those tables usually are wrong or misleading, i don't like them.
Edge for example has the 3rd party cookie blocking and it works ok, so why it's "no" and not "somewhat" or similar?
I dont see the line "3rd party cookie blocking"
should be "prevent sites from tracking". Or they carefully chose that sentence in order to give a "no" to edge and "somewhat" to chrome and opera
Firefox uses a built-in domain blocklist for tracking protection, in addition to blocking third party cookies
Although that would not explain why Chrome and Opera pass that at all to begin with IMO. Maybe these browsers enforce their own additional data silos or other deviations from specs when in Private Browsing mode. I know Chrome for example shrinks the storage provision for various JS APIs down to practically nothing when in Incognito mode, which can break things like Teams Web etc when you start sharing files.
Either way though all marketing ever is, is just a selection of carefully chosen words. In this case, browsers too, as there's no Brave there (I'm not a fan of Brave anyway, but worth noting)
Precisely why these "feature comparisons" are bogus.
It's this.
Firefox' total cookie protection does not block third party cookies, it isolates them in separate jars for each website....
Total Cookie Protection works by creating a separate “cookie jar” for each website you visit. Instead of allowing trackers to link up your behavior on multiple sites, they just get to see behavior on individual sites. Any time a website, or third-party content embedded in a website, deposits a cookie in your browser, that cookie is confined to the cookie jar assigned to only that website. No other websites can reach into the cookie jars that don’t belong to them and find out what the other websites’ cookies know about you — giving you freedom from invasive ads and reducing the amount of information companies gather about you.
The 'Enforce users choice' is just GPC on by default I believe. Which means nothing since it is still voluntary.
By that logic Linux supports windows because I can run it using wine.
Yeah I’m confused about what tracking Chrome blocks that Chredge does not.
Does it, though? Or does Microsoft come under the second party label
if i enable it, most websites don't load ads at all, including MSN news that's ad-ridden
the 'msn news' that most people see is the 'start' page that's baked into the edge browser. ubo does not work on it. for users that actually want that page, i clean up the start page settings and throw a bookmark to msn.com on their toolbar instead so ubo works.
I think this is a shitpost of the highest order. If this appears to everyone (?) it adds nothing, and the crappy table is just astonishingly blatant cherry-picking.
That's how all these tables are. If a vendor presents a table comparing themselves to competitors, it's going to be cherry picked.
I think it's a work of love. :)
It seems to trigger discussions like yours, so it's good, a forum is for discussion.
astonishingly blatant cherry-picking
Did you expect them to create a table showing how mediocre they are?
Copy without tracking has been hit or miss for me on Firefox
I just gave up and went back to using ClearURLs add-on. Nothing else seems to work as reliably, not even adding rules to uBO.
I don't use ClearURLs because it breaks some websites and doesn't implement a blacklist
Really? I haven't had it break anything at all.
I didn't get that but I guess because I have a plugin to give me nice backgrounds on new tabs.
But yeah, shots fired. Nice!
The only issue is that only already existing Firefox users see this, and we already know this.
Tabbliss represent
Yassssss
What's the extension for nice backgrounds on new tabs?
I use "renewed tab"
Thanks!
i probably had it but closed the tab before it loaded
True, but I can share it with friends who already think I'm weird because I use Linux and they can have another reason why they think I am weird.
Every brother has one of these on their site, and somehow that browser always wins
So does Simplex Chat.
Im just over here using firefox since it was still netscape navigator 2.0.
Another update? Okay
They need to add a row for "Owned by a foreign superpower""Owned by the Chinese government" and a check for Opera.
@DannyMac@Napain They are all owned by foreign powers.
Oh, your definition of "foreign" is non-US?
Everyone knows the world is divided into:
United States
Everyone Else
How is Mozilla owned by the US government?
On one hand, yeah. On the other hand, that could be a point in its favor, depending on your threat model. After all, if you're American, China can't prosecute you for secrets it learns from Opera the way the FBI could prosecute you for secrets it learns from Google.
On the third hand it's pointless cause they all buy each other's data anyways.
Honestly I don't see the reason they put that there. I already own Firefox why are you trying to win me over?
People tend to have multiple browsers. You might have FireFox installed but still not be aware why you should use it over other browsers on your computer.
This is a very good reason to put this kind of page in. For less computer savvy people, they may vaguely know "if I click this fox icon it takes me to the Internet and so does this colorful circle and this blue swoosh, so it's all the same" but when they accidentally open one they use less often, seeing something like this might push their preference a little for which one they open
i do the multiple browsers thing, but it's firefox, firefox developer, and librewolf (i also have a seamonkey and a waterfox on one system). and they can all run at the same time without conflicting with another.
the few instances where i need a chromium-based one, it's a fresh 'install' of a portable 'alternative' like vivaldi or opera from portableapps (or via appimage on linux) and then deleted when i'm done with it.
You're not a typical user or the target audience.
Oh that makes sense. I just assumed people who have Firefox would know stuff like that since Chrome is usually the one people know about but yeah it could have already been in the OC or they just searched for a different one randomly.
For the newbies
Conveniently excluding Vivaldi browser.
They included the biggest browsers. They don't need to include every single browser in existence.
Youch, that's just mean!
I know, right? Where's my entry for lynx, dang it?!
Holy crap, do people still use lynx? (asked in an endearing tone)
yes, I do! helps me to quickly search for information without leaving my beloved terminal. in fact, I have added a custom theme to it(Dracula). I've aliased it to open mojeek by default.
if i'm feeling fancy, then only I fire up librewolf.
You are too cool for school if you use lynx!
mojeek and lynx together, love this combo!
If it's going to be about privacy, they should at least include the privacy oriented browsers even if they aren't the biggest ones out there.
And DuckDuckGo Browser
And lynx
And Brave too, which inconveniently beats firefox hands down in independent privacy checks. The mozilla foundation finally needs to step it up.
That heavily depends. Brave may have better advice/tracker blocking by default, but they send more telemetry. Them being an advertising company also doesn’t speak for them. Brave is a decent browser and on IOS/IPadOS a good option for open source + Adblock, but max privacy would be reconfigured Firefox or Librewolf.
I have no idea why you were down voted. These are facts, not opinions
Fact: Brave is a protection racket wrapped in a crypto scam.
Even if it weren't for the crypto, Brave's CEO is one sleazy, untrustworthy motherfucker. I'd never put my privacy in his hands. Just an absolute dogshit reputation.
I figured there was enough to criticize without needing to resort to ad-hominem attacks against the CEO. However, if we're going there, then I'd be remiss not to point out that he's also the motherfucker who inflicted Javascript upon the world when we could've had a decent language like Python or Scheme in the browser instead. Not to downplay the significance of his bigotry, but that's almost the greatest sin of them all!
Homophobes always come bundled with a lot of other problems. There's no way anyone can trust a homophobe of any kind.
Anyway, blocking you. Have a great life, asshole.
Edit: Bonus fuck javascript
Edit 2: This was so wrong of me, I'm sorry. I'm an ass. Leaving my comment for honesty's sake.
Hey Linky… friendly fire!
That guy was agreeing with you:
Brave bad
JavaScript bad
Bigotry bad
:)
Yeah sorry about that. I see that now. Unblocking engaged.
I'm so used to people trying to shut other people down for "ad hominem attacks" that I had a real misfire. That's embarrassing and wrong of me. Thank you for so gently pointing this out, I appreciate it.
It's also yet another Chromium fork which if there's one thing the world does not need more of, it's Chromium forks
Fact: your opinion is based on snippets of things you heard online and doesn't actually match reality 🤷
Fact: your opinion is based on snippets of things you heard online and doesn’t actually match reality 🤷
My facts come directly from Brave's own claims, so fuck off with your condescension, fanboi. Your dismissive trolling isn't welcome here.
Find me a claim from Brave's that it's a protection racket.
Find me a claim from Brave's that it's a crypto scam. NOT just that they use crypto, but that it's a scam.
And before you start, a blanket statement of "all crypto is a scam" is not a fact. It's hyperbole and your opinion.
So do you actually have "facts"? Or did you just present opinions as facts?
Of course criminals aren't going to admit that they're criminals. But when they describe their behavior (in this case, man-in-the-middle replacing sites' ads with their own and then extorting them to participate in the crypto scheme in order to replace the revenue) anybody objective would recognize that it is, in fact, criminal.
Sadly its not just "heard". Just google it, you will find enough "incidents" brave had.
If only Firefox on Android doesn't refresh the pages every time I switch to another app and back to Firefox (and even showing only black screen), just to input 2FA code or card detail. It becomes really annoying.
The desktop browser is pretty fine though.
Android is really aggressive with killing background apps
I'd rather them just put up the results of the chrome lawsuit rather than a marketing table lol.
You love it?
I bet you hate Google doing self ads?
Yet this is also just a self ad. And spammy, because it pops open a tab, something browsers are supposed to suppress unless specifically enabled.
This is a false equivalence.
If Google advertises the merits of their browser within their browser, like Mozilla is doing here, then that's fair enough, I have zero complaints about that. Why not have a welcome page when you install the browser, highlighting the benefits of using your product?
If Google is utilising their other products to unfairly give themselves a leg up in advertising their browser, then yeah, I'm against that.
If I search on Google (the de facto standard), I shouldn't have popups telling me to use Chrome. If I watch a YouTube video, Google shouldn't be allowed to place Chrome ads there.
Same goes for MS relentlessly advertising Edge in Windows and forcing it into other Microsoft programs.
Those are examples of companies abusing their monopolistic market position to gain a business advantage, which is illegal. It's nothing like Mozilla having a Firefox ad within Firefox.
I tend to agree here. It's like Netflix showing banners of what content they have, on their own site.
"Here are some features of this product you have!" Intrusive, maybe, but not like they're directing you away to pay more money.
But what about Duckduckgo advertising its browser on its search homepage? Would that be a problem too? Or is it only because Google has a dominant position in search?
Would it be an issue for Apple to advertise its browser on macOS? Every time I get a system update on macOS, I get a "what's new" thing for Safari, even though I never use it (Firefox is my default browser on my work computer). Is that okay? Is it okay if Microsoft does it as well?
What about Mullvad advertising its browser on its webpage, which is selling a VPN service? Mullvad Browser integrates Mullvad VPN features, so it's directly related, kind of like how Chrome integrates Google Search features and Safari integrates macOS features.
I'm not sure where I stand here. Saying company X can't do what company Y can do just because company X has a dominant position just feels wrong. I'm all for attacking abuse of dominance, I just think this argument is a little weak.
The abuse of market position makes it far worse, and I'd argue illegal under existing competition law.
Your other examples are annoyances for sure, but not straight up anti-competitive/probably illegal.
The way you describe the MacOS one makes it sound like a system update change log, an entirely different thing.
Saying company X can't do what company Y can do just because company X has a dominant position just feels wrong
Why?
One would be abusing monopolistic power, the other isn't.
The way you describe the MacOS one makes it sound like a system update change log, an entirely different thing.
Yeah, it's a "what's new" OS update, but that includes Safari features, which isn't strictly an OS thing. Microsoft got a lot of flak for including IE with the OS (well, a bit more than that, they tried to block Netscape from accessing "private" APIs that IE had access to), and it seems to follow that Apple should get a similar amount of flak for having an unfair advantage with Safari having access to OS features before anything else.
One would be abusing monopolistic power, the other isn’t.
Is advertising "abusing monopolistic power"? I get Microsoft getting hit with anti-trust because they actively prevented competition, but both MS and Apple advertise their other products through their OS (e.g. IE and Safari, Office 365 and iCloud, etc).
Google should absolutely get hit with anti-trust when they are shown to make their sites perform worse on other browser engines (happens a lot w/ Firefox, where just changing user-agent improves perf). But I'm not so sure that they should be hit with anti-trust for advertising their other products, because that's an establish practice.
A changelog is a changelog. If safari updates are in OS updates, then yeah that's where the changes will be listed.
Microsoft got a lot of flak for including IE with the OS [...] Apple should too
In a completely different market.
At the time, browsers were sold as standalone software. MS including it was an unfair advantage in that context.
Nowadays browsers aren't distributed in that way, installing another browser takes seconds and they're free. It's nowhere near as anti-competitive.
Is advertising "abusing monopolistic power"?
Please don't distort my words. I never said that. You know exactly what I said and the meaning behind it.
Google using their position in Search and on YouTube and Gmail to push you to install Chrome is an abuse of market position.
I never said advertising is an abuse of monopolistic power and you know that.
I don't know why you're being so needlessly combative here?
I'm not trying to be combative, just wondering what the policy would look like.
A changelog is a changelog
Sure, and I would expect to see the Safari changelog when I launch Safari. But I get it when I upgrade my OS, and Safari (in my eyes) isn't an OS feature. I don't use Safari, so seeing Safari changelog is an ad. Likewise for Edge on Windows, I don't use Edge, so seeing an Edge changelog from an OS update is an ad (not sure if MS still does that, I haven't used Windows in years).
Google advertises its products on its search page. Microsoft advertises its products on its OS (initial run, pretty much every update). Apple does the same with macOS.
So what exactly is the proposed change? Do we block advertising for other products if you have a certain share of the market? Or does it come down to the manner of advertising?
In my mind, "monopolistic behavior" means doing something to undermine competition. If you're merely pushing your own services and not interfering with other options, I don't think that's anti-competitive. For example, is Valve's pushing of its Steam Deck on their store anti-competitive? Valve is dominant on the PC gaming market and I wouldn't be surprised if they're dominant in handheld PC gaming as well (e.g. compare to Ayaneo, Asus ROG Ally, etc). That sounds similar to how Google is dominant in both search and browser market share. I don't think Valve should be treated as a monopoly though since they're not really doing monopoly things (no exclusives except a handful of Valve-made titles, no special discount for using Steam Deck, etc).
I get it, Google is bad, but what exactly are they doing that's bad that should be restricted? What exactly should the law look like? We can't punish companies because we feel they're doing bad things, we need a system of laws that specifically lays out what's not okay. AFAIK, Google doesn't meet the current standard, so what exactly should that standard be?
Sure, and I would expect to see the Safari changelog when I launch Safari. But I get it when I upgrade my OS, and Safari (in my eyes) isn't an OS feature.
But if its updates are packaged with the OS updates, it makes sense for its changelog to be shown alongside the rest of the OS update.
Google advertises its products on its search page [...] So what exactly is the proposed change? Do we block advertising for other products if you have a certain share of the market?
Yes. And the percentage of the market share is already defined in antitrust law.
In my mind, "monopolistic behavior" means doing something to undermine competition.
Such as using your monopolistic position in Search to push your browser?
If you're merely pushing your own services and not interfering with other options, I don't think that's anti-competitive.
How isn't it? How is that fair competition?
For example, is Valve's pushing of its Steam Deck on their store anti-competitive? Valve is dominant on the PC gaming market
Perhaps. But it's also worth remembering that Steam is literally Valve's store, of course they sell steam decks there.
People go to storefronts with the explicit intention of buying things. I don't go to a search engine or email client with the expectation of having popups telling me to install a browser.
If I went onto Google's storefront, I wouldn't be upset about them selling Pixel phones there. I'd expect that their store would have their products for sale.
I get it, Google is bad
Nonono. No. I know your angle here, and it's a clever one, but I'm not falling for it.
Don't attempt to reduce my argument against abuse of market position to being some kind of fanboyish "hur dur Google bad, amirite guys?" - that's not my argument. I've explained what my argument is.
but what exactly are they doing that's bad that should be restricted?
As stated, they're abusing their monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage that cannot be achieved by their competitors.
What exactly should the law look like?
The same as it is now, just actually enforced.
We can't punish companies because we feel they're doing bad things
There you go again. Trying to reduce my argument to being reactionary and feelings-based. I've explained my view multiple times, and it has nothing to do with my feelings, and everything to do with abuse of market position.
AFAIK, Google doesn't meet the current standard, so what exactly should that standard be?
They definitely do, and they've got in trouble in the EU over it multiple times. Laws aren't always followed, and they're not always actually acted on by governments. Warranty void if removed stickers aren't legal, yet pretty much all devices have them, for example.
Tell me about it. I use nothing but Firefox right now and I hate these intrusive ads. Of course, there’s no built in way to disable it, when it could very easily be a toggle.
those tables usually are wrong or misleading, i don't like them.
Edge for example has the 3rd party cookie blocking and it works ok, so why it's "no" and not "somewhat" or similar?
I dont see the line "3rd party cookie blocking"
should be "prevent sites from tracking". Or they carefully chose that sentence in order to give a "no" to edge and "somewhat" to chrome and opera
Firefox uses a built-in domain blocklist for tracking protection, in addition to blocking third party cookies
Although that would not explain why Chrome and Opera pass that at all to begin with IMO. Maybe these browsers enforce their own additional data silos or other deviations from specs when in Private Browsing mode. I know Chrome for example shrinks the storage provision for various JS APIs down to practically nothing when in Incognito mode, which can break things like Teams Web etc when you start sharing files.
Either way though all marketing ever is, is just a selection of carefully chosen words. In this case, browsers too, as there's no Brave there (I'm not a fan of Brave anyway, but worth noting)
Precisely why these "feature comparisons" are bogus.
It's this.
Firefox' total cookie protection does not block third party cookies, it isolates them in separate jars for each website....
The 'Enforce users choice' is just GPC on by default I believe. Which means nothing since it is still voluntary.
By that logic Linux supports windows because I can run it using wine.
Yeah I’m confused about what tracking Chrome blocks that Chredge does not.
Does it, though? Or does Microsoft come under the second party label
if i enable it, most websites don't load ads at all, including MSN news that's ad-ridden
the 'msn news' that most people see is the 'start' page that's baked into the edge browser. ubo does not work on it. for users that actually want that page, i clean up the start page settings and throw a bookmark to msn.com on their toolbar instead so ubo works.
I think this is a shitpost of the highest order. If this appears to everyone (?) it adds nothing, and the crappy table is just astonishingly blatant cherry-picking.
That's how all these tables are. If a vendor presents a table comparing themselves to competitors, it's going to be cherry picked.
I think it's a work of love. :)
It seems to trigger discussions like yours, so it's good, a forum is for discussion.
Did you expect them to create a table showing how mediocre they are?
Chrome and Google 4 LYFE bro!
I like using Firefox, but it's a bit ironic to have google analytics tracking on the page you declare to protect the users privacy.
They never claimed firefox.com was privacy focused. Only your browser.
Just doesn't sit well But at least it's open source
Safari needs a tick in “copy urls without site tracking” since ios17 and macOS Sonoma
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/remove-tracking-information-urls-safari/
Copy without tracking has been hit or miss for me on Firefox
I just gave up and went back to using ClearURLs add-on. Nothing else seems to work as reliably, not even adding rules to uBO.
I don't use ClearURLs because it breaks some websites and doesn't implement a blacklist
Really? I haven't had it break anything at all.
I didn't get that but I guess because I have a plugin to give me nice backgrounds on new tabs.
But yeah, shots fired. Nice!
The only issue is that only already existing Firefox users see this, and we already know this.
Tabbliss represent
Yassssss
What's the extension for nice backgrounds on new tabs?
I use "renewed tab"
Thanks!
i probably had it but closed the tab before it loaded
True, but I can share it with friends who already think I'm weird because I use Linux and they can have another reason why they think I am weird.
Every brother has one of these on their site, and somehow that browser always wins
So does Simplex Chat.
Im just over here using firefox since it was still netscape navigator 2.0.
Another update? Okay
They need to add a row for
"Owned by a foreign superpower""Owned by the Chinese government" and a check for Opera.@DannyMac @Napain They are all owned by foreign powers.
Oh, your definition of "foreign" is non-US?
Everyone knows the world is divided into:
How is Mozilla owned by the US government?
On one hand, yeah. On the other hand, that could be a point in its favor, depending on your threat model. After all, if you're American, China can't prosecute you for secrets it learns from Opera the way the FBI could prosecute you for secrets it learns from Google.
On the third hand it's pointless cause they all buy each other's data anyways.
Honestly I don't see the reason they put that there. I already own Firefox why are you trying to win me over?
People tend to have multiple browsers. You might have FireFox installed but still not be aware why you should use it over other browsers on your computer.
This is a very good reason to put this kind of page in. For less computer savvy people, they may vaguely know "if I click this fox icon it takes me to the Internet and so does this colorful circle and this blue swoosh, so it's all the same" but when they accidentally open one they use less often, seeing something like this might push their preference a little for which one they open
i do the multiple browsers thing, but it's firefox, firefox developer, and librewolf (i also have a seamonkey and a waterfox on one system). and they can all run at the same time without conflicting with another.
the few instances where i need a chromium-based one, it's a fresh 'install' of a portable 'alternative' like vivaldi or opera from portableapps (or via appimage on linux) and then deleted when i'm done with it.
You're not a typical user or the target audience.
Oh that makes sense. I just assumed people who have Firefox would know stuff like that since Chrome is usually the one people know about but yeah it could have already been in the OC or they just searched for a different one randomly.
For the newbies
Conveniently excluding Vivaldi browser.
They included the biggest browsers. They don't need to include every single browser in existence.
Youch, that's just mean!
I know, right? Where's my entry for
lynx, dang it?!Holy crap, do people still use lynx? (asked in an endearing tone)
yes, I do! helps me to quickly search for information without leaving my beloved terminal. in fact, I have added a custom theme to it(Dracula). I've aliased it to open mojeek by default.
if i'm feeling fancy, then only I fire up librewolf.
You are too cool for school if you use lynx!
mojeek and lynx together, love this combo!
If it's going to be about privacy, they should at least include the privacy oriented browsers even if they aren't the biggest ones out there.
And DuckDuckGo Browser
And lynx
And Brave too, which inconveniently beats firefox hands down in independent privacy checks. The mozilla foundation finally needs to step it up.
That heavily depends. Brave may have better advice/tracker blocking by default, but they send more telemetry. Them being an advertising company also doesn’t speak for them. Brave is a decent browser and on IOS/IPadOS a good option for open source + Adblock, but max privacy would be reconfigured Firefox or Librewolf.
Everyone's just trying to strike a balance between protecting privacy and preserving usability - it's not as simple as just enabling the strictest privacy protections, consequences be damned. Case in point: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/brave-to-end-strict-fingerprinting-protection-as-it-breaks-websites/
I have no idea why you were down voted. These are facts, not opinions
Fact: Brave is a protection racket wrapped in a crypto scam.
Even if it weren't for the crypto, Brave's CEO is one sleazy, untrustworthy motherfucker. I'd never put my privacy in his hands. Just an absolute dogshit reputation.
I figured there was enough to criticize without needing to resort to ad-hominem attacks against the CEO. However, if we're going there, then I'd be remiss not to point out that he's also the motherfucker who inflicted Javascript upon the world when we could've had a decent language like Python or Scheme in the browser instead. Not to downplay the significance of his bigotry, but that's almost the greatest sin of them all!
Homophobes always come bundled with a lot of other problems. There's no way anyone can trust a homophobe of any kind.
Anyway, blocking you. Have a great life, asshole.
Edit: Bonus fuck javascript
Edit 2: This was so wrong of me, I'm sorry. I'm an ass. Leaving my comment for honesty's sake.
Hey Linky… friendly fire!
That guy was agreeing with you:
:)
Yeah sorry about that. I see that now. Unblocking engaged.
I'm so used to people trying to shut other people down for "ad hominem attacks" that I had a real misfire. That's embarrassing and wrong of me. Thank you for so gently pointing this out, I appreciate it.
🤗
Thanks!
It's also yet another Chromium fork which if there's one thing the world does not need more of, it's Chromium forks
Fact: your opinion is based on snippets of things you heard online and doesn't actually match reality 🤷
My facts come directly from Brave's own claims, so fuck off with your condescension, fanboi. Your dismissive trolling isn't welcome here.
Find me a claim from Brave's that it's a protection racket.
Find me a claim from Brave's that it's a crypto scam. NOT just that they use crypto, but that it's a scam.
And before you start, a blanket statement of "all crypto is a scam" is not a fact. It's hyperbole and your opinion.
So do you actually have "facts"? Or did you just present opinions as facts?
Of course criminals aren't going to admit that they're criminals. But when they describe their behavior (in this case, man-in-the-middle replacing sites' ads with their own and then extorting them to participate in the crypto scheme in order to replace the revenue) anybody objective would recognize that it is, in fact, criminal.
Sadly its not just "heard". Just google it, you will find enough "incidents" brave had.
be sure to run on top of linux otherwise...
If only Firefox on Android doesn't refresh the pages every time I switch to another app and back to Firefox (and even showing only black screen), just to input 2FA code or card detail. It becomes really annoying.
The desktop browser is pretty fine though.
Android is really aggressive with killing background apps
I'd rather them just put up the results of the chrome lawsuit rather than a marketing table lol.
You love it?
I bet you hate Google doing self ads?
Yet this is also just a self ad. And spammy, because it pops open a tab, something browsers are supposed to suppress unless specifically enabled.
This is a false equivalence.
If Google advertises the merits of their browser within their browser, like Mozilla is doing here, then that's fair enough, I have zero complaints about that. Why not have a welcome page when you install the browser, highlighting the benefits of using your product?
If Google is utilising their other products to unfairly give themselves a leg up in advertising their browser, then yeah, I'm against that.
If I search on Google (the de facto standard), I shouldn't have popups telling me to use Chrome. If I watch a YouTube video, Google shouldn't be allowed to place Chrome ads there.
Same goes for MS relentlessly advertising Edge in Windows and forcing it into other Microsoft programs.
Those are examples of companies abusing their monopolistic market position to gain a business advantage, which is illegal. It's nothing like Mozilla having a Firefox ad within Firefox.
I tend to agree here. It's like Netflix showing banners of what content they have, on their own site.
"Here are some features of this product you have!" Intrusive, maybe, but not like they're directing you away to pay more money.
But what about Duckduckgo advertising its browser on its search homepage? Would that be a problem too? Or is it only because Google has a dominant position in search?
Would it be an issue for Apple to advertise its browser on macOS? Every time I get a system update on macOS, I get a "what's new" thing for Safari, even though I never use it (Firefox is my default browser on my work computer). Is that okay? Is it okay if Microsoft does it as well?
What about Mullvad advertising its browser on its webpage, which is selling a VPN service? Mullvad Browser integrates Mullvad VPN features, so it's directly related, kind of like how Chrome integrates Google Search features and Safari integrates macOS features.
I'm not sure where I stand here. Saying company X can't do what company Y can do just because company X has a dominant position just feels wrong. I'm all for attacking abuse of dominance, I just think this argument is a little weak.
The abuse of market position makes it far worse, and I'd argue illegal under existing competition law.
Your other examples are annoyances for sure, but not straight up anti-competitive/probably illegal.
The way you describe the MacOS one makes it sound like a system update change log, an entirely different thing.
Why?
One would be abusing monopolistic power, the other isn't.
Yeah, it's a "what's new" OS update, but that includes Safari features, which isn't strictly an OS thing. Microsoft got a lot of flak for including IE with the OS (well, a bit more than that, they tried to block Netscape from accessing "private" APIs that IE had access to), and it seems to follow that Apple should get a similar amount of flak for having an unfair advantage with Safari having access to OS features before anything else.
Is advertising "abusing monopolistic power"? I get Microsoft getting hit with anti-trust because they actively prevented competition, but both MS and Apple advertise their other products through their OS (e.g. IE and Safari, Office 365 and iCloud, etc).
Google should absolutely get hit with anti-trust when they are shown to make their sites perform worse on other browser engines (happens a lot w/ Firefox, where just changing user-agent improves perf). But I'm not so sure that they should be hit with anti-trust for advertising their other products, because that's an establish practice.
A changelog is a changelog. If safari updates are in OS updates, then yeah that's where the changes will be listed.
In a completely different market.
At the time, browsers were sold as standalone software. MS including it was an unfair advantage in that context.
Nowadays browsers aren't distributed in that way, installing another browser takes seconds and they're free. It's nowhere near as anti-competitive.
Please don't distort my words. I never said that. You know exactly what I said and the meaning behind it.
Google using their position in Search and on YouTube and Gmail to push you to install Chrome is an abuse of market position.
I never said advertising is an abuse of monopolistic power and you know that.
I don't know why you're being so needlessly combative here?
I'm not trying to be combative, just wondering what the policy would look like.
Sure, and I would expect to see the Safari changelog when I launch Safari. But I get it when I upgrade my OS, and Safari (in my eyes) isn't an OS feature. I don't use Safari, so seeing Safari changelog is an ad. Likewise for Edge on Windows, I don't use Edge, so seeing an Edge changelog from an OS update is an ad (not sure if MS still does that, I haven't used Windows in years).
Google advertises its products on its search page. Microsoft advertises its products on its OS (initial run, pretty much every update). Apple does the same with macOS.
So what exactly is the proposed change? Do we block advertising for other products if you have a certain share of the market? Or does it come down to the manner of advertising?
In my mind, "monopolistic behavior" means doing something to undermine competition. If you're merely pushing your own services and not interfering with other options, I don't think that's anti-competitive. For example, is Valve's pushing of its Steam Deck on their store anti-competitive? Valve is dominant on the PC gaming market and I wouldn't be surprised if they're dominant in handheld PC gaming as well (e.g. compare to Ayaneo, Asus ROG Ally, etc). That sounds similar to how Google is dominant in both search and browser market share. I don't think Valve should be treated as a monopoly though since they're not really doing monopoly things (no exclusives except a handful of Valve-made titles, no special discount for using Steam Deck, etc).
I get it, Google is bad, but what exactly are they doing that's bad that should be restricted? What exactly should the law look like? We can't punish companies because we feel they're doing bad things, we need a system of laws that specifically lays out what's not okay. AFAIK, Google doesn't meet the current standard, so what exactly should that standard be?
But if its updates are packaged with the OS updates, it makes sense for its changelog to be shown alongside the rest of the OS update.
Yes. And the percentage of the market share is already defined in antitrust law.
Such as using your monopolistic position in Search to push your browser?
How isn't it? How is that fair competition?
Perhaps. But it's also worth remembering that Steam is literally Valve's store, of course they sell steam decks there.
People go to storefronts with the explicit intention of buying things. I don't go to a search engine or email client with the expectation of having popups telling me to install a browser.
If I went onto Google's storefront, I wouldn't be upset about them selling Pixel phones there. I'd expect that their store would have their products for sale.
Nonono. No. I know your angle here, and it's a clever one, but I'm not falling for it.
Don't attempt to reduce my argument against abuse of market position to being some kind of fanboyish "hur dur Google bad, amirite guys?" - that's not my argument. I've explained what my argument is.
As stated, they're abusing their monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage that cannot be achieved by their competitors.
The same as it is now, just actually enforced.
There you go again. Trying to reduce my argument to being reactionary and feelings-based. I've explained my view multiple times, and it has nothing to do with my feelings, and everything to do with abuse of market position.
They definitely do, and they've got in trouble in the EU over it multiple times. Laws aren't always followed, and they're not always actually acted on by governments. Warranty void if removed stickers aren't legal, yet pretty much all devices have them, for example.
Tell me about it. I use nothing but Firefox right now and I hate these intrusive ads. Of course, there’s no built in way to disable it, when it could very easily be a toggle.