• Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

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

    • bamboo@lemm.ee
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      1 year 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
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        1 year 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
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          1 year 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
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            1 year 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
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          1 year 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@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year 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

      • Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t Mozilla a non profit? I don’t they can sue for anything along the lines of hurting profits to the company.

    • sweeny@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year 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@lemm.ee
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        1 year 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@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year 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