Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…We really need that. But I can hold that thought in my head at the same time I hold the thought in my head that Google Chrome was pivotal to the web surviving as the premier web development platform. If it had not been for Google and their entire business depending on a thriving open web, Apple, Microsoft I think would’ve been just as fine to see the web go away to disappear into being something that’s just served native mobile applications and native desktop applications that they could completely control. So I have all sorts of problems with Google, but it’s not Chrome. Chrome is a complete gift to web developers everywhere, to the web as a development platform, and they deserve an enormous amount of credit I think for that. Even if it’s entangled with their business model and half of Chrome is code that spies on you or informs targeted ads and a bunch of things I’m not a big fan of, I can divorce that from the fact that we need champions in the corner of the web who have trillions of dollars of market cap value riding on the open web. We’re going to take tangents upon a tangent upon a tangent. So let’s go to Chrome. I think Chrome positive impact on humanity is immeasurable for reasons that you just described. On the technology front, the features that present the competition they created, it’s spurred on this wonderful flourishing of web technologies. But anyway, I have to ask you about the recent stuff with the DOJ trying to split up Chrome and Google. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think this does harm? It’s a disaster. 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, Chrome is the last thing, and this is why I get so frustrated sometimes about 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. There are 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 want to 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, their ad monopoly maybe, or the shenanigans they’ve done in controlling both sides of the ad ledger, that they both control 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’ve always got to remember when we think about legislation, when we think about monopoly fights is you may not like how things look today and you may want to 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.…

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