This isn't a mundane explanation though: this is exactly the example Luca gives in the original thread. It's anti-competitive, because it's functionality only available to Google Meet. Google is using its browser monopoly to advantage its other products.
They are just trying to make their products better. Anti competitive behavior is generally perceived to be about doing things that put the company in question in a better position without improving the product.
Ask yourself the question - are customers better or worse off because of this?
That's not what anti-competitive means at all. Having APIs that Google Meet can use but competing products can't reduces competition, which makes customers worse off.
> are customers better or worse off because of this?
Worse. Google's Hangouts/Meet customers are better off, but everyone else is not. That's what anti-competitive behavior is: using your monopoly in order to advantage your own products at the expense of others.
Don't you find it hilarious how people who work or worked at Google happen to think that things Google does are "mundane", even when other people think they're outrageous? Hilarious coincidence, really. Can't stop laughing.
Yeah, crazy to think that Google of all companies would track people in unexpected ways :eyeroll:.
Your post is evidence that the scrutiny Google gets is actually helping matters. Companies, especially powerful ones, should default to not tracking personal data any more than necessary. I'm glad to hear that at least one department took that seriously.
Exactly. In a world with sufficient anti-trust and privacy enforcement Google would instill into their employees a fear of even thinking about pulling stunts like this. Instead we have Googlers and ex-Googlers running defence for it claiming they see nothing wrong.
In such world, no one does anything without running it by the lawyers first, and then a months long debate occurs around every single little move, and nothing gets done.
Tracking is very rarely useful to the application but can be useful to the company when the application isn’t profitable on its own. Google has demonstrated this before.
Even if you take the mundane explanation -- that this was just to allow Google engineers to troubleshoot user issues with Hangouts -- you still have a company using their market power to give their product (Hangouts) a benefit that no other product (Zoom, Teams, literally any other WebRTC video conferencing solution.) gets to use.
This isn't a mundane explanation though: this is exactly the example Luca gives in the original thread. It's anti-competitive, because it's functionality only available to Google Meet. Google is using its browser monopoly to advantage its other products.
They are just trying to make their products better. Anti competitive behavior is generally perceived to be about doing things that put the company in question in a better position without improving the product.
Ask yourself the question - are customers better or worse off because of this?
That's not what anti-competitive means at all. Having APIs that Google Meet can use but competing products can't reduces competition, which makes customers worse off.
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Other companies are also trying to make their product better. If other products are not able to compete this can become a problem for the users.
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> are customers better or worse off because of this?
Worse. Google's Hangouts/Meet customers are better off, but everyone else is not. That's what anti-competitive behavior is: using your monopoly in order to advantage your own products at the expense of others.
Don't you find it hilarious how people who work or worked at Google happen to think that things Google does are "mundane", even when other people think they're outrageous? Hilarious coincidence, really. Can't stop laughing.
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Yeah, crazy to think that Google of all companies would track people in unexpected ways :eyeroll:.
Your post is evidence that the scrutiny Google gets is actually helping matters. Companies, especially powerful ones, should default to not tracking personal data any more than necessary. I'm glad to hear that at least one department took that seriously.
Exactly. In a world with sufficient anti-trust and privacy enforcement Google would instill into their employees a fear of even thinking about pulling stunts like this. Instead we have Googlers and ex-Googlers running defence for it claiming they see nothing wrong.
In such world, no one does anything without running it by the lawyers first, and then a months long debate occurs around every single little move, and nothing gets done.
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Tracking is very rarely useful to the application but can be useful to the company when the application isn’t profitable on its own. Google has demonstrated this before.
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> People's imaginations run far ahead of reality.
Can you really blame people for that when the company in question has been enmeshed in a case like this [1] involving Chrome.
1: https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-settles-5-billion-consu...
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Even if you take the mundane explanation -- that this was just to allow Google engineers to troubleshoot user issues with Hangouts -- you still have a company using their market power to give their product (Hangouts) a benefit that no other product (Zoom, Teams, literally any other WebRTC video conferencing solution.) gets to use.
I hope the anti-trust regulators notice this one.