Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Bloomberg shines a spotlight on Google’s anti-competitive business practices

Props to Bloomberg for running this article — it’s timely and needed.

Most major browsers are now built on the Chromium software code base that Google maintains. Opera, an indie browser that’s been used by techies for years, swapped its code base for Chromium in 2013. Even Microsoft is making the switch this year. That creates a snowball effect, where fewer web developers build for niche browsers, leading those browsers to switch over to Chromium to avoid getting left behind.

This leaves Chrome’s competitors relying on Google employees who do most of the work to keep Chromium software code up to date. Chromium is open source, so anyone can suggest changes to it, but the majority of programmers who approve contributions are Google employees, and any major disagreements get settled by a small circle of senior Google employees.

The authorities move slowly or not at all, so this problem will get worse before it gets better. Do your part to resist hegemony on the Web by using Firefox or a Firefox-derived browser instead of Google Chrome or a Chrome clone.