• Queen HawlSera
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1158 months ago

    Oh I imagine the papers are being filed as we speak, because this is blatantly illegal.

    • @bamboo@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      368 months ago

      Well you typically need standing in order to file a lawsuit, who would do it? Mozilla are probably the only ones. Why would this cause them to do it when past similar practices haven’t?

      • @pup_atlas@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        438 months ago

        Perhaps YouTube premium subscribers would have standing as a class action, since Google is materially worsening the experience of a paid product if you don’t use their browser

        • @bamboo@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          18 months ago

          I personally don’t think an argument like that would hold up. A company making its service worse in itself isn’t going to win court cases, and this is hardly the worst example of a tech company making its products worse unless you use more of their software.

          • @pup_atlas@pawb.social
            link
            fedilink
            English
            68 months ago

            Perhaps not, but it’s not just the act of making the service worse, it’s doing so measurably to paying customers ONLY when using a competitors product. With those caveats, I think you could at least argue standing. Winning is a whole other battle.

        • @bamboo@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          18 months ago

          On what standing though? Mozilla potentially has standing, and if the government finds that google is a monopoly, then the government could have standing, but nobody else.

      • @laurelraven
        link
        English
        28 months ago

        Users affected by it, Mozilla, any other company that comes to support Mozilla, watchdog groups like the EFF…

        It can also be brought by attorneys general and governmental regulators, the FCC and FTC might have a bit to say about it…

        Antitrust suits aren’t civil cases, I don’t think, so “having standing” is a bit different

        I’m not a lawyer though so I could be way off base, but the antitrust cases I’ve been aware of I don’t think they were brought by companies but by government agencies

    • @sweeny@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      28 months ago

      What law are they breaking? Not trying to defend Google or anything, just curious what law is blatantly being broken here because I don’t know of one

      • Queen HawlSera
        link
        fedilink
        English
        6
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        It’s an anti competition law, they cannot penalize you for using a competitor service. This would be like getting fined by McDonald’s because I went to Taco Bell.

      • @laurelraven
        link
        English
        48 months ago

        Blatantly anticompetitive behavior where you (ab)use your dominance in one sector (i.e. YouTube) to choke out competition in another (i.e. make it slow on competing browsers) is illegal in the US and the EU, at the very least. I don’t know the specific laws or acts in play, but that’s the sort of thing that triggers antitrust lawsuits