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Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by jfig on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @07:42AM (#17967473)
Would Google allow edge on a Chromebook?

Microsoft has fallen in the market-share of OSs, can no longer be considered monopolist move.

But yes, it's a new low, there was never a "new Microsoft" just better PR.

Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by pritambaral on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @07:49AM (#17967529)
> Microsoft has fallen in the market-share of OSs, can no longer be considered monopolist move.

That's not how anti-trust works. Just because a player does not hold as much of a market they used to, does not mean they do not have a monopoly or cannot abuse it.

Microsoft absolutely has a monopoly on the desktop OS market. And even without that monopoly this is abuse. With monopoly, this becomes abuse of their power in addition to being abuse of their users.

Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by philipov on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @08:31AM (#17967862)
Every time someone mentions anti-trust, someone else comes in and starts claiming it's not really a monopoly, so antitrust doesn't apply. The thing is, market manipulation doesn't require monopoly power: an excessive difference of scale between the largest and smallest participants in a market is enough.

For example, the consumer choice feedback loop breaks down when scale gets large enough that market signals from individual decisions are smaller than the amplitude of the noise, making it easy to neutralize them with marketing. We are heading in a direction where market breakdown occurs long before monopoly power, and cartel-like behavior is more likely. The largest players are so large they have more incentive to cooperate to keep everyone else down, while maintaining only nominal competition with each other.

That doesn't mean anti-trust is no longer relevant, but that people arguing for it need to revise their position. Antitrust has never been about monopolies, but about abuse of power in the market. It was only a historical coincidence that that lined up with monopolies when the total economy was smaller. Corporations have now become so large that market failure begins long before monopolies, and our trust-busting strategies need to adapt to that.

Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by tssva on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @08:12AM (#17967691)
ChromeOS allows the installation of Android apps which includes a variety of alternative browsers.
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by laurent123456 on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @08:18AM (#17967735)
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by josefresco on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @08:27AM (#17967811)
That's ... hilarious. I'm actually excited to try this on my Chromebook which is eligible for Android/Play apps. I'm not getting my hopes up though.
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by Macha on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @12:11PM (#17970214)
Although despite Android not requiring you to just wrap the native browser, Edge on Android just wraps the native browser (unlike Firefox for Android and like Chrome for iOS)
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by JohnTHaller on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @08:32AM (#17967868)
ChromeOS on specific devices. Many ChromeOS devices don't support Android apps.
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by ionised on Friday September 14, 2018 @10:50AM (#17987567)
If it doesn't even support Android apps then what does it support?
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by xacky on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @10:58AM (#17969421)
They allow Firefox but it's the android version and not the Linux version so it has a different UI and you often get mobile sites when browsing.
Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by Un1corn on Wednesday September 12, 2018 @07:48AM (#17967512)
Chromebooks can only install web apps, no? Then it's not like they ban other browsers, they doesn't run any other non-web software.

Maybe it's possible to run Firefox through the new Linux apps option they added?

Re:Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Wi... by bestnameever on Thursday September 13, 2018 @06:45AM (#17977565)
I can install Android and Linux app's on my chromebook Firefox linux app works fine too.