[HN Gopher] The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
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The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
Author : hydrolox
Score : 123 points
Date : 2025-03-08 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| lolinder wrote:
| Discussion on the Proposed Final Judgement yesterday:
|
| _DOJ asks for judgement requiring Google to divest Chrome [pdf]_
| (31 points 30 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43296045
| cagenut wrote:
| good. ublock origin finally stopped working for me two days ago
| and for the first time in like 20 f'n years I got a popup
| yesterday.
| lifeinthevoid wrote:
| Switch to Firefox!
| delduca wrote:
| https://adguard.com/en/blog/mozilla-deletes-promise-to-
| never...
| sejje wrote:
| Switch to lynx!
| protimewaster wrote:
| If someone was previously using Chrome, though, they're
| probably not that protective off their data. So it would
| seem like Firefox is a decent solution even if it is
| selling your data. Google was probably selling your data
| too...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Maybe but it doesn't affect the ad-blocking abilities of
| Firefox and uBlock Origin. It is a legal document, not a
| technical document.
|
| If you want to go with ethics and trust, I am not
| particular fond of Brave practice of _replacing_ ads for
| some shady cryptocurrency (BAT). You don 't have to do
| that, you can just use it as an adblocking browser, but if
| you don't care about these things, the news of Firefox
| updating some privacy policy shouldn't affect you too much
| either.
|
| Anyways, both Firefox and Brave/Chromium are open source,
| you can see what data is being sent out, and there are
| forks.
|
| And to make things clear, I am not really a fan of Mozilla
| direction, I just switched because Firefox became better
| and Chrome worse in the last years.
| CivBase wrote:
| The point of switching to Firefox is not "Google bad,
| Mozilla good". The point is to chip away at the chromium
| browser monopoly. If you have another non-chromium browser
| to recommend, please share as an alternative.
|
| Mozilla has not proven themselves to be trustworthy, but I
| think most would still consider them to be less
| untrustworthy than Google. Firefox offers similar levels of
| support, feature parity, and performance to Chrome, which
| makes it an easy alternative to recommend. There are
| certainly other non-chromium options worth considering, but
| Firefox is still by far the most accessible.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> feature parity_
|
| No PWA support out of the box last time I looked. And
| Firefox (understandably but annoyingly) doesn't support
| some of the non-standardised Chrome APIs such as the File
| System Access API.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| Not on desktop, but PWA support is there on Firefox for
| Android at least.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Firefox on iOS has no built-in adblocker making it a no-go.
| And I need sync between platforms.
| tmottabr wrote:
| firefox on iOS on most places is just a firefox skin on top
| of safari, since Apple does not let other browsers engines
| in iOS..
| tgv wrote:
| Firefox Focus at least removes trackers. It's a wrapper
| around Safari, anyway.
| nuker wrote:
| I use Wipr in Safari on both, iOS and Mac. Small one time
| purchase each. And i enable only passive filters, not the
| active one, that requires page access.
| PierceJoy wrote:
| Me too. Found out you can reenable it in the extension
| settings.
| delduca wrote:
| Safari + Wipr, 100% adblocking in my experiments.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Safari only exists on the Apple platforms
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Brave is the best option.
| 3836293648 wrote:
| Sure, if you have no morals
| toxican wrote:
| Yet another Chromium browser, you say?
| ksec wrote:
| Just use NextDNS.
| newsclues wrote:
| I don't care that Google, Apple or Microsoft have their own
| browser.
|
| Especially not when there are other third party browsers.
| Wouldn't say no to a government funded one that was secure and
| tested with government services.
|
| There are some issues with the big tech giants that is likely
| harmful to consumers and the industry, and I'd welcome anti-trust
| investigations into all of them, but I feel like minor issues
| like browsers is an attempt to pretend like meaningful regulation
| and government control has been applied, while the real problems
| are ignored.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > third party browsers. Wouldn't say no to a government funded
| one that was secure and tested with government services.
|
| Yes because the government is so well run with competent people
| waiting in line to join it in the era of DOGE?
|
| Do you think that a web browser would be free of politics?
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| > Especially not when there are other third party browsers.
| Wouldn't say no to a government funded one that was secure and
| tested with government services.
|
| Which government, though? The US is mired in corruption at the
| moment, and the UK is taking an extended dump on privacy,
| Russia is ... Russia and China doesn't really believe in
| privacy or freedom of speech, among other things.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > secure and tested with government services.
|
| The same government services that require things like recaptcha
| to work? The situation in the US is far worse than just "I need
| to use a BigTech browser to access government services".
| Springtime wrote:
| Regardless of what happens to Chrome per se it's who is involved
| with pushing for major controversial changes in Chromium that
| matters.
|
| Manifest v3 and Web Integrity API are prominent examples of
| Google's team shaping how all Chromium based browsers will be,
| regardless of pushback (though they relented with the latter for
| now).
| ttoinou wrote:
| Can't any motivated group of developers fork chromium and push
| their own agenda ?
| calcifer wrote:
| That's not relevant. Chrome has the most market share, so its
| decisions become de facto standards. What happens in some
| fork by a 2 men crew doesn't matter.
| nfw2 wrote:
| The cancellation of the web integrity api is evidence
| against this claim.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Manifest v3 is not even breaking any standards. This is like
| saying Google should not make any changes to their browser as
| any forks will not be able to maintain any divergence. All
| forks are free to keep manifest v2. Off course maintaining a
| browser is expensive, but that doesn't mean Google has to foot
| the bill for everyone and everything.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| The standards google bullies us into?
| lolinder wrote:
| To try to stem the tide of "Trump will just make this go away
| because ${corruption}", I want to remind everyone of a few
| things:
|
| * This is not a Biden-admin lawsuit. It was launched by the first
| Trump admin.
|
| * Of the 14 co-plaintiffs, only 1 (CA) is a state that didn't
| vote for Trump in 2024. The Colorado Plaintiff States include
| another 16 red states, for a total of 29 red states represented.
|
| As much as it's trendy in 2025 to talk about this admin as though
| it's entirely unprincipled, it's actually been doing exactly what
| it said it would do to satisfy its base. This lawsuit was started
| by them in the first place and if the list of Attorneys General
| is anything to go by has overwhelming support from the base that
| Trump is acting to satisfy. Google's not getting out of this from
| just a small amount of kowtowing now, it's _far_ too late for
| that.
| awnird wrote:
| The tiktok ban was the same way, until it wasn't. Remarkable
| that people are still falling for this.
| lolinder wrote:
| The TikTok ban was overwhelmingly unpopular among several
| important demographics and undoing the ban formed a part of
| Trump's 2024 campaign. His decisions with TikTok this year
| were a reversal from 2020 but entirely expected based on his
| 2024 campaign, so that's not a valid comparison.
| malfist wrote:
| What about all the other times Trump has done something
| like that?
|
| Trump's MO seems to be to take something away, then give it
| back and declare himself the savior of it. Just look at all
| the chaos with tariffs recently
| martinsnow wrote:
| Essentially what you're saying is Google need to tell their
| users they will lose a lot if chrome is sold, and Google
| needs to say a few nice things about trump to get the same
| treatment.
| keepamovin wrote:
| At the risk of smoting from the Google Gods ( I should be
| careful, I make a product that depends on their browser ), I
| think the best thing that should happen to Chrome, if it's
| going to be sold off - is it becomes a "public utility" and
| basically is a model for actually publicly stewarded open
| development. Like maybe what the Mozilla Foundation should have
| been, like what many actual C-based open source OS projects
| seems to be (tho I'm no expert).
|
| Why? Because it's essentially the defacto way/portal/thing to
| access to the biggest source of information humanity has: the
| web.
|
| It's too big and important for any 1 company - tho saying that,
| I'm okay with Windows being owned by Microsoft which is (was)
| basically the same thing in a way.
|
| My unsolicited advice to Google: sacrifice it, focus on AI. To
| all the people on the Chrome team? They should be financially
| taken care of, and should be part of the foundation that
| develops it if they want. The foundation should not be
| controlled by Alphabet, but should be truly public.
|
| This is all probably too vague and unspecified for you
| lot...but it is just an idea.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I'm okay with Windows being owned by Microsoft which is
| (was) basically the same thing in a way
|
| Windows is much worse by most metrics. I can't fork
| Windowsium and build (and sell) my own fully-compatible,
| 99.999999% R&D paid for by Microsoft, OS.
|
| > This is all probably too vague and unspecified for you
| lot...but it is just an idea
|
| It is a bit vague :) In that: who pays for it? Who decides
| what features are in or out? Public utilities are generally
| what we make things when they're feature complete and the
| only challenge is rolling it out as cheaply as possible. But
| it feels like web browsers have a way to go yet. There's
| nothing stopping the US government (or any government) from
| bulding their own browser off Chromium right now. Nothing
| needs selling or splitting.
| keepamovin wrote:
| I think the control should be in the hands of the public.
| Stewarded by a public organization with government funds.
| What do you think?
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> This is all probably too vague and unspecified for you
| lot...but it is just an idea._
|
| Forgive me for being blunt, but what idea? If the question is
| who is supposed to fund Chromium and Firefox going forward
| then you haven't actually offered any ideas.
| keepamovin wrote:
| It's okay. Yes, it is just an idea, specifically of making
| it public. I think the government should pay for it. What
| do you think?
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Governments are unreliable (e.g. USAID or recently
| disappeared government datasets) and have even more
| conflicts of interest than Google itself (e.g. debates
| around encryption). Many people don't trust their
| government.
|
| Commercial funding is not necessarily more reliable in
| general. Google keeps shutting down stuff all the time.
| But in this particular case, the commercial interest is
| so strong that funding is secure.
|
| In my opinion, governments should focus on natural
| monopolies (taxation, violence, justice, transport
| infrastructure, water, etc) and on areas where there is
| broad consensus for a public option (health, schools,
| etc).
|
| Where governments fund random stuff that few people
| understand the importance of, there is a big risk of the
| whole thing getting DOGEd or starved to stagnation. The
| government would never put up a fight against Apple
| relegating the web platform to the status of a glorified
| document viewer.
|
| In my opinion, the status quo is flawed but the
| alternatives are worse.
|
| If the court decides that Google must "divest" Chrome,
| they will have to say what that means for an open source
| project. If it basically comes down to Google being
| banned from controlling the default search engine setting
| in any web browser, then their main incentive for funding
| Chrome would be gone.
|
| If that happens, the only solution I see is a joint
| "Chrome Foundation" effort funded by a number of
| corporations with a less direct interest in the viability
| of the web, i.e the Linux model. But this would be very
| disruptive. I fear that browser development would be
| aimless and start to stagnate. Other oligopolists would
| quickly take advantage of the ensuing power vacuum.
| 3vidence wrote:
| Agree with another comment that I absolutely do not want
| the US government running chrome at this point.
|
| Maybeee the EU but we are talking about an American
| ruling.
| floydnoel wrote:
| so every 4 years a new group can shift the priorities
| completely and what should be a technical challenge
| becomes a political one, dominated by those with money.
| I'm sure before long you would be required to input your
| government ID to use it. I am not sure a worse idea is
| even possible.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I'm sure before long you would be required to input
| your government ID to use it.
|
| The government does not need to maintain a browser to
| enforce this rule. It would simply tell people that
| logging into the internet requires government ID now, and
| the ISPs would make it so or be shut down.
|
| The government could however, if it maintained a browser,
| _guarantee_ that the internet would be accessible
| _without_ a government ID, just by not putting that
| feature in their browser. A government browser would be
| subject to the constitution, debate, public comment, and
| legislation; rather than having to sue companies to get
| anything done.
|
| Google, Apple, and Mozilla are not protecting you from
| the government. They're intimately financially
| interconnected with each other, and can decide what the
| entire world is going to have to tolerate on the web on a
| group chat. Without government intervention (even if just
| to collect bribes), they'd all just probably merge and
| enslave the planet.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| "It was launched by the first Trump admin"
|
| The first Trump admin was positively benign and adult compared
| to the current one. The first Trump admin had significant
| checks and balances on its behaviours.
|
| And of course almost everyone who served in that first Trump
| admin campaigned against/warned about Trump this time, which
| should be telling. Or maybe they're just "RINOs" or something.
|
| "As much as it's trendy in 2025 to talk about this admin as
| though it's entirely unprincipled"
|
| This administration is extraordinarily unprincipled and self-
| serving. The DOJ as a tool for use at the leisure and to the
| benefit of the president/king is blatantly in the open[1].
|
| "Google's not getting out of this from just a small amount of
| kowtowing now"
|
| I would bet real money they absolutely will get out from this.
| Not only that they will get out from it, they'll get the public
| "treated unfairly" speech as well.
|
| [1] - There is a major plot point in the 1993 movie The Pelican
| Brief where the simple insinuation that the president
| influenced the DOJ in any way would be so politically
| devastating that it would destroy his administration. This is
| so quaint now. How far the country has fallen.
| techpineapple wrote:
| " As much as it's trendy in 2025 to talk about this admin as
| though it's entirely unprincipled, it's actually been doing
| exactly what it said it would do to satisfy its base."
|
| Most Arguments in both directions are basically unprovable and
| amount to propaganda at this point. Degrees matter. Saying
| "people voted for this", which both sides say with different
| directionality, is mostly away to convince people to either
| support or fight against the administration. Everyone voted for
| their interpretation of thing X, but will oppose it if
| implementation Y causes impact Z which they perceive as bad.
| dartos wrote:
| > it's actually been doing exactly what it said it would do to
| satisfy its base
|
| Yes and no.
|
| Lots of quick sweeping local changes were promised to specific
| states during trump's rallies in those states only for him to
| go silent on them post election.
|
| I don't think flip flopping on tariffs was part of his platform
| either.
|
| But generally, yes, this is what was voted for.
|
| He takes the gish gallop approach to governing, so it's hard to
| make any large statements like this without being a little
| incorrect.
| ein0p wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think Trump has any sympathy for Google
| whatsoever, given how censorious (and proud of it) it was on
| both Google Search and on YouTube in the 2020 election cycle.
| Good luck, Google, you're gonna need it.
|
| That said, Chrome is not really viable on its own, and it's the
| wrong "split" to enforce. The correct split is "down the
| middle" right through the money-making businesses - create two
| Googles, with their own search and search/web ads and ensure
| (through antitrust oversight) that they compete with each other
| instead of rubbing each other's back. Spin out Cloud and
| Android/Play Store into separate companies. Separate all four
| from Alphabet. The rest of the money-losing properties
| (including Chrome) can be distributed arbitrarily, it doesn't
| really matter.
|
| Or something to that effect. As long as ads are split down the
| middle, and separated from Alphabet, that's all that really
| matters. Unless this happens, any "antitrust" against Google is
| bullshit for those who can't read its SEC filings.
| re-thc wrote:
| Can Google just "donate" Chrome to a foundation like a lot of big
| companies do to deal with this?
|
| Maybe we'll soon have Apache Chrome!
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Apache is where projects go to slowly die.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Or Oracle. :D
| ekianjo wrote:
| Really? Airflow, Arrow, Iceberg, Kafka are dying projects?
| jherdman wrote:
| Is this really true? Something that can be supported by clear
| evidence? I've seen this trotted out many times, but it seems
| like there are interesting Apache projects:
|
| https://airflow.apache.org/
|
| https://iceberg.apache.org/
|
| https://kafka.apache.org/
|
| https://superset.apache.org/
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It's superficially true of any large stewardship
| organization. After N years some significant percent of
| projects will be on their way out. These will continue
| accumulating year over year and they potentially won't be
| disposed of for decades (and for good reason).
|
| Meanwhile only a vanishingly small fraction of projects
| remains at the center of public attention for an extended
| period of time. People develop a skewed perspective because
| we interact with many of the most popular projects on a
| daily basis.
| rany_ wrote:
| https://openoffice.apache.org/ is the context in which I've
| seen this saying get regurgitated the most.
| tslocum wrote:
| I wrote about the situation with Apache Open Office here:
|
| https://rocket9labs.com/post/its-time-to-let-go-apache-
| softw...
| crop_rotation wrote:
| There is no foundation with the budget to even maintain a web
| browser, let alone keep developing. If Google is not footing
| the bill then Safari will become the torch bearer, and Apple
| has no incentive to make Safari become more capable to threaten
| that sweet IAP revenue.
| rchaud wrote:
| Have there been meaningful changes to the browser spec since
| ES2015 support was baked in? Chrome, Safari etc. are not
| developing their browsers for the betterment of the web. One
| company wants to shove ads in your face, the other wants you
| out of the web entirely and into their walled garden of apps
| and ads.
|
| From a security standpoint, I'm sure it's more complicated,
| but UBO and warning dialog boxes about downloading files to
| your device, logging into services without 2FA would probably
| solve a lot of those problems. Does a billion dollar corp
| have to be involved considering how much has gone into Linux
| from people's pro bono efforts?
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Linux kernel gets so so much of corporate support, and is
| still a much more smaller project than any web browser.
| People's pro bono efforts stopped being enough for linux
| about 2 decades ago at the very least.
| rollcat wrote:
| Like what Mozilla was supposed to be doing all along?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| This is the absolutely dumbest thing that I have read. Who would
| buy Chrome and why? If you just want the codebase, you have
| Chromium. Chrome only monetizes because of ads.
|
| Then what happens to Chromebooks? Can Google no longer ship a
| browser with Android?
|
| Besides, unless you have an Android - which is only 30% of the US
| market or a Chromebook, everyone who uses Chrome went through the
| process of downloading it and made a purposeful choice to use it
| crop_rotation wrote:
| It is dumb and the comments here are baffling. People are
| blaming Google for forks not being able to keep up. Like forks
| can be based on webkit or gecko if they don't like Google. Both
| Apple and MSFT are far far more closed in all their products
| where they have any inertia. Yet Google gets the flame mostly
| because of their incompetent PR and legal execution. Case in
| point Google got flamed here so much for dragonfly, while Bing
| keeps running in China and even sometimes by mistake or not
| applies Chinese sensors to the rest of the world. The sacred
| Apple also works in China following all their laws. But Google
| is worse than both just for attempting dragonfly.
| nfw2 wrote:
| Google lost a lot of goodwill on HN since the proposed web
| integrity api. HN has a strong aversion to perceived attacks
| on the open web.
|
| I personally don't think it's fair to single Google out and
| leave Apple and Microsoft alone. It may be overly cynical,
| but I think Google is in its current situation because it has
| fostered political enemies on both sides.
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Google gets this treatment before any talk of web integrity
| API so no that was not it. I don't think this is
| necessarily about political enemies on both sides. Just
| that their PR is just so so bad. Like look at Brad Smith
| and all the big but empty statements he keeps making for
| Microsoft. Google needs someone like him.
| LightHugger wrote:
| Monopolies are at their worst when they use their position to
| make a power play over a market (such as browsers) that isn't
| very profitable on it's own but can be used as a loss leader in
| a wider monopolistic scheme.
|
| This is when antitrust is needed most, by design. There's a bit
| of understanding you need to do, but not only is it not dumb,
| what you said about nobody wanting to buy chrome is actually
| part of the proof of why google needs to be broken up and why
| chrome is an ideal target for doing so. The browser market
| needs to be made competitive again.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So who is going to fund a fully featured browser?
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| It's not like browsers will cease to exist though. If the
| proposed selling of Chrome leads to slower change in web
| specifications (i.e. 'fully featured' browser stuff) I
| don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
| ksec wrote:
| I disliked Google ever since they started their "Do No Evil" PR
| campaign. For as long as I remember I was the extreme rare few on
| internet against them.
|
| And I also disliked Chrome. Especially the direction of the web
| they are using Chrome to push forward.
|
| And I also disliked Electron.
|
| But I am against DOJ forcing Google to sell off Chrome.
| Especially when most of Chrome is open sourced. I think this is
| just plain wrong. Why dont we force Apple to open source macOS?
| Microsoft to Open Source Windows? Or Selling off Office. SpaceX
| to sell its Engine?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| None of those exhibit the same sort of outsized influence that
| chrome does on global web standards. The app store duopoly
| might come close but still not to the same extent.
|
| Being open source has nothing to do with it. Of course selling
| it off won't necessarily accomplish the desired result since at
| the end of the day it isn't the legal ownership per se that
| results in the influence.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Outsize influence combined with conflict of interest. The
| other branches of Google have too much to gain from being
| able to steer the direction of the web with Chrome, and the
| company as a whole benefits from writing its web apps in a
| way that makes them work better under Chrome, making for
| self-reinforcing hegemony. It's just as bad as MS+IE, maybe
| worse since Chromium/Blink being open source has given them
| plausible deniability that MS didn't have.
| ksec wrote:
| Chrome isn't bundled with Windows, but most Window users
| decided to install Chrome.
|
| While I agree outsized influence that chrome does on global
| web standards, it is not like Apple doesn't or couldn't
| invent something as well. The reality is that no one has the
| incentive to make better web technology.
|
| If Google sold off Chrome, who will buy it? Are Google even
| allowed to make another browser based on same technology?
| What is everyone just installed that again? Selling off
| Chrome doesn't make any sense at all. And as you said. Their
| influence on development of Blink is still, Google.
| dartos wrote:
| Electron isn't a google product...
|
| Also why bring up disliking something as though you were ahead
| of the curve only to stop short of actually being in favor of
| taking action?
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Electron isn't a google product...
|
| Sure, but it's exacerbating the Blink monoculture anyway.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Last time the DOJ declared a web browser monopoly, they lost the
| case on appeal, then the web browser does on its own.
|
| The problem isn't within Google. They aren't doing anything
| substantial to lock users into Chrome. The problem is unforced
| errors on the part of both Apple and Mozilla creating awful web
| browsers that aren't worth using.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Safari and Firefox are capable web browsers. Where do people
| get this outlandish take from?
| sebazzz wrote:
| Maybe the actual problem is some people having this
| sentiment.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| Can't speak for Safari, but Firefox has never been anything
| but a dumpster fire for me. Constant reminders about updates
| and a UI that slows my computer to a crawl no matter what I
| do. Yes, I open many tabs and don't use a turbocharged
| laptop, but the same applies to my Chrome use with next to no
| problems, so really, fuck you Firefox for not adjusting after
| decades, as per possible user needs. Chrome seems to manage
| it, so why can't the Mozilla people with their own expertise
| and funds?
|
| Many new versions and updates of FF that I've tried have
| claimed to be much smoother and more efficient, only for the
| exact same shit to start happening across the years and
| multiple laptops used.
| jmisavage wrote:
| When was the last time you tried? I have a 2012 Mac mini
| that runs it like a champ and has done so for a very long
| time. I only have a handful of plugins but uBlock Origin is
| one of them.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Either you need to service your computer or configure your
| Firefox.
|
| I went back to Firefox about 5 years ago and not even once
| missed Chrome since.
| nradov wrote:
| Why should the user need to do that? The browser should
| automatically configure itself for optimal performance on
| any reasonable hardware.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Because none of what they talk about is a problem. So the
| problem may lay on their side. Or they roll on a half-a-
| decade-old sentiment.
| Twirrim wrote:
| Firefox does, though. There really aren't these wild and
| crazy speed issues with it at all, even with fresh out of
| the box defaults.
|
| The only time I've had to touch about:config in the last
| several years was due to some smartcard related bug
| caused by an external library, that forced me to tweak
| firefox's behaviour. Once that bug was resolved, I
| switched it back.
|
| Firefox being slow is well into the self-perpetuating FUD
| territory.
| geor9e wrote:
| Capable is a interesting word choice. Capable means something
| meets a bare minimum for success. A and B are great. C is
| fantastic. D is arguably first class. E is capable. When
| making a free choice, I want the best one, so any lackluster
| review feels like one of those southern backhanded
| compliments, getting the message across without insulting it
| in polite company. Capable perfectly describes my feelings
| towards Firefox and Safari.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Seeing that Safari doesn't drain my battery on my laptop
| and it doesn't send my search engine to an adtech
| company...
| bdavbdav wrote:
| Not used Firefox in ages, but what's the matter with Safari? It
| sips battery and cpu cycles on my macs.
| scarfaceneo wrote:
| None. Safari is the best browser I've used by a long margin.
| 3vidence wrote:
| On the developer side I've always found Safari messy to
| support with out of date APIs
|
| Feels like Apple doesn't really care about it
| AnonHP wrote:
| > The problem isn't within Google. They aren't doing anything
| substantial to lock users into Chrome.
|
| I feel this is meant to trigger people into reacting and
| causing a flame war.
|
| Google has been making its own web properties work well on
| Google Chrome while making them perform poorer or make them
| break on other browsers. Google Chrome optimizes for Google,
| not the web, and certainly not "the open web".
| hypeatei wrote:
| One example of special treatment is Chrome giving
| *.google.com sites access to system metrics for the CPU, GPU,
| and RAM usage[0][1] through a default extension that isn't
| exposed to users.
|
| [0]: https://xcancel.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018
|
| [1]: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main
| :chr...
| DragonStrength wrote:
| Well, last time, the presidential election changed executive
| support as well. That would make this significant since it's a
| new Justice Dept.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This suit began under the last Trump administration. If there
| was a Google-friendly administration, it was Obama's.
|
| What's disappointing to Google is that all of their kowtowing
| to the Biden administration's "content shaping" ended up
| worth nothing in the end. Harris would have rewarded them for
| that help, but Trump of course hates them for it because it
| was largely directed at him.
| 3vidence wrote:
| (Googler opinions are my own, don't work on chrome)
|
| Chrome has just been a better product for the last 10 to 15
| years.
|
| Every other company has just failed to make a good browser
| because they lack the incentives to do so (have gone back and
| forth as a Firefox user).
|
| The only competitive browsers are those already built on chrome
| or safari.
|
| I'm not personally a big fan of Safari but it's bigger issue is
| that it is only available on one platform whereas the web is
| naturally cross platform.
|
| Almost by definition Safari can't be the "winning" browser.
|
| This feels like ruling that the iPhone is a monopoly in the US
| and that Apple needs to divest from phones.
|
| Edit: to those replying I 100% don't agree with all the decisions
| chrome make, very importantly ad block.
|
| But just survey the actual browser market in the last 10 years to
| understand Chrome's dominance
| pjmlp wrote:
| I am sure folks at Microsoft were saying the same of IE 5 and
| 6, as I was around when it took over.
| 3vidence wrote:
| If I remember my history Microsoft was never actually forced
| to stop integrating IE in their product.
|
| The only reason it stopped being the #1 browser is that
| Chrome came out and was better...
|
| Even though people had to go out of their way to download on
| all computers
| pjmlp wrote:
| Only because the whole thing was shut down when
| administration changed.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_
| C...
|
| Nowadays if it wasn't for Safari, thanks to Chrome and
| Electron garbage, the Web is effectively ChromeOS.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I would love for something to trounce chrome the way it did
| IE, and even FF (which was so slow chrome felt lightning fast
| by comparison).
|
| I'm not optimistic that it'll happen, but I'd still like to
| see it.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It starts by not shipping Electron garbage, and write
| browser agnostic Webapps.
| sneak wrote:
| I'm confused, as a firefox daily driver, why is firefox not a
| good browser? Or are we discounting it because it is funded by
| Google?
| blibble wrote:
| because it can be used to effectively block Google ads and
| tracking
| derkster wrote:
| I'm with you. Every time one of these arguments come up,
| people talk about how Chrome is superior. I've used Firefox
| daily for minimum five years as a daily driver, and it's been
| atleast 3 years since I've had to install Chrome because some
| website specified that it NEEDED a Chromium based browser for
| something specific, I believe it was a Firmware Upgrade over
| USB - through the browser. I split my time between Windows
| and Linux equally, and Firefox is the daily driver on both.
|
| Can someone in this thread who have swapped between
| Firefox/Chrome explain the problems they run into ultimately
| driving them back to Chrome?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I've seen increasing numbers of site breakages in the past
| 6mos. Airline websites that won't let you book, car rental
| websites that won't even load, the persistent PayPal bug
| that requires you to enter a security code. 2fa checks
| _everywhere_. I keep a chromium installed to deal with
| these, but when there 's a decent alternative (i.e. not
| brave) I'll probably drop FF as a daily driver.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It kills my battery on my Mac about as bad as Chrome.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Your employer is constantly adding non-standard shit to their
| browser so instead of making competitive browsers others have
| to either burn cycles on demolishing that bs, or catch up with
| you. You want an example? That command and commandFor bs from a
| couple of days ago.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| > But just survey the actual browser market in the last 10
| years to understand Chrome's dominance
|
| I feel like most people here wouldn't understand that to
| inherently indicate superior quality. I'd argue that the
| absolute dominance of Chrome is mostly evidence of the monopoly
| power that Google yields. It got on top via search, becomes the
| gateway to the web for people, leverages that to sell
| advertisement and also convince tons of people to use the
| browser. It's been all leverage.
|
| I'd also disagree on it even being a better browser. Firefox
| has issues, but on actual usability and feeling like a user
| agent, it's head and shoulders above Chrome. It is more
| flexible, more customizable, and I find that it runs
| significantly better on every website that isn't owned by
| Google. If Chrome was a better browser, they wouldn't have had
| to sabotage Firefox on their sites for years
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38349357).
|
| It's Google that can't compete, if they have to use back-
| channels and leverage their other powers to maintain dominance.
| They aren't competing with the product alone.
| borgster wrote:
| It's morning in America - pmarca
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > The Justice Department also kept a Biden-era proposal that
| seeks to ban Google from paying companies like Apple, other
| smartphone manufacturers and Mozilla to make its search engine
| the default on their phones and browsers.
|
| RIP Firefox?
| hinkley wrote:
| Ah fuck.
|
| Welp. They had a chance to be default alive and they fucked it
| by trying to spend the money on new initiatives instead of just
| spending the interest payments from an endowment.
| wmf wrote:
| Weren't the new initiatives pretty small compared to Firefox
| development?
| hinkley wrote:
| At the moment when I got upset about this, they were trying
| to do an awful lot, and it felt like the money was burning
| a hole in their pockets.
|
| I know they cut back a little but maybe they've sobered up
| since? Haven't had the heart to look again.
| pavon wrote:
| Yes. And other than Firefox, Mozilla was spending money in
| two ways. First creating new paid products in an attempt to
| have revenue in case the Google money ever went away. None
| of them were successful enough to meet this goal, but it
| was a good goal. Secondly, they spent their charity
| donations on activism work. The way they are structured
| they legally could not spend that money on Firefox. They
| would need to restructure as a non-profit corporation (not
| tax deductible charity) to accept donations to spend on
| Firefox, like their Thunderbird subsidiary. I hope they do
| so now, and at least attempt to support Firefox on
| donations.
|
| The truth is that browsers are a very complicated, very
| quickly moving, and very security sensitive piece of
| software. They spent all that money on Firefox rather than
| saving it because if they didn't Firefox would have fallen
| behind Chrome and Safari and it wouldn't be worth using
| today.
| hinkley wrote:
| I would put that heavily on the "excuse not reason"
| category. The public doesn't understand this nuance and I
| hope you're right about next steps.
|
| It makes no good goddamned sense that money that was
| given in order to be featured in a web browser cannot be
| spent primarily on that web browser, and can only be
| spent on anything _except_ that web browser.
| jcfrei wrote:
| If chrome is no longer owned by Google I'll use it. That's the
| reason I switched to firefox in the first place.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| In my opinion Firefox is better in all the ways except speed
| - Chrome still feels faster on old computers. And I prefer
| the browser market to still have some technical diversity no
| matter who actually runs it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Ever try installing chrome on an old operating system like
| Windows 7? It doesn't work but if already installed then
| much faster. Wonder upto what version works with win7
| tiberious726 wrote:
| Eh, I tried using Firefox again for a few months when
| manifest v3 was announced, nothing worked quite right, then
| I ran into this: https://madaidans-
| insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.ht...
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Firefox had Servo, a project that among other things
| focused on delivering faster technologies for a web
| browser. They had impressive results (integrated into
| Firefox as Firefox Quantum) but were suddenly fired
|
| At that point I think Firefox lost a vision of a better
| future
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| chrome no longer supports effective ad-blocking extensions.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Isn't that because Google doesn't want them upsetting their
| advertising business. Breaking up seems like it will help
| this
| loeg wrote:
| Sort of. MV3 is less effective than MV2, sure. But it is
| not wholly useless. uBlock Origin Lite exists.
| seam_carver wrote:
| uBO Lite seems to sufficient for like 99% of my usage.
| Only certain websites I'll open up in FireFox with UBO
| full.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Who do you think is going to buy chrome? And don't you think
| they are going to want to recoup their investment?
|
| I suspect chrome will get far less consumer friendly than
| chrome currently is if it is sold.
| rollcat wrote:
| Firefox will be just fine. Mozilla CEO bonuses however...
| dralley wrote:
| This is complete nonsense.
|
| I don't love the CEO bonuses, but they are objectively less
| than half a percent of Mozilla's budget. Google search on the
| other hand is 85% of their revenue.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think it's now at 1% $6.3M of $650M revenue which is a
| lot for a CEO failing to keep the company viable from a
| clearly obvious eventuality.
| loeg wrote:
| Maybe they'd be better served with a more effective and
| expensive CEO. It's hard to know.
| rollcat wrote:
| Apologies for the cheap shot at sarcasm, however the point
| I was trying to make is this:
| https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/09/this-is-a-pretty-dire-
| asses...
| infinitezest wrote:
| I recently switched to Vivaldi and have really liked it.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Is it going to support manifest v2 after it is phased out by
| Google or whoever is going to own Chrome?
| ofalkaed wrote:
| I made that switch quite a few years ago, got sick of dealing
| with extensions and configuring browsers. Vivaldi gives me
| enough out of the box to call it good.
| manquer wrote:
| It will hurt but it won't be their death.
|
| They have been saving up a bit last year if you see the
| financial reports their reserves are just above $1B now and
| there are others who paid in the past (like Yahoo did till
| 2017) who will pay Firefox a decent amount if not like Google
| does .
|
| My guess it is likely be Bing or probably a new generation AI
| company like OpenAI who will replace Google and perhaps even
| pay similar or close to what Google pays. The traffic _is_
| worth a lot. Bing attested to click flow as _the_ reason they
| cannot make a better product in their testimony in this trial.
|
| Also Google will either be allowed to continue the contract
| till its current end (I believe 1-2 more years ) or will pay
| fully and release Mozilla from their obligations (Mozilla is
| not party to the case so early termination without compensation
| would be penalty on them for no reason ).
|
| Mozilla will need to make some significant cuts and layoffs no
| doubt will be hard on the team, but the product will survive.
| delfinom wrote:
| They can start by reducing their CEO salary from _check
| notes_ $6.9 million in 2022. It increased by millions in just
| a decade while their market share declined and they layed off
| hundreds.
| _bin_ wrote:
| time to try ladybird haha
| catach wrote:
| I recall it being claimed that Mozilla has the warchest to
| survive at typical spending levels for quite some time, without
| Google.
| pavon wrote:
| If I am reading their financial statement correctly, they
| have about 3 years of runway. $500M/year expenses, $65M/year
| revenue other than search deals, $45M/year interest on
| savings and $1300M assets.
|
| https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/mozilla-
| fdn-202...
| binarymax wrote:
| Mozilla should have seen this coming and invested in their own
| search and ad infrastructure like Brave. They've had years but
| wasted their time on tiny features like Pocket.
| lewdwig wrote:
| All that rather pathetic grovelling and kowtowing to Trump, for
| naught.
| spamizbad wrote:
| They're still getting a friendlier NLRB, lower corporate tax
| rates, and an economic policy that is less focused on full
| employment; tamping down engineering wage growth
| Muromec wrote:
| They already pivoted to hire offshore workers, so why would
| they care
| relaxing wrote:
| Offshoring as the supposed death of the US software
| developer going on 40 years now remains greatly
| exaggerated.
| jfengel wrote:
| And I still don't understand why. I expected it when I
| started my career, and here nearing the end it's still
| really rare. And it should have gotten easier in that
| time, what with the Internet.
|
| Time zones and culture and language and all that, I
| suppose. But the world is full of very smart people who
| have a decent grasp of American and European culture, and
| would work for a tenth the price.
| Muromec wrote:
| It depends what kind of a company you work for. Something
| like a bank with a lot of boringly tedious stuff on top
| of procedures will have quite a lot of offshore
| contractors. They don't even have to be very smart,
| because truly smart ones decide to move closer towards
| the source of the moneys.
| relaxing wrote:
| It's hard enough to get developers to build what you want
| when they're sitting one cubicle over.
|
| > But the world is full of very smart people who have a
| decent grasp of American and European culture
|
| Haha no. And maybe even more importantly, the Americans
| have zero grasp of theirs.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The suit started under the last Trump administration.
| relaxing wrote:
| And then they did all that pathetic groveling to the Trump
| administration.
| slickQ wrote:
| It may be sold to a Trump insider in the end. First crypto
| and now this.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Do note that this will take years to play out. Nothing is
| certain yet.
| mountainmonk wrote:
| The answer is quite simple, they just need to make a big
| announcement that they will be investing a few billions into
| something that will 'create well paying AMERICAN jobs',
| keypoint is that they need to let Trump announce it.
|
| It doesn't matter if they actually go through with it or
| greatly inflate the number like OpenAI, Softbank and co did.
| modulus1 wrote:
| A company owning a web browser isn't the problem. A company
| owning a web browser, OS and search engine shouldn't be a problem
| either. I don't know why the remedy can't actually address the
| problem, and the DOJ can't move more quickly to address antitrust
| across the industry. This feels like randomly cutting a baby in
| half, while the rest of the thieves, even those in the same
| family, are not deterred.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The problem is an _ads_ company owning a web browser, OS, and
| search engine, and using that control over how users interact
| with the internet to outcompete everyone else. You left out
| Google 's raison d'etre from your statement.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| That is not what is happening. I use Android, Chrome, and
| Google Search because the alternatives are quite poor. All of
| those things work better with alternatives than any
| competition. Android is the most open mobile OS, Chrome is
| the most open and non-coercive browser, Google Search works
| great with all other OS's and browsers.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It doesn't matter why you use any of this software. What
| matters is what it does to the ads market. This is not 1999
| and this is not Microsoft. Google's product isn't software.
| It's the attention of its users.
| dathery wrote:
| Isn't "monopolies suppress competition" one of the classic
| reasons people think they should be broken up? I'm not
| saying you have to agree with that theory, but just
| observing a current lack of competition doesn't by itself
| seem like an argument against breakup.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Google is not suppressing competition. There are plenty
| of competing browsers and search engines, they all suck.
| On the Mobile OS side there is less but substantially
| more robust competition, even though I, personally, hate
| iOS. So breaking Google up because of a theoretical
| problem that is refuted by reality is nonsensible.
| dathery wrote:
| > There are plenty of competing browsers and search
| engines, they all suck.
|
| Maybe our difference in viewpoint is that I see this fact
| and wonder why it's seemingly impossible for anyone to
| build a financially viable alternative, and I'm at least
| open to the idea that it's very difficult to compete with
| Google when they can leverage their successful ads
| business to subsidize the investment into their browser.
|
| Yes the alternatives are worse, but is that because
| Google is inherently smarter, or because the newcomers
| have a tiny fraction of the investment and usually fizzle
| out within a year or two? Google doesn't have to be
| actively trying to kill the competitors for it to have an
| anti-competitive effect in the market.
| modulus1 wrote:
| MS and Apple have the same thing, they're just less
| successful. Just a browser and an OS was previously seen as
| antitrust (and it looks like MS is being anti-competitive in
| this space still). Just a browser and a search engine can
| allow anti-competitive behavior. Or just a search engine and
| an ads platform...
|
| The problem is the anti-competitive behavior. Businesses are
| generally rational actors, so clearly our system isn't
| working. It's unclear what the boundaries are until years in
| court, and even then it only applies to a single company.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| MS and Apple aren't companies who sell ads. MS and Apple
| are companies who sell tech products. Everyone analogizing
| the current situation with Google to Microsoft in 1999 is
| missing the core of the facts here. The Apple/Epic Games
| antitrust suits are much more similar to MS in 1999, but
| Google's antitrust issues are very different.
|
| Google's product isn't its software, it's the attention of
| its users. Having this large and this dominant of a
| software/data platform attached to a company that sells
| attention is anti-competitive _in the attention market_.
| ody4242 wrote:
| MS does sell ads, they have an advertising platform.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The US never did anything about Microsoft owning a browser.
| There was never a browser choice screen in the US and
| Microsoft was never forced to sell Windows without a
| browser.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And we are already seeing that people are moving to both
| ChatGPT and perplexity for search. No one is forced to
| download Chrome or use Google for search.
|
| Why is an ads company owning a browser any different than a
| phone company (Apple) or an operating system vendor?
| threeseed wrote:
| > A company owning a web browser, OS and search engine
| shouldn't be a problem either
|
| It is when Google compromises the privacy/security of Chrome
| because of their Ads/OS business.
|
| For example, allowing first party cookies to be a maximum of
| 400 days versus Safari and Firefox where it is 7 days. These
| cookies are required by ads retargeting which is critical to
| effective ecommerce campaigns.
|
| It also supports browser fingerprinting by advertisers which
| means that every random API Chrome adds (and they add a lot)
| directly improves their Ads revenue.
| ronnier wrote:
| It's a big world. Does breaking up google give the Asian giants
| an advantage? Wonder if China breaks up their large tech
| companies?
| manquer wrote:
| Advantage where ? Chinese tech companies are not competing
| outside China with one notable exception of TikTok (1) .
|
| Global tech companies do not compete in China, the market is
| brutal for non Chinese companies with level of espionage,
| theft, sabotage that is allowed.
|
| It is really small world for big tech, the same 5-10 companies
| dominate most of the world in most frequently used consumer
| products, and using that dominance to crowd out competitors in
| every new product category
|
| (1) which is banned in few major markets like India already
| even if the US reverses the ban
| azinman2 wrote:
| > Chinese tech companies are not competing outside China with
| one notable exception of TikTok (1) .
|
| This is absolutely not true. Most phones in Africa are
| Chinese now. Chinese internet companies are all over Asia
| outside of Japan/SK. Chinese cars (EVs, which arguably are
| tech), are now world-wide.
| manquer wrote:
| Tech companies or big tech conventionally usually mean
| software companies.
|
| _Every company_ is a tech company, if you want to be broad
| in your definition, they have to use tech to compete .
|
| Actions on Chinese EV cars are either being seriously
| considered or already in effect in most major car markets.
|
| All phones have been always more or less Chinese made
| forever including Apple, even Chinese badging is how it
| been for low/mid range for 10 years now, maybe Samsung does
| some local manufacturing in SK but no one else major does.
|
| Budget phones or budget EVs with razor thin margins is not
| big tech and no DoJ action to break up Google is going to
| affect the way they are becoming Chinese or already are .
|
| There is reason TikTok is the most valuable Chinese company
| and not a phone company, big tech have big margins and
| strong market effect on their own and not as a group (I.e.
| it would be hard to beat Chinese companies in a space , but
| no individual one (say byd) is irreplaceable by another
| Chinese company
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| Another perspective is Google is stifling American innovation
| by its megalithic presence in markets. Suppressing local growth
| in exchange for short term profitability.
|
| Separately, why is having tech giants a pure advantage? These
| companies got big by innovating, but the innovation slows down
| when they are big. Sounds to me that we should be regularly
| clearing old growth to let new ideas break through
| _bin_ wrote:
| one really easy example is the AI arms race. and make no
| mistake, it is an arms race that matters for maintaining
| global American supremacy and ensuring china stays secondary.
| LLMs are one of the very few recent technologies where the
| marginal cost of a user is well above zero; they require
| colossal build-out of energy and compute. everyone who's done
| a good job with them is either a tech giant or has become one
| in valuation. c.f. how Google specifically has been working
| on TPUs for years, produced solid models with Gemini, and
| offers them for a tiny fraction of the cost of others. having
| a large team experienced with scaling stuff perhaps better
| than anyone else is a good thing and google keeps those
| people paid.
| spease wrote:
| Some things can only be done at scale, or are a side effect
| of solving problems at scale. It's not quite so simple as
| "big is bad".
|
| Also, it's harder for international companies to buy, say,
| Google, than a browser-only company, just through the amount
| of capital needed to put up a credible offer.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| But it also works vice versa. Remember that Google
| literally misses its own ChatGPT while key figures
| literally work at Google.
|
| These trillion-dollar companies only focus on billion-
| dollar markets and kill their own products that are deemed
| unable to scale at a planetary level
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| China is not a democratic country. They don't break up
| companies, they forcefully remove their CEOs from their
| positions, or put them to jail or they can put a bullet to
| their head for disobeying the Party.
| jacksnipe wrote:
| Making the argument that anti-trust is a bad idea because of
| geopolitics seems pretty wild to me.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Wild? Everything is just a tool. If enforcing antitrust harms
| national security then ...
| jacksnipe wrote:
| So the _entire economy_ should be in service of national
| security? That's preposterous.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| I didn't suggest the entire economy. I'm just saying it's
| not _wild_ to consider national security when enforcing
| policies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It does but for totally dysfunctional different reasons,
| Emperor Xi fears any underling doing too good as a threat to
| his power and cracks down on entire markets. China has been
| regularly engaged in this sort of outright self sabotage.
| batperson wrote:
| I can't find information on what would happen to Chromium, would
| google need to hand it over too? That's probably more important
| than the fate of Chrome.
| wmf wrote:
| Realistically Chromium is downstream of Chrome and it goes
| where Chrome goes. Chromebooks are somewhat more interesting.
| surajrmal wrote:
| The only thing being specific is chrome the product launches.
| Selling of the pixel phone business wouldn't require also
| selling android for instance, so arguably its the same.
| cubefox wrote:
| Google has to sell Chrome, a completely optional browser, and
| stop supporting Firefox, the best Chrome alternative, while Apple
| is allowed to completely lock down iOS without allowing
| installing alternatives to Safari, or any third party app stores.
| Not to mention that Apple for years exploited its dominant market
| position in the US by resisting messaging RCS Android
| compatibility, and pressuring teens into either buying into the
| Apple or ecosystem or risk being socially ostracized from
| incompatible group chats. It seems to be more that a double
| standard.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Perhaps Apple is next?
| crop_rotation wrote:
| Google is just incompetent at PR and legal. That is how Epic
| won against Google and lost against Apple, even though Android
| is far far more open than iOS.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Incompetency is a blessing for users.
| blueboo wrote:
| Instant, universal, and immaculately-fair is the real
| impossible standard. Your line of thought has long been in the
| arsenal in defense of inaction
|
| let's permit the firefighters to leave the firehouse even
| though they can't tend to all the fires simultaneously
| wmf wrote:
| You're ignoring the antitrust cases against Apple which may
| seek similar remedies.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Epic lost their's, while ironically winning the Google one...
| Where you were always able to install a third party app
| store, they just didn't let you do it through the official
| store.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| The iOS app store monopoly is unreal. Epic's case should have
| been a slam dunk, they got removed from the app store by
| offering a discount if people went through their processor
| instead of Apple's, proving harm to the consumer by simply
| expecting less than 30% for simply processing a payment.
|
| People complain about whataboutism, but the Apple versus almost
| any other 'monopoly' is insane. You can switch browsers within
| the next 30s, you can't install an app from a third party
| vendor ever on iOS. [1]
|
| [1] Yes I know you can pay $100 a year, and then compile your
| own/open source apps weekly and move them to your device. No
| this is not a reasonable solution.
| milesrout wrote:
| The difference is pretty obvious, no? Google search and Chrome
| are genuine monopolies: they complete dominate their respective
| markets. Chrome decides which JS APIs and which other HTML
| extensions are available in all browsers. If Chrome implements
| it, all others follow or it is IE6-style "this only works in
| Chrome" for everyone. Notice that every browser's UI has
| followed Chrome. Every browser offers identical webextensions.
| Etc.
|
| For Google search, the quality has gone down enormously and yet
| it has lost approximately 0 market share. It is still utterly
| dominant. This was used to push people to Chrome, and still is.
| It was used to dominate the web ads market. And so on: market
| power used to increase market power in other markets. Classic
| anticompetitive behaviour.
|
| Apple doesn't have anything like a monopoly in any market. Even
| in the US, where their position is strongest relative to
| Android, it still isnt even close to a monopoly.
|
| iOS isn't a monopoly so there is nothing wrong with it being
| locked down. It doesn't pressure "teens" into anything.
| Teenagers will pick up on anything they can to create peer
| pressure themselves. They would just say "lol nice loser
| android phone" when they saw the phone in person anyway lol.
| maxclark wrote:
| First I don't believe this is an effective remedy to break up a
| Google monopoly, but I have no influence on the DOJ.
|
| I'm curious though, if Google can no longer pay browsers for
| search engine traffic what is the business model that will
| sustain development and advancement in the space?
|
| How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue
| development?
|
| What happens to all the applications that rely on Chrome
| extensions?
|
| As much as I dislike Google behavior, I don't see this as being a
| good thing.
| geor9e wrote:
| You call them Chrome extensions, but they're really Chromium
| extensions that work on Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, Arc, etc.
| Those teams contribute code to the Chromium open source project
| too. Sure, whoever takes over Chrome won't have Googles
| juggernaut team pushing Chromium development forward, and maybe
| that will lead to degradation over time, but it's not like it
| would cause immediate ecosystem collapse. For all my psychic
| prediction powers know, getting rid of the monopoly could lead
| to a renaissance in browser tech via stronger competition. This
| could go either way.
| nfw2 wrote:
| In the past, too many competing browsers resulted in a
| frustrating experience for web application developers.
|
| Does Google have undue influence now? Sure. But I'm not so
| sanguine about the alternatives either.
| MyOutfitIsVague wrote:
| It was more than just too many competing browsers, from
| what I understand. It was a few competing browsers that
| interpreted standards completely different, and a standards
| body that was slow enough to be completely ineffective.
|
| I'd argue that the main problem was not too much
| competition, but effective anti-competitive behavior (and
| simple laziness) from Microsoft in particular. The
| frustrating experience was primarily caused by Internet
| Explorer.
| hysan wrote:
| > How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and
| continue development?
|
| Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support
| Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-
| Chromium) based browsers?
|
| As much as I loved Chrome when it first came out, I've also
| been well aware that Google's backing of Chrome (and Chromium)
| has given it undue advantages in the browser market by
| effectively making everyone else compete with a loss leader. If
| Chrome itself cannot sustain its pace of development or even
| stay alive without the unlimited funding by Google, then I
| think that is a good thing and proof that it acting as a
| monopoly. Forcing Chrome to balance product velocity with
| revenue constraints evens the field amongst all browsers.
|
| (edit: If Google killing competition by injecting unlimited
| funding into a project without needing to make a profit sounds
| familiar, it's because they've done this for a long time. The
| often cited example being Google Reader.)
| robotnikman wrote:
| At the same time though, being developed under a company which
| derives most of its revenue from ads seems to be a big conflict
| of interest to a free and open web. We have already seen this
| conflict of interest with Manifest V3, which takes away freedom
| from the users, and almost with remote web attestation before
| Google held off it's development due to the backlash (but I can
| see them trying to implement it again while Chrome is still
| under control of Google/Alphabet.) It also doesn't help that
| Chrome and the underlying browser engine powers just about
| every major browser other than Firefox, which is struggling.
|
| So what will sustain the development of browsers like Chrome or
| Firefox? Well that's the big question... Maybe they will
| downsize and become a non-profit similar to the Linux
| Foundation, and receive funding similar to how they do? I can
| see this have the affect of greatly slowing down the
| development of various web standards, but would that be such a
| bad thing?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > what is the business model that will sustain development and
| advancement in the space?
|
| Imagine buying a browser
| notatoad wrote:
| in a simple world, a web browser is a tool that is used by an
| end-user, and so end-users should be the ones paying for it.
|
| whether that's directly as paid software, or indirectly as part
| of purchasing a device that has the software installed on it.
| bagels wrote:
| Ads!
| surajrmal wrote:
| Get ready for having your data sold to everyone. Rather than
| just a few major players having access, anyone willing to pay
| will get the raw data rather than something obfuscated through
| an ads platform.
| user3939382 wrote:
| If you look carefully at the Chromium project, it's made up of
| teams that specialize in different components. The majority of
| the members of those teams are in turn Google employees.
| Presumably they have the best qualifications to be on those
| teams. I don't see how a DOJ decision against Google would change
| any of that. Ban Google employees from participating in the
| project? And then who would replace them?
| crop_rotation wrote:
| I am not sure why you are being downvoted. This just means
| existing OS monopolies of Apple and Microsoft are given entire
| control of their kingdoms with no web landscape to challenge
| them a teeny tiny bit.
| wmf wrote:
| All the people who work on Chrome would go with it.
| theptip wrote:
| But we are not discussing Chromium. Google's browser is Chrome,
| and that product has search exclusivity deals that have been
| deemed monopolistic.
|
| Google could divest the Chrome product and keep contributing to
| Chromium, but the value proposition is really unclear when that
| OSS investment doesn't buy you billions of dollars of browser
| lock-in value.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Thus why the Linux Foundation is gunning for Chromium. (When
| do we rename the Linux Foundation? Only 3.2% of their revenue
| goes to Linux development these days...)
|
| https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/linux-foundation-
| annou...
|
| https://www.linuxfoundation.org/supporters-of-chromium-
| based...
| rafram wrote:
| > Several leading organizations have already pledged their
| support for the initiative, including Google, Meta,
| Microsoft, and Opera.
|
| Doesn't read like a takeover attempt to me...
| swat535 wrote:
| My question is, even if they do sell off Chrome, wouldn't
| Google just create another "Chrome" using the Chromium and
| use its monopolistic power to push it on everyone? What am I
| missing here?
|
| It doesn't sound like this would solve the issue..
| dehugger wrote:
| Presumably part of the court order is that they can't just
| do the same thing again without suffering the same (or
| worse) consequences.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Are you assuming the people crafting remedies haven't
| thought of this? You should tell them immediately!!! LOL.
| of course they've thought through that and will have a "you
| can't just rebuild it" clause in the remedy. This isn't
| hard unless you're trying to make it hard and I'm not sure
| why anyone would want to do that except to side with Big
| Tech over consumers trying to muddy the waters and convince
| others it's all just too darned hard to do anything about
| so we should let our betters in Big Tech continue dictating
| our lives.
| crote wrote:
| Same way it worked in the past with monopolies like Ma Bell?
|
| Those teams can keep working on Chrome, they'll just have to
| fall under some new kind of separate Chrome Inc. structure
| instead of under Google Inc., and Google will have to sell most
| of its shares of Chrome Inc. to third parties.
|
| Splitting off Chrome really isn't the problem. Making the new
| Chrome Inc. profitable without accepting bribes from big tech,
| on the other hand...
| loeg wrote:
| Yes, that's sort of the problem. An independent Chrome
| probably wouldn't be profitable. This is essentially just
| forcing Google to fire the Chrome developers.
| Clubber wrote:
| >This is essentially just forcing Google to fire the Chrome
| developers.
|
| To be fair, Google could reassign them to something else.
| Firing everybody will be Google's decision that wasn't
| forced on them.
| loeg wrote:
| I don't really know if they would be allowed to divest
| the IP but retain the developers. Maybe!
| asadotzler wrote:
| Of course they could. They could just cancel Chrome, shut
| the whole browser down and reassign all the staff, and
| the DOJ would be fine with that. Cancelling it, or
| selling while keeping 100% of the employees are in no way
| counter to the proposed remedies.
| phkahler wrote:
| Microsoft has a customized version of Chrome. Don't they
| already pay for it?
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Yeah, I could imagine Microsoft making a bid. To people
| who don't follow tech product ownership, "Windows comes
| with Chrome instead of Edge" would be good PR and it
| could basically be Edge minus the rebranding.
| forgotTheLast wrote:
| Would love if that also meant no more shovelware features
| to try and distinguish Edge from Chrome.
| loeg wrote:
| Doesn't Microsoft ownership of Chrome suffer from
| identical antitrust concerns?
| stefan_ wrote:
| I love how people in this thread just unilaterally declare
| and accept as fact that you can't possibly turn _the
| monopolistic browser and browser engine powering millions
| of devices and with billions of users_ into a profitable
| business. Aim low I guess?
| mattlondon wrote:
| So please enlighten us, how will someone make money from
| the free product that is free and no one pays for because
| it is free?
|
| Selling user browser data obviously won't fly (and note
| that Google has never _explicitly_ nor _directly_ sold
| user 's browsing data as far as I know, but they do have
| a huge ad network that utilises cookies...), so what's
| the plan? Put ads in the browser? "Premium" features?
|
| The only thing I can think of is highjacking links to
| Amazon et al to insert referral codes en masse, or
| selling links/ads on new tab pages.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Why won't selling data fly?
|
| Why not sell premium features?
|
| Why not add affiliate codes to links?
|
| Why not sell ads on new tab pages?
|
| All of these are fine examples of how a not-Google Chrome
| could make money. They could even get paid by Microsoft
| or some other not-Google search for that traffic.
|
| This isn't hard unless you're trying to make it hard to
| convince us all we should just give up and let Google
| continue running our online lives through monopolization.
| timewizard wrote:
| > Presumably they have the best qualifications to be on those
| teams.
|
| What exactly are "best qualifications?" More simply are you
| assuming that myself and Google share a definition of "best
| qualified?" I genuinely don't believe that we do.
|
| > And then who would replace them?
|
| People working for a different company. Is your case that
| without Google no one would make web browsers?
| realitysballs wrote:
| Think about difference between Brave and Chrome. Both Chromium
| browsers but Brave is much less intrusive and exploitative of
| user data. More Brave and less Chrome would allow average user
| greater privacy and less reliance on large corporations perhaps
| davidcbc wrote:
| Not sure this is the company we want to put our trust in: htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)#Controvers...
| irrational wrote:
| Firefox seems to do fine without Google employees.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Are they?
|
| "When you upload or input information through Firefox, you
| hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide
| license to use that information to help you navigate,
| experience, and interact with online content as you indicate
| with your use of Firefox."
| no_wizard wrote:
| How long is Firefox going to be held to a standard that
| none of the other vendors are realistically held to?
|
| They change their ToS in an unfavorable way and yes I think
| it's criticism they need to hear.
|
| However, has Chrome, Brave (I don't look favorably on their
| cryptocurrency initiatives) Edge , Safari etc. been held to
| the same, in practice? Why isn't Chrome barraged with
| negative sentiment the same way? It has far worse ToS
| policies (which doesn't make Firefox "right" or "just")
|
| Because if that is upsetting then using Chrome should be
| outright enraging, yet people hardly mention it's
| consistent anti user behavior as often as people jump on
| Mozilla and a Firefox for anything they do that is seen as
| unfavorable
| nuker wrote:
| Please don't lump Safari with the rest of them, drunk on
| ad-based revenue.
| eCa wrote:
| I believe that has been changed to something more like:
|
| "You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox.
| This includes processing your data as we describe in the
| Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive,
| royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as
| you request with the content you input in Firefox. This
| does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content."
| icehawk wrote:
| What's the issue here?
| loeg wrote:
| Firefox has been in decline for many years, sadly.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Indeed, it has not had even one moment of market share
| growth since about 8 months after Google Chrome was first
| released.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Keep Google Chrome. Separate search. Sell it to private equity.
| (I bet DoJ didn't think about that whammy.)
|
| And start charging for everything else out there like maps,
| street view, and browser. And buy cloudflare while at it. Push
| themselves into everything related to connectivity and internet
| properties.
|
| The search business is the cash flow that is being a thorn in the
| side of Google. And it doesn't even make sense in its vision
| anymore.
| mrweasel wrote:
| You sort of make an interesting point. Google search isn't the
| main product, hasn't been for a decade. Still I don't think
| Google Ads would do amazing without the traffic from Google
| Search.
|
| But it does solve an important problem: Who in their right mind
| would buy Chrome? It's not a profitable business to be in,
| without the surrounding ad business, and in turn the insane
| amount of traffic from Google Search.
|
| Almost by definition, anyone who would be interested in buying
| Chrome and turning it into a commercial product shouldn't be
| allowed to buy it. The only buyer I can imaging is OpenText.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Cloudflare has been a continual breath of fresh air compared to
| Google Cloud and AWS. Please oh please don't suggest selling it
| to google to let it atrophy its way to the graveyard
| nuker wrote:
| > Keep Google Chrome. Separate search. Sell it to private
| equity.
|
| This. If Search + Google Ads is independent from Android +
| Chrome + Gmail, it will choke the user-data flow that Google
| Ads platform is feeding on. This opens doors to new competing
| search engines!
|
| Android + Chrome + Gmail needs to be bundled with hardware
| purchases, like Apple does with Safari + iCloud.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| At this point, tech's major competitors are overseas. Never
| thought I'd be making this argument, but does breaking up the
| search monopoly help America or up and comers?
| jacksnipe wrote:
| I care more about how it affects consumers.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| There are certainly some short term consumer gains to be made
| in decoupling the oppressive monopoly of android, payments,
| chromium, search, and ads. If Google wants to send their search
| experience to shit that should probably be their right to
| mismanage, but the ramming home of Manifest v3 and Google Play
| Protect in the interest of nobody is beyond the pale.
| arthurofbabylon wrote:
| Let's not turn into game-theory bros here. Despite the
| nationalist, pie-dividing rhetoric the billionaires are
| foisting upon us, it remains favorable to grow the pie with
| competitive markets.
| thrance wrote:
| Does upholding monopolies help Americans at all? Do not
| conflate the ballooning wealth of billionaires with any kind of
| improvement in your material conditions.
| loeg wrote:
| Americans marginally benefit from American owned monopolies
| over Chinese owned monopolies.
| thrance wrote:
| How so? They pay almost no taxes, they capture a huge share
| of the market, they stifle innovation, they regularly
| engage in anti-user practices...
|
| The bottom 90% is owning an ever smaller share of the
| economy, while the real economy doesn't seem to grow that
| much.
| ImJamal wrote:
| If a Chinese company has a monopoly you get All those
| things, minus the US jobs.
|
| It seems like you are comparing small companies vs large
| companies, rather than US vs Chinese.
| thrance wrote:
| Ok, well in that case, sure. But the alternative to US
| monopoly is not automatically Chinese monopoly. No one
| was advocating for the destruction of Google in favor of
| Baidu or whatever.
| ImJamal wrote:
| The person you were responding to was explicitly
| comparing US vs Chinese monopolies. Maybe it is a false
| dichotomy, but that was the situation that the post was
| brining up.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Cue the uncountable number of Chinese jobs generated by
| overseas companies / the US monopolies, indirectly or
| directly....
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's not clear that Chinese owned monopolies are any good
| at breaking out. They seem to suffer from the same problem
| as Japan where their market is so unique and insular that a
| lot of products do not carry over all that well.
|
| WeChat, for example, is the end all be all megaplatform in
| China but never took off with any Western consumers simply
| because they're uninterested.
| loeg wrote:
| Alibaba and ByteDance have both successfully broken out.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| In what way, please explain. Both are monopolies.
| Clubber wrote:
| >does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and
| comers?
|
| Big companies tend to calcify. We can see that in FAMANG's
| products. Big companies can also remove any direct competition
| in multiple ways that smaller companies can't:
| 1. Bankrupt them through frivolous litigation. 2. Buy
| them. 3. Lower their prices so new competitors who don't
| have economies of scale can't be price competitive. 4.
| Propose legislative regulation that they can afford but smaller
| competitors can't. 5. Pay for negative news articles to
| be written against their competition (FUD). 6. Poach
| their talent.
|
| I'm sure there's more. Anyhow, monopoly status generally leads
| to stagnation not innovation.
| tinktank wrote:
| So sad all that sucking up to the new administration didn't work.
| Oh well...
| xnx wrote:
| This is so so dumb and not related to the already dumb monopoly
| ruling.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Who would even buy Chrome? No one's building new browsers, and MS
| even walked away from the browser game. Mozilla and Firefox
| haven't been relevant for a decade. The only buyer I can see is
| private equity, and that's sort of the big boy version of buying
| an abandoned browser plugin so it can track you and show more
| ads.
| stogot wrote:
| I agree there needs to be remedy, but Does chrome have a profit
| without Google? Who's going to buy it? Oracle?
| xyst wrote:
| Google just needs to send the appropriate amount to kleptocracy
| war chest and this will get killed on the backend.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Isn't android like 10 times the problem chrome is?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Always had to. They built Alphabet but its obvious they didnt
| break things up. Whats going to be interesting is how some of
| them will even be able to afford to operate under separate orgs.
| mattlondon wrote:
| So they sell Chrome today and create Ghrome tomorrow?
|
| I can't see Chrome surviving as a standalone product - where is
| the revenue? I am sure someone will buy it and try to create some
| "premium" version, but ultimately it will wither and die I
| expect.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I assume Oracle will buy it and start threatening to change
| APIs and then sell a enterprise version
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