I agree for the most part but it really does “just work” for gaming. If you use Chimera or Bazzite it works almost just like a console.

Didn’t know about the MS/Apple thing, thanks.

When it was time to sell, Microsoft pocketed a sweet $550 million, making it more than a three-times multiple.

I hardly think this could be considered “helping” Apple.

I’m saying that one of the reasons Google shovels money in their direction is to stop regulators from having a reason to take a closer look at Chrome’s dominance.

I really don’t think they do. And the contracts reflect as much.

Regardless, none of this has anything to do with my point that no companies have an obligation to help their competition, which you’ve already agreed with, so maybe I’m missing your point.

Can I just disable CUPS?

If they’ve already been deemed a monopoly? Sure. That’s a response to anticompetitive behavior.

like Microsoft with Apple in 1997

Don’t know anything about that.

Google with Mozilla today

That’s funny because this is the opposite of what you seem to be suggesting. This is not helping their competition, this is paying another company hundreds of million dollars to be anticompetitive against their competition. They paid Mozilla (and dozens of others) to be the default search engine. Its the exact anticompetitive behavior that caused them to be legally classified as a monopoly.

They literally, objectively, have, monopolistic anti-competitive power

They literally don’t.

in literally every single western democracy you have special obligations to actually further competition

You literally don’t.

It isn’t. And they don’t.

That’s an interesting perspective.

What do you expect them to do? Not actively helping your competition is not remotely the same thing as being anticompetitive.

it’s that there are very good reasons to not have these in my car

There’s also very good reason TO have them, as I’ve already explained.

the loud alarm and policeman on the road searching for the stolen car has worked well for decades

LOL no. It hasn’t.

haven’t heard of car theft in… a pretty long time

Right, my mistake. If you haven’t heard of it happening, it must not have happened.

think these tings do exist, in the form of little devices thay you can connect to your car’s OBD port, and they have a GPS receiver and a SIM slot to do it’s job.

…yes, that’s what we’re discussing…

No u

I appreciate being able to check if I remembered to lock the doors.

How exactly does that work with a keyfob…?

I’d like to see a Sankey graph of where Valve’s money goes before I praise them that much for helping out a Linux distribution a bit.

I’d say it’s a lot more than “a bit”. It’s an enormous amount of help that pretty much everyone in the Linux (professional) community can, has, and will attest to.

I don’t agree that they’re a monopoly, because they’ve done absolutely nothing to prevent competition. Other stores do it to themselves.

I do agree though that their fees are exorbitant and their contributions to Linux are a teeny tiny fraction of their wealth, but I appreciate it regardless.

and a way to tell Windows that they could go without them if they don’t collaborate.

Ehhhh it’s a step in that direction. But as long as 96% or whatever of their users run Windows, it’s hardly much of a bargaining tool.

I do think that’s what they’re working for. After all Windows could flip a switch at any time and royally fuck them.

I wasn’t trying to make an argument either way. Just stating facts…

Oh, I see. Thanks.

Honestly the quality of games is the tip of the iceberg.

This is going to be one of those “Ubisoft investigates Ubisoft and found that Ubisoft did nothing wrong at Ubisoft”-situations, isn’t it?

No, this is going to be one of those “our stocks are tanking and investors want someone’s head on a pike” sort of meeting.

I can absolutely Google. But I choose not to. Because fuck Google.

When I did a web search it just directed me back to this same page.

God damnit, they just got away from Tencent…?