Comment by asr
6 months ago
So the concern is that Google is making Hangouts better in a way that is hard for competitors to replicate? (And by "hard," I mean, "competitors have to ask users to install something," not hard in any HN-relevant sense of the word.) This forum sure has a lot of wanna-be Handicapper Generals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
If it's easy for users to just install the extension, then obviously there's no point in Google doing this in the first place. The fact that they bothered sounds like a pretty compelling argument for it being worth caring about.
Worth caring about why?? Because you think Google shouldn’t be allowed to make things better for their users? Like I said, you are so concerned about fairness you’re missing the point.
Worth caring about because they have a browser monopoly. It's not allowed for the exact same reason why in the olden days Microsoft wasn't allowed to add APIs to Windows that could only be used by IE, even if it made things better for IE users. It harmed users in the overall market by making it harder to compete.
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