblockers in the future.

      One of the first instances that I can recall was when Google acquired Youtube. There were critics who worried about the lack of competition in video hosting. Google assured legislators that things were fine because they still had Google Video at the time. Controlling those two allowed them to dominate the video hosting space. Google video was eventually phased out, with hosting being diverted to Youtube.

      IIRC Google were also throwing their weight around when it came to buying up portions of the wireless spectrum in NA. Again, to prevent other, smaller organizations from gaining a foothold in the mobile industry.

      These are mostly off the top of my head from watching their practices over the last 20 years or so there may be corrections to this.

      Sorry for not having more direct sources for you but I will continue looking for some and will update when I get a chance.

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