Browser Monopoly

The Browser Monopoly by Blair Reeves

There is really only one Big Tech monopoly that I actively worry about. It’s not Amazon, Facebook or Apple, though they are all extremely dominant in their respective fields and do act in anti-competitive ways that merit regulatory remedy. Rather, the tech monopoly that I wonder about is arguably one of the more mundane parts of the modern internet experience: your web browser, and its most likely source – Google.

Zeldman warned us about this last year.

Mozilla Blocking Tracking Cookies

According to Bucking the Norm, Mozilla to Block Tracking Cookies in Firefox, 55.4 per cent of the total time required to load an average website was spent loading third-party trackers. I find that indicative of a problem with US businesses. I think marketers have adopted a “by any means necessary” approach to destroying customers privacy.

In the physical world, users wouldn’t expect hundreds of vendors to follow them from store to store, spying on the products they look at or purchase,” Mozilla’s Nick Nguyen pointed out, in a posting on Thursday. “Users have the same expectations of privacy on the web, and yet in reality, they are tracked wherever they go.

Some sites will continue to want user data in exchange for content, but now they will have to ask for it, a positive change for people who up until now had no idea of the value exchange they were asked to make,” Mozilla said.