Re:Gchat Was the Future of Messaging, but Google Didn’t Know
by Godel_unicode on Sunday May 29, 2016 @11:10AM
(#11796603)
> note that this doesn't require a perfect monopoly in the first market
There's no such thing, that's a strawman to permit calling things monopolies when they aren't. Given that Google allegedly tried to act like a monopoly and totally failed, I suggest that you rethink your view.
> An open (federated) protocol is the most dangerous kind of competitor to a big company like Google.
You mean protocols like SMTP and HTTPS, protocols which are core to Google's business? This was not a company with a monopoly in one area leveraging it to gain advantage in another. Google was not even close to a monopoly (or even a plurality) in email; Yahoo for one had more users at the time than Gmail.
This was Google admitting that open wasn't working and going private to try and retain existing users. Which, not having anything close to a monopoly, was perfectly legal. One could even argue it was their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to try and grow the user base.
There's no such thing, that's a strawman to permit calling things monopolies when they aren't. Given that Google allegedly tried to act like a monopoly and totally failed, I suggest that you rethink your view.
> An open (federated) protocol is the most dangerous kind of competitor to a big company like Google.
You mean protocols like SMTP and HTTPS, protocols which are core to Google's business? This was not a company with a monopoly in one area leveraging it to gain advantage in another. Google was not even close to a monopoly (or even a plurality) in email; Yahoo for one had more users at the time than Gmail.
This was Google admitting that open wasn't working and going private to try and retain existing users. Which, not having anything close to a monopoly, was perfectly legal. One could even argue it was their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to try and grow the user base.