You're talking about the same Firefox that displays ads on my home page by default, sends analytics to them by default, and is owned by a foundation that is owned by a for-profit company?
Too many vowels? Would you prefer 'pldg' ? ;) Unless you meant the stringly-typed arguments in which case I'm 100% with you, they're asking for trouble.
Not a binary thing, no. But who gets to be in charge of that speech? Do you trust them? Do you trust who will follow them in power?
Where I live, I'm vastly outnumbered by people who have vastly different values than me. Their party is in control now. Pretty scary to think they could shut off my voice at whim, or worse.
I think "protesting in front of twitter HQ for enabling a political view I don't like" is a silly thing to do. If you don't like X (in this case fascism) I am sure there are better things you can do to stop it, like creating an alternative that those who like X would adhere to.
Netflix uses fast.com and their speed index as a way to extort ISPs into giving them traffic for free. They refuse to pay any fees to connect directly to ISPs and then they use that website to imply they are being throttled when the meager free routes they use get saturated, which is their own fault.
I know net neutrality is no longer law, but I think if you interviewed a thousand people on this site, you might be the only one miffed that Netflix isn't paying ISPs for faster routes.
Put another way, it is my impression that consumers are already paying for bandwith. Getting Netflix to pay for faster routes would mean ISPs are double-dipping.
Netflix (and Youtube and Hulu and all the other big content providers) pay big bucks (millions per month) to get the content from their servers to the internet backbone. Their contracts with their ISPs don't specify where the traffic goes. They just buy lots of 10 gpbs links, and send the data off. They're paying their share.
Your contract with your ISP doesn't distinguish between getting traffic from a mom&pop website or Netflix. It just said they would deliver the rated speed (7 mpbs or 10mbps, or 100mbs) of data to you for your fixed monthly fee.
When the ISPs found out that people were actually using that much data (that YOU PAID FOR), they found they had underprovisioned their network, and couldn't support the load. ISPs started saying, "Netflix is using too much", because, really, it's rude to blame your customer for using the service you provide as contracted.
This is called double-dipping.
So - Netflix is paying their fair share. You are paying your fair share. If your ISP can't handle the traffic demands of their customers, they need to suck it up and provide the capacity that you're paying for.
ISPs are neutral here, the problem is, once again, that Netflix uses a HUGE amount of traffic, and the normal routes (the ones everybody gets) get saturated.
If they want "premium" routes for their MASSIVE traffic, they will have to pay to the ISPs. I think that's reasonable. Giving them premium routes for free would not be neutral, would it? ;)
Either their infrastructure supports what the customer is paying for or it doesn't. If the ISP is running crusty old routes they're slacking and customers should migrate away from them as soon as feasible.
ISPs should provide connection to the internet for their customers in exchange for a monthly bill. How they do that isn't the customer's concern and it shouldn't be Netflix's concern. The only ISP Netflix should be paying is their own link to the internet (AWS last I heard)
Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.
>Side note, Netflix isn't using any traffic. They're not sending me a UHD video stream unsolicited. I'm using the traffic.
Milk companies put their lorries in the highway to deliver their products. You're the one buying milk. Are you the one who's using the highways?
If Netflix wants a premium highway let them pay for it. Otherwise they will have to use the normal highway, the one that's worked fine until Netflix decided to fill it with lorries.
In a less direct sense, yes. If there was no demand for milk in my area there would be no milk lorries sent to my area
Sidebar: I do wish HN had a rule against these kinds of analogies as they do other reddit-esque puns and the likes. The internet is not like a milk truck, it's not like a series of tubes, it's like 1s and 0s being communicated across a worldwide mesh of cables of varying material under the control of varying entities
We're all at least vaguely techy enough that we're on HN, we can understand at least the basics. Lets talk about what it is, not what it's like.
Except that I pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s and they pay for an highway that should support 100 mb/s, yet it only support 10 mb/s.
The Netflix route is using too much bandwidth? Then upgrade it, that's what your customer pay you for. For sure there will be route that will be unequal, some too big, some too small, but that's part of ISP job to make sure its impact is minimal.
BOB pays ALICE for a connection at fixed uplink/downlink parameters to the public collective of interconnected autonomous networks commonly referred to as INTERNET.
BOB uses the service as advertised to connect to CAROL’s autonomous network.
ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.
BOB can’t switch ISPs because ALICE has monopoly on the service where he lives.
ALICE tries to muddy the waters with nonsensical milk lorry analogies that have nothing to do with fiber optic cables to maintain its monopoly and further leverage it to run protection racket on CAROL.
Sounds about right?
When BOB is paying ALICE for the service, he is implicitly paying for whatever “highway” connects his house and CAROL’s milk depots. Everything between the two points is ALICE’s responsibility. If ALICE doesn’t like that BOB mostly orders his milk from CAROL’s then she shouldn’t offer the service as supporting fixed amount of lorries per hour.
>ALICE fails to adequately peer with CAROL’s autonomous network and calls it a feature.
It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.
Also, laughable that you call me a shill. Seems like the most used argument when you don't agree with someone. I'm not even American. So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.
> It also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.
How does this logically follow? CAROL advertises fixed downlink/uplink connection to any autonomous network. How is it “premium access” to deliver on what you are actually advertising?
It’s like selling SSD drives and then saying oh yeah but if you store video files in this particular video codec they will play at only 15 fps unless the codec vendor pays us extra for a firmware update.
> So your "BOB can't switch ISPs" does not even apply here.
It applies to the particular Netflix/neutrality debate.
> also works the other way around: CAROL does not want to pay ALICE to have premium access.
As others have mentioned there is no extra "premium" access needed.
Netflix pays for their whole upstream, probably a bit extra for redundant uplinks etc.
Customers pay for the entire downstream.
Everyone in between just have to accept the bits and forward them within reasonable time (Netflix has some caching in the client so it shouldn't be to hard unless someone has oversold their capacity.)
> Also, laughable that you call me a shill.
I looked at your recent comment history and I agree.
That said you really seem to defend an undefendable practice to the point where I understand where people get that idea from.
So I'd rather guess you enjoy annoying people on the internet to see them get mad.
The way I see it is net neutrality is very unfair to the isp. It creates unnecessary burden to the isp. Of course Isp will hate it and will fight for it as much as their can.
Those ISPs can only fight this “burden” by taking advantage of their unfair monopoly. If there was an actual free market competition there would be no need for net neutrality in the first place.
BOB could just switch to using DAVE’s ISP service, who would be happy to connect him with CAROL’s AN without any throttling.
Just because an action is in their best interest does not absolve them from the fault of that action. Arguably, one can usually safely assume the opposite.
While your statement of "of course they are not happy with it" is true, it's not a defense in my mind. The same could be said about any regulation that controls indefensible practices of companies.
From oil companies, to fishing companies, to waste disposal to whatever, most companies from a purely technical viewpoint would be more than happy to get rid of regulations that control what and how they can do business. Yet, we have those regulations in place for a reason.
In this case we simply ask that ISPs deliver the bits we paid for. I don't want Comcast treating my bits differently anymore than I want my mail carrier to hold my packages ransom because they seem important and I'd probably pay more for them.
My mail carrier doesn't read my mail. Comcast shouldn't either.
Yes of course it always depends on which side are one on. If I'm the customer sure I don't want isp throttle my bits but If I'm the isp, I want the freedom to throttle.
Net neutrality requires that ISPs actually deliver what they've advertised and collected payment for and claimed to deliver. Of course they're not happy with that. It's much easier to deliver less than promised but still pocket the full payment.
Correction - make it comply with Title 2. Net neutrality isn't what the FCC killed, Title 2 (which is still a massive blob of legislation, even if you discount the stuff in forbearance) is a set of laws that ensure a kind of neutrality.
The grocery store bought the milk so that’s why the truck is on the highway. The truck (Netflix) wouldn’t be there if the grocery store (customer) didn’t order the milk.
If we imagine Netflix traffic as milk trucks delivering milk B2C, the “downlink” road to a milk buyer’s house would likely be maintained by neighborhood home owners’ association, thus ultimately paid for by the consumer.
Those highways between the farm and the neighborhood, though… Anyway, either the analogy breaks or it’s onto something!
What's the problem with routes getting saturated? The consumers are paying for bandwidth and if they're using it all for Netflix, that's their choice.
The only problem is if the ISP can't actually deliver the bandwidth that they promised in exchange for taking the consumers money. That's called a scam.
Couple of megabits from time to time, not even every night, is not a HUGE or a MASSIVE traffic, neither it has to be "premium". It's very normal traffic, on the lower end even. It's just some ISPs are monopolies and want to abuse their position and extort money from anyone they can, despite the fact that customers pay them to literally provide access to those services.
> ISPs are neutral here, the problem is, once again, that Netflix uses a HUGE amount of traffic, and the normal routes (the ones everybody gets) get saturated.
What I don't get is, both Netflix and I pay for bandwidth. As far as consumer bandwidth (mine) is concerned, why should Comcast care if it's 1TB/month coming from a thousand sites or just one. I paid for the data, I paid for the bandwidth, give me my bandwidth.
Likewise, Netflix paid for their own too, with whoever is their ISP.
Conceptually the bandwidth has to be paid for, and I could see your argument if I only paid a portion of what it costs to transfer the data.. but that is a broken model if that's the way it is. I want to pay for data, and I shouldn't have to get Movies.com to pay Comcast to serve me movies. I paid Comcast for data, it doesn't matter who it's from. My data is my data.
Is this wrong somehow to you? Honestly it's a strange argument from you, I have a hard time understanding. Like, if you run a website and I visit your website, do you think you should have to pay my ISP for data I'm downloading from your site? That's a bizarre system in my mind.
ISPs were or are double dipping. They actively started throttling Netflix even when there was no congestion or traffic only so that they could extort money out of Netflix. You could access YouTube, Vimeo or their own video-on-demand without any compromise in quality but Netflix was forced to a crawl.
If Netflix wants to pay extra to deal with saturation they are more than welcome too but if ISPs are denying their subscribers access to a service, even when spare bandwidth was available and sitting unutilized then its time for pitchforks to come out
Netflix rarely consumes Internet traffic as your statement assumes. Netflix has content caching at, pretty much, most legitimately sized ISP and peering points today. That means you're probably watching your content without leaving your ISPs network. The ISP pays pretty much nothing for transport (because Netflix provides them with a way to alleviate that) however the customer gets better service and quality of Netflix because the content is local. While this isn't always true neither is the thought that all traffic is heading back to Netflix HQ and saturating all of the Internet links in between.
Then how is fast.com effective at all? It was created to show that ISPs were throttling Netflix, but if Netflix has boxes at peering points, this seems moot.
They peer with Netflix for free then demand extra money to actually keep peering for free at proper capacity. They want money for connecting an extra cable to their router. It’s a protection racket pure and simple.
The customers of the ISP have paid to connect to the internet. Netflix isn't generating the traffic, the customers are, and if the ISP wants to serve the customers they need to provide bandwidth to the places they want to go.
Shaking down the destination, because the ISP controls the customer is wrong on many levels.
Um, when this whole debacle started, I saw articles which said that Netflix offered to pay for hardware and put more capacity in ISPs datacenters but ISPs refused and instead wanted more money to give access on the last-mile connectivity
The program is called OpenConnect [1], which has been around for a while. If you're an ISP, Netflix will ship you a beefy server for free to cache Netflix content.
Edit: I hear arguments like this and I really don't understand them. I would like to hear the reasoning behind it because it just doesn't make sense to me.
Apple does not have a <s>monopoly</s> dominant position. In my country I think they are like 10% of the market. You can't abuse your dominant position if you don't have one.
But for this case, they are using a definition that makes Android even more dominant: they allege that Google restricts device manufacturers' freedoms. And from a device manufacturer point of view, Android has a 90+% market share of "licensable smart mobile operating systems", with "licensable" being key: as a device manufacturer, you cannot use iOS, so that doesn't count if you buy into this line of argument:
That is fair enough - though is there really any competition in that space? Even if Google did nothing, I imagine most manufacturers would continue using Android as there isn't much choice. I don't actually know any mobile OS other than iOS and Android variants. Blackberry, Nokia (?) and Windows for mobile are all pretty much dead at this point.
Well, that's why they don't want to limit Android's market share, instead they want to open up Android licensing restrictions.
In particular, the EU alleges that if you want to install Google Play on your phones, you need to sign a license agreement which also forces you to:
a) install Google Chrome;
b) make Google Search the default search engine; and
c) not sell phones with Android forks at the same time ("Anti-Fragmentation Agreement").
They want to force Google to allow manufacturers to more freely chose which apps to pre-install and also to be able to offer Android forks in parallel to "Google-finish" Android.
I'm not sure if this will really be good for consumers... I would argue that most smartphones have too much crapware on them, not too little. On the other hand, the Microsoft Internet Explorer unbundling case arguably helped fuel the success of Firefox in breaking the IE dominance, which I would argue was good for consumers.
* Symbian
* Palm webOS
* Mozilla (I think that was also called WebOS?)
* Jola
* Some blackberry thing based on QNX that "supported" Android apps
* Tizan
* Windows Phone
* Ubuntu Phone
Plus a bunch of independent / hobby(?) ones that never really took off, eg the Inferno port
These days it feels like most people have given up trying to compete against Apple and Google.
I personally think the issue is more with the OEMs wanting to close their hardware than it is with developers and consumers (not that Im suggesting your point doesn't also play a part)
It's also about giving the manufacturers more freedom in what "flavor" of Android they ship, e.g. currently Google forbids them from making both devices with Android with all the Google stuff and devices without it, or devices only using some of the package.
Seems kinda perverse. After all, you can't fork Windows, macOS, or iOS at all. Why should making Android more open than the competition lead to worse punishment?
It's not making Android more open that leads to the punishment here. Google made Android more open when they open-sourced AOSP; they made it more closed when they prohibited manufacturers from actually forking Android in a way Google doesn't like. The behavior that is punished is the use of their market power to negate the open-sourcing, not the open-sourcing itself.
They are free to fork Android though and use it however they want, as Amazon did. They just can't install the Google Play Store without including the other Google apps which Google claims are part of a unified experience.
Of course there is. Mobile OEMs are quite capable of making their own operating systems and not so many years ago they all did. Of course Apple does, and Samsung still does with Tizen, from what I know.
These alternatives mostly suck but "your competitors suck" is not grounds for an anti-trust violation. No phone vendor is forced to deal with Google, that's an absurd distortion of the facts. Even if they feel their own in-house engineering abilities are so weak they can't make a better platform than Android, they can still take the open source code and use it as a base, providing their own mapping and app store along the way ... just like Apple do.
Probably UK, because iOS marketshare in UK is very close to 50% (52% Android, 46% iOS [1]). For curious, in some countries there is much more Apple iPhone users than Android users, like in Liechtenstein (58% [2]) or Monaco (64% [3]).
Richer countries naturally have more iOS devices because those are more expensive. With Android, you pay with your privacy. Unless you opt out of GMS, but that's an all of nothing deal.
- has required manufacturers to pre-install the Google Search app and browser app (Chrome), as a condition for licensing Google's app store (the Play Store);
- made payments to certain large manufacturers and mobile network operators on condition that they exclusively pre-installed the Google Search app on their devices; and
- has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
- has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
This is the most clearly anti-competitive practice.
I would argue that its actually pro-consumer - because if I was Google's CEO, I would just shut down AOSP, and wish that I had done it years ago, in relation to this ruling.
Google supports AOSP and has done so for years, making it available freely. Why shouldn't they be able to dictate their own terms? If phone makers don't like it, they can make their own OS (which they have - and they all suck).
> Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
Hence the fine.
You cannot have something open and control it at the same time.
> Market dominance is, as such, not illegal under EU antitrust rules. However, dominant companies have a special responsibility not to abuse their powerful market position by restricting competition, either in the market where they are dominant or in separate markets.
> Google has engaged in three separate types of practices, which all had the aim of cementing Google's dominant position in general internet search.
It’s about abusing the power of a monopolistic position in the market. The power being abused is the monopoly power.
If you don’t have a monopoly and do things your partners/competitors don’t like, they can’t complain that you are abusing a dominant market position to get away with it.
There’s nothing wrong with bundling. But when you have a monopoly on the market bundling suddenly is wrong and abusive even if it’s the right thing for your end users.
So we see time and again monopolies are knee-capped in the market and face these absurd fines, in the name of fairness and competition.
I have no doubt that some monopolies leverage their market dominance for some pretty atrocious dealings. I personally see nothing wrong with Google licensing the optional (but extremely popular) Google Play services such that it requires Google Search and Chrome along with it.
If they were unrelated then the experience of Google Play Services would be identical with or without the other pieces (Chrome and Search). I don’t use Android so I can’t say for sure, but I’m quite confident that the overall experience suffers without all three pieces together.
> If they were unrelated then the experience of Google Play Services would be identical with or without the other pieces (Chrome and Search). I don’t use Android so I can’t say for sure, but I’m quite confident that the overall experience suffers without all three pieces together.
The EU text talks about requiring chrome and search if the play store is installed. As a user of android, I cannot think of any way in which these are linked. I don't see why the play store wouldn't work without those two, or would even lose a single feature.
if we are comparing to the microsoft case apple does have a monopoly. microsoft was not found to have a monopoly on computers in general. it was specifically found to have a monopoly on intel based computers. Apple has a monopoly on A9, A10, A11 based computers. A 100% monopoly
A monopoly is not defined by the possiblity that there are other products available for purchase on the market, but rather how many products have been purchased and are in use.
Using your reasoning, Microsoft could never have had a monopoly on Windows because you always could have bought a Mac.
That latter definition is in fact a reasonable counter-argument to Windows being a monopoly (people did buy Macs), and that's why Microsoft got in trouble for the deals they cut to try and crush Netscape, not for making a more popular OS than Apple did.
You can't define a monopoly as "your competitors aren't popular" because otherwise it'd be illegal to invent new product categories, as at the start you'd be the only player in the new space. You can't define it that way for another reason: it punishes success.
FWIW the definition of a patent is a "time-limited monopoly on working an invention", so all new products that are patented are monopolies by definition.
As the sibling comment rightly says, monopolies are acceptable. But, as the EU clearly point out, a greater onus is put on monopolies to avoid abusing their monopoly power.
That would work if patents were enforceable but they really aren't. I can't see a company that (re)invented a new product category where no competitors emerged because of patents.
A monopoly is exactly that. Mono means one. Thats the root of the word. What you are describing is a dominant position, which is completely different since its a relative definition.
> Nevertheless, the Commission investigated to what extent competition for end users (downstream), in particular between Apple and Android devices, could indirectly constrain Google's market power for the licensing of Android to device manufacturers (upstream). The Commission found that this competition does not sufficiently constrain Google upstream for a number of reasons, including:
They are not punished for their behavior in the downstream market (in which they barely participate). They are punished for their behavior in the upstream market. We consumers do not participate in the upstream market.
Nevertheless, the EU commission considered whether the lack of a monopoly in the downstream market ameliorated the monopoly effects in the upstream market and found it did not.
This is talking about from the perspective of phone manufacturer. As a phone manufacturer you can't license iOS so that's out. You can really only license Android and if you do you have to also install Google Apps, Chrome, and make Google the default search engine on your phone.
You are not required to license Android to use Android. AOSP and other versions forked from AOSP do exist.
There are.other mobile OSes available as well. I'm sure Microsoft will gladly let you use their OS for the right price, KaiOS, Ubuntu phone OS could be resurrected, you could role your own, I'm sure Symbian is for sale somewhere, how about Meego.
>In particular, Google has prevented manufacturers wishing to pre-install Google apps from selling even a single smart mobile device running on alternative versions of Android that were not approved by Google (so-called "Android forks").
If you want to have Google apps on your phone you can't sell any forked android version.
Microsoft never had a monopoly in operating systems ever in it's history either. You could install CP/M on IBM XTs and you could run OS/2 or Linux or a plethora of other UNIXes on later IBMs and clones instead of Windows.
Doesn't mean they hadn't had market control due to it's market share.
The problem with this definition is that it also assumes that if you have 75%+ market share you're likely having a similar share of the profits which is not the case here. If you take profit into account it's really at best a 50-50 market for Google.
I agree that assumption is the wrong word. But do you have examples of monopolies that didn't take the profits and control the pricing of the markets they control?
Monopolies are not based on the profit but market share. Yes Apple has a very profitable niche but that does not mean Android does not have a near-monopoly on smartphones.
No, a monopoly is controlling a market to the point where competition is restricted via controlling supply or other means. A company can have 100% market share and not be a monopoly (which is always what happens when a new market emerges).
(Not OP:) In theory I agree. As soon as you have IPR like patents and copyright that are protecting the new product then you're inhibiting access for other companies; that is probably the case in a lot of new markets.
So if price pressure from consumers forces down your profit then you should be allowed to exploit a monopolistic position to leverage profits in another sector?
Like, own all cinemas in a country but home-viewing keeps profit low, so now it's fine to only allow people to visit your cinemas if they buy clothes from your clothing company?
A better example would be you own 75%+ of the cinemas but revenue wise you only control 50% of it. And in that case I think it's fair to do it. If they would force Apple out that would be a problem, but instead they even give you the basis for your own cinema for free (in contrast to Apple).
