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The law on browser choice

Good morning my dears,

I have just been asked to reselect my browser on my smartphone.

I was wondering to what extent this new law will affect my two investments, Microsoft and Alphabet?

And couldn't it hurt Alphabet the most because Chrome is the default browser on most devices?

Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments.

The law on browser choice, more specifically the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), aims to promote competition in the digital space by imposing more obligations on big tech companies to give users more choice, especially when it comes to choosing browsers and search engines.

Background:

The DMA is an EU law that came into force on March 6, 2024 and is aimed at "gatekeeper" companies, i.e. large platforms that play an important role as intermediaries between users and digital services.

The aim is to prevent these gatekeepers from exploiting their dominant market position to suppress competition and restrict choice for users.

In concrete terms, this means the choice of browser:

Users should be able to freely choose their default browser on their devices without being restricted by pre-installed apps or other measures.

This applies to Android devices as well as other platforms on which major technology companies offer services.

Google Chrome, for example, has been required by the EU to offer users a choice of search engines when they launch the browser for the first time.

The law is also intended to facilitate interoperability between different services so that users can, for example, exchange data between different platforms more easily.

In summary, the Browser Choice Act, or DMA, is an important step towards making the digital market fairer and more open by giving users more control and choice when using browsers and other digital services.

24 Commenti

Yasin21@Yasin21

A completely superfluous law - we live in a free market economy, and then companies are so severely restricted. To be honest, if a company has achieved a kind of monopoly position, it's not without good reason. This is usually the result of decades of hard work. It's a real shame when laws then force companies to do something!

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ThemenmitKopf@topicswithhead

@Yasin21 learned absolutely nothing about monopolies and especially not how Google became one. I am also pro-freedom, but this is one of the best things the EU has ever done. Competition is the most important goal in a market economy and most platforms don't offer any.

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ThemenmitKopf@topicswithhead

@topicswithhead apart from that, it's just a click. i've never understood why people can get upset about something like that.

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SemiGrowth@SemiGrowth

@Yasin21 This is about pre-installed standard browsers. This is not a direct consumer choice. If you're really in favor of a market economy, then surely you know that the best product should be the one that most customers want to use.
But if I have Chrome pre-installed, I haven't actively chosen Chrome because I think it's so great.
That's why it's important to give the consumer decision back to the customer. So that the best product, and not the most popular one, prevails

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Yasin21@Yasin21

@SemiGrowth That is also a market economy for me! If a company has earned it and pays for it, e.g. that Google is pre-installed, then that's fine with me. As a customer, I can always change it if I don't like it. Because the EU gets hung up on such small things, the world is passing us by!

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SemiGrowth@SemiGrowth

@Yasin21 No, there must be competition rules. Even in a market economy, you need an authority that controls, provides legal certainty, protects minorities and prevents monopolies.
Monopolies are always bad for innovation (not to mention the consumer, who is extremely negatively affected).
It is unacceptable that an entity can defend its market position through capital alone. The focus must always be on the product. The consumer decides.
Otherwise, we will not only have problems with innovation, but we will also lose prosperity because consumers will no longer be able to choose the best product and thus achieve a poorer price-performance ratio. This lowers the standard of living.
The aim of a market economy should be to make luxury a common good over time

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Yasin21@Yasin21

@SemiGrowth If you take this idea further, should a country that has the capital strength to develop new industries and use its financial power to its advantage be obliged to support the weak countries through an authority?

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SemiGrowth@SemiGrowth

@Yasin21 exactly. If, for example, the USA develops nuclear fusion and can therefore provide unlimited energy, it must make the technology available to other countries (e.g. by exporting it). What must not happen, in my view, is that the USA uses nuclear fusion only for itself (and thus reduces electricity costs to zero) and thus gives domestic companies an unfair advantage.
Of course it can (and will) benefit from having invented this technology, but it should be made accessible as long as it is not dangerous.

Incidentally, I don't mean something like:
"A country builds a whole lot of wind turbines because they have so much money and now the country has to build wind turbines for all other countries too" or to take the Google example:
"Google develops new expensive products and brings them to market" - good
"Google uses money to bribe other entities (it's nothing else) to force its products on consumers" - not good

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Yasin21@Yasin21

@SemiGrowth Well, then we just have different opinions on the subject. It's not a bad thing, because I can see that in this case - if they want to - America will benefit from the technology alone. It's not stolen, but developed. Of course it would be annoying for the rest of the world, but that's life.

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SemiGrowth@SemiGrowth

@Yasin21 I am very much in favor of "open source". I think the world progresses best when everyone has all the information. This increases the chance of innovation.
(dangerous technologies and weapons are excluded from "all")

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devnerd_daddy@devnerd_daddy

@Yasin21 But you do realize that it is only thanks to such measures that we can live here the way we do? If unlimited monopolies were accepted, there would only be Mercedes cars and they would dictate the price of cars. Telephones would probably only be available via Telekom and they would also dictate the price. Let's not start with medicines.

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Visualizza tutti 8 ulteriori risposte

Sina@lawinvest

On my service PC, the great Google thing automatically switched to Chrome and I now have the Yahoo crap. The first thing I did: reset it immediately

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Das Portfoliopferd@Portfoliopferd

Chrome is pre-installed on most devices? I didn't know that. Chrome has been my browser of choice since it came out (replaced my firefox preference). Now I use Chrome on my MacBook.

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ThemenmitKopf@topicswithhead

@Portfoliopferd Switch to Brave or Arc. Otherwise European Vivaldi. The ad blocker is not as good as in Brave but has cool functions with others. Definitely worth it. Normally everything is also taken over. Pretty simple, at least on Windows

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Yasin21@Yasin21

@Portfoliopferd I only know Safari, that's good enough for me!

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PatitosFortune@dividend_master_pf

I have $OPRA in my watchlist. It recently did a campaign trying to promote their hygge desk experience. I almost switched from Chrome. Maybe I’ll get some shares in the future.

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