Google Chrome and DOJ

`0:30:49`

And I say that as someone who's been very sympathetic to the antitrust fight, because I do think we have antitrust problems in technology. But the one place where we don't have them, by and large, is with browsers, is with the tools we use to access the open web. First of all, we have Firefox. Now Firefox is not doing all that great. And Firefox has been propped up by Google for many years to deter from exactly what's going on with the DOJ that they were the only game in town. Apple has Safari. I have a bunch of problems with Apple too, but I love Safari. I love the fact that we have a premier browser running on a premier operating system that people can't turn the web into just a Chrome experience. But I also think that the open web needs this trillion dollar champion, or at least benefits from it. Maybe it doesn't need it, but it certainly benefits from it. And of all the things that are wrong with monopoly formation in technology,

`0:31:52`

Chrome is the last thing. And this is why I get so frustrated sometimes about the anti or the monopoly fight that there are real problems. And we should be focusing on the premier problems first. Like the toll booths on our mobile phones. They're far bigger problems. It's not the open web. It's not the tools that we use to access the open web. If I don't want to use Chrome, if my customers of my businesses that run on the internet don't wanna use Chrome, they don't have to. We're never forced to go through it. The open internet is still open. So I think it's a real shame that the DOJ has chosen to pursue Google in this way. I do think there are other things you can nail Google for and their ad monopoly maybe, or the shenanigans done in controlling both sides of the ad ledger that they both controlled the supply and the demand. There are problems. Chrome, isn't it? And you end up making the web much worse. And this is the thing we always gotta remember

`0:32:52`

when we think about legislation, when we think about monopoly fights is you may not like how things look today. And you may wanna do something about it, but you may also make it worse. The good intentions behind the GDPR in Europe currently has amounted to what? Cookie banners that everyone on the internet hates. That helps no one do anything better, anything more efficient that saves no privacy in any way, shape or form has been a complete boondoggle that has only enriched lawyers and accountants and bureaucrats. — Yeah, you said that the cookie banner is a monument for why Europe is losing is doing the worst of all the regions in tech. — It's a monument to good intentions leading straight to hell. And the Europe is actually world class in good intentions leading straight to hell.

`0:33:53`

— So hell is the cookie accept button that you have to accept all cookies. That's what hell looks like over and over. You don't actually ever get to the web page. — Just on a human scale, try to imagine how many hours every day are wasted clicking that away. And how much harm we've done to the web as a platform that people enjoy because of them. The internet is ugly in part because of cookie banners. Cookie banners were supposed to save us from advertisement, and advertisement can make the web ugly. There's plenty of examples of that, but cookie banners made the entire internet ugly in one felt swoop. And that's a complete tragedy. But what's even worse, and this is why I call it out as a monument to everything the EU gets wrong, is that we have known this for a decade. No one anywhere who's serious believes that cookie banners does anything good for anyone. Yet we've been unable to get rid of it. There's this one piece of legislation that's now I think 10 or 12 years old.