In light of articles all over Lemmy about Google pushing ManifestV3 onto Chrome and the majority of web users, isn't that an antitrust violation?

Technology@lemmy.world – 710 points – 12 months ago

So as I understand it, Google’s using it’s monopoly market position to force web “standards” unilaterally (without an independent/conglomerate web specification standards where Google is only one of many voices) that will disadvantage its competitors and force people to leave its competitors.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm a fledgling tech guy, but this sounds like abuse of a monopoly. Google which serves 75% of the world's ads and has 75% of the browser market share seems to want to use its market power to annihilate people's privacy and control over their web experience.

So we can file a complaint with FTC led by Lina Khan who has been the biggest warrior against abuse by big tech in the US.

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation

We can also file a complaint with the DOJ:

https://www.justice.gov/atr/citizen-complaint-center

And there have to be EU, UK, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese organizations that we can file antitrust complaints to.

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At the time Firefox was clunky, unpopular, and did not have good compatibility across all sites

Firefox was an excellent, fast, highly compatible, alternative to Internet Explorer. It was already winning when Chrome came on the scene. However, Firefox actually got more clunky and slower over time, so Chrome was a breath of fresh air in comparison. People like me who used Firefox back from version 0.6 jumped to Chrome because it was doing what Firefox used to do. Chrome was a genuinely better product for a long time, but then like Firefox, it too got slower and more clunky. Meanwhile, Firefox saw what they were up against and went back to their roots. Firefox has gotten a lot better in the last couple years.

Google also significantly pushed Chrome adoption by encouraging people to download it in Google search and Gmail.

That's probably true, but when I bailed on IE I tried both and Chrome was the better. I must have missed that early Firefox beats Chrome era. Even so I do remember having compatibility problems with Firefox on some sites and I simply couldn't stand the settings interface. In any case the current awfulness of Chrome removes any question. Chrome is only going downhill and it will probably pick up the pace.

Firefox compatibility got worse as Chrome became more popular. There was a time when Firefox was the standard that everyone developed to. I'm talking like 2003-2004 period. Case in point, to this day Chrome identifies itself as Firefox to websites to get the "Firefox" version of a webpage as opposed to the Internet Explorer version.