Comment by foob
2 years ago
you have to show how a significant faction of the consumers are being harmed. You're going to have a tough time with that one.
I'm not a lawyer and can't speak to what qualifies as anti-competitive behavior in a legal sense. Qualitatively, Web Extensions Manifest v3 and Web Environment Integrity are clearly harmful to consumers in my opinion. The first significantly hinders ad blockers, and the second kicks down the ladder on building search engines and hinders competition in that space. Other browsers using Chromium as a base doesn't change the fact that Google almost unilaterally controls it, and Google has made it extraordinarily clear that they're interested in making decisions that prioritize their own best interests over those of their users. I don't see why Chromium being open source would absolve any responsibility here, especially when the open source project in question primarily exists to serve the interests of the profit center of a mega-corp. I deeply support open source software, and I'm glad that Chromium is open source, but being open source doesn't excuse behavior that is against the interests of users whether it qualifies as illegal or not.
I think you're going to have a tough time with Chromium seeing as how the likes of Microsoft and Canonical are contributing to the project. You're also going to have a tough time showing anti-trust when Google is working with Apple. I'm old enough to remember some famous anti-trust lawsuits where the plaintiffs had a much more solid case and still lost. In this case Google is literally working with the industry's largest companies. You're going to have a really hard time with that.