That sounds like a pretty big abuse of their power and potentially raises anti-trust concerns. They could easily wield that power for nefarious reasons and I don't think any of us would want that. We can change laws. Companies should abide by them, however insufficient they may be at a given point in time.

> That sounds like a pretty big abuse of their power and potentially raises anti-trust concerns. They could easily wield that power for nefarious reasons and I don't think any of us would want that.

As if google doesn't already abuse its power and weild it for nefarious reasons, or have massive anti-trust concerns? But god forbid they use their power to prevent others abusing theirs by forcing people to pay again and again for media they already own.

So just to be clear, you're suggesting that Google use threats of blocking content providers from their other products, to strong-arm them into better licensing terms?

There's a reason they don't do that, in any business. How do you think e.g. anti-trust regulators would feel about that?

Perhaps I wasn't clear, apologies. Not other products. Google is a video seller and distributor. They have a right to decide what terms they like or don't, just as Walmart does.

As a seller of widget X, there's no way I'd accept a product with a license that says they could just take it back anytime for any reason. No sane seller should agree to that.

Their market share of "search, mobile phones, smart TVs" is what you originally claimed would give them leverage. But none of those have any bearing on movie rentals / sales on YouTube. They're entirely different products.

Now, the terms for the movie rentals / sales would definitely be negotiated between Google and the content owner. And Google could of course make your no-DRM policy a line in the sand in those negotiations. But why would the content providers agree to that? There's plenty of other competitive platforms they can (and do!) sell exactly the same content on, being specifically on YouTube's movie rental system won't make or break them.

And then we get back to your original proposal, which was clearly that they'd be using all their unrelated properties as (highly unethical) leverage in the negotiations.

If that's not what you're proposing, maybe you could be really concrete about what you think Google would be saying in those contract negotiations? "We will be selling your movies without DRM; if you don't agree then X". What exactly do you think X would be?

Well, leveraging the other properties but only so far as around those services. So if I search my TV for movies to rent, it would only show me those. Same with the Movies and TV app on my phone.

It would be unethical to completely remove them from search. But would it be unethical to prefer partners and give them higher precedent in results?

As for what X is, I don't know precisely. They could easily update Play terms that no app my sell an item to a user that may be removed later. That would mean X would mean you weren't in Play Movies and TV, but also weren't allowed to sell movies via a Play Store App.

"How dare Google use their market dominance to do X"

but also

"Why doesn't Google use their market dominance to do X"

Even the currently sleeping market watchdogs would wake up for that free promotion.

That would kill the small labels, but not the big labels because they have a way to connect with their customers that google does not control, namely radio.

That said, I agree with the principle of what you're saying. Google put a LOT of things in place on youtube specifically so the large publishers wouldn't go after them, and that has extended to everything else.

Google absolutely has a large responsibility in this, but it's also true they're not the only party with responsibility for it.