[HN Gopher] Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for t...
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Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
Author : OuterVale
Score : 186 points
Date : 2025-03-15 01:57 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chriscoyier.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (chriscoyier.net)
| xigency wrote:
| Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web.
| This piece seems to be looking at Google at large (and I think
| all of Alphabet would be better scope there).
|
| Certainly this would be unpopular here but I would be all for
| aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done
| historically, including vertical integrations.
|
| Right now tech is a strange feudal state with hundreds of
| thousands of small teams anchored to a few hydra-like super-
| corporations on a consuming destructive rampage. Somehow, with
| the most advanced computer and technological systems to ever be
| known by man, we're looking to increase working hours and cut
| benefits, for "profits" that are not quite realized by the labor
| class or the end users.
|
| Gonna be interesting to see what happens. I know Wall Street will
| place their bets for what they want to happen right along side
| what's obviously going to shake out once the market becomes
| 'rational.'
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The administration doesn't give a shit about the web, and DOJ
| is a fully political entity. They'll extort Google for whatever
| concession they want, and Chrome will remain.
| g-b-r wrote:
| They'll demand half of Google's rare earths deposits
| tempodox wrote:
| Or just the keys to total surveillance and suppression of
| web content they don't like.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Well now to be fair, total surveillance and suppression
| of any content they don't like is worth a whole lot more
| than rare earth deposits to a government.
| fragmede wrote:
| Why would they need to do that when they already have the
| formula down? How much have you been hearing about all
| the protests?
| bmacho wrote:
| Why wouldn't they?
|
| Also they have the have the formula because they've
| already done it. And it works, why wouldn't they want to
| keep doing it, but more?
| acdha wrote:
| Things are going to get more heated as the voluntary
| economic downturn heats up. The current protests get some
| coverage but we're starting to see even the loyalists
| realize that they won't be spared, and that is likely to
| increase protests considerably.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| You are probably right.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Biden or Trump administration? This remedy was originally
| proposed under Biden's DOJ.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's still around and the admin continued it.
|
| Biden's DOJ was slooooooowly pursuing anti-trust more
| seriously. That's not a Trump priority. So what's the
| reason?
| libertine wrote:
| Google would just need to buy many Trump coins on the next
| drop. If he ever got Russian money, that was a great
| opportunity for it.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done
| historically, including vertical integrations.
|
| Vertical integration was a huge part of what they went after
| historically, until a bunch of people "convinced" the US that
| the standard should be "consumer harm." The cool thing about
| consumer harm is that you can come up with any bullshit
| argument about how prices will go down and access and quality
| up in the future from some merger, and nobody can disprove it
| because it's a counterfactual (he said, she said.) And when
| prices go up, it's just <shrug>, who could have known?
|
| I know what vertical integration is _today_ , though. It's not
| a hypothetical, it's a selling point to investors. I can just
| tell you no. Any clear metrics or standards for antitrust
| action can't be tolerated. The goal is to force us to go on
| _vibes_. Then they say we have bad vibes.
|
| Competition brings down prices. Laissez-faire leads to pseudo-
| Communism with royal families, courtiers, and technicians
| making up the top 10%, and everybody else gets to be a (debt)
| slave i.e. feudalism.
|
| We should err towards breaking more things up than would be
| ideal, not less. If I make you divest from something, you sell
| it and get whatever future value out of it _today._ It 's not a
| punishment according to SCOTUS when they're looking at TikTok
| (which is why they said the TikTok ban wasn't a bill of
| attainder.) We charter these companies, and they operate for
| our benefit, which is why we grant them limited liability and a
| whole bunch of other treats. What you divest is going to go to
| somebody just like you, but someone who is not _financially
| entangled_ with you. The only reason you want to keep it all is
| to do things that I don 't want you to do with it, I don't want
| you doing unproductive market manipulation, I want you to put
| that energy into competing.
| crabmusket wrote:
| > The only reason you want to keep it all is to do things
| that I don't want you to do with it
|
| Surely, the reason you want to keep it is because owning and
| controlling thing A _and_ thing B allows you to make more
| profit personally than being a controlling owner of thing A
| _or_ thing B.
|
| That said, I agree with your post and also think nations
| should err more on the side of breaking things up.
|
| Concentrations of power distort markets and resist democratic
| control.
| gtsop wrote:
| > Somehow, with the most advanced computer and technological
| systems to ever be known by man, we're looking to increase
| working hours and cut benefits, for "profits" that are not
| quite realized by the labor class
|
| Somehow?? This is capitalism 101. Not a "strange feudal state"
| nor anything else.
| boxed wrote:
| > Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web.
|
| Because then Chrome would slowly rot since there's no one to
| fund development, leading us to WebKit being the only engine,
| as Firefox is also defunded. I don't see how that's better.
| quinnirill wrote:
| That's assuming the divested Chrome would then proceed to
| lose its gigantic market share and thus the mind-boggling
| proceeds from defaulting to Google as the search engine. They
| might even be able to afford a bigger development team, if
| need be.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| But what makes you think the DoJ allow Google to continue
| paying Chrome to have Google as default? Google is already
| not allowed to pay Apple to be default.
| wffurr wrote:
| >> Google is already not allowed to pay Apple to be
| default
|
| The antitrust remedy isn't set until the September
| hearings and won't take effect until after years of
| appeals hearings.
| pmontra wrote:
| The new owner of Chrome can sell it to the manufacturers of
| Android devices. Royalties.
|
| They can even make it closed source or enforce a not for
| commerce license. That would make manufacturers choose
| between paying those royalties, installing Firefox, investing
| in their own browser (a fork of Chrome or their very own
| tech.) Some of them will pay royalties.
| rishav_sharan wrote:
| Why do you think so? Google can continue to contribute to
| chromium as they are doing now, alongwith other contributors
| like Microsoft
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Why do browsers need to be free?
| nerdix wrote:
| As long as OS vendors are allowed to bundle browsers with
| their OS then any paid browsers is at a huge disadvantage.
| Most people are going to pay for a browser when their OS
| comes with a free one that is good enough. Thats how
| Microsoft killed Netscape Navigator.
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| Alphabet tried to kill adblock in Chrome, so...
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| not good for their wallet apparently
| surajrmal wrote:
| It's conjecture at best that killing adblock was related to
| manifest v3. Given apple also rolled out the same sorts of
| restrictions years earlier, there is strong precedent for this
| being purely a security improvement measure. Especially when
| you consider how problematic and prevalent malware extensions
| are.
| pyrale wrote:
| I'm not sure Apple's monopolistic behaviour is a good excuse
| to claim that Google is not abusing its monopoly.
|
| As for malware ; sure, but the alternative is not allowing
| people to run the software they want on the machine they own.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Is malware in ads not a problem anymore?
| orionblastar wrote:
| We can always use Chromium https://www.chromium.org/chromium-
| projects/
|
| This is like if Microsoft was forced to sell Edge or Apple sold
| Safari.
|
| I am thinking of switching from Chrome to Brave
| https://brave.com/
| youngtaff wrote:
| I'd pick a different Chromium based browser maybe Vivaldi if I
| was you
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| I personally wouldn't trust all my most valuable personal
| info to a small, closed-source browser like Vivaldi
| wordofx wrote:
| If Google wasn't such a trash company and using chrome to drive
| more revenue by farming data and preventing adblocks then no one
| would have a problem with chrome.
| vachina wrote:
| You can always use Chromium or dozens of others viable Chromium
| derivatives.
|
| Google at least gave you the option to do that.
| koito17 wrote:
| > Google at least gave you the option ...
|
| Not sure if Google voluntarily gave users the option. Google
| was forced to give users the option since Blink is a
| derivative of the LGPL-licensed WebKit, which is itself a
| derivative of the LGPL-licensed KHTML.
|
| An argument can be made for open-sourcing the frontend of the
| browser. However, even the WebKit codebase has a test browser
| that runs on Windows (despite Safari dropping Windows support
| over a decade ago). This would have been present in the Blink
| codebase even if Google decided to keep the Chrome frontend
| proprietary. So people would still be able to embed
| "Chromium" into applications.
| tim333 wrote:
| They aren't that bad. Out of the FAANG lot Facebook, Amazon,
| Apple, Netflix, and Google they are probably the one I'm
| happiest with. Facebook have gone crazy with ads, Apple are
| expensive, Amazon and Netflix are pushy for money. Google on
| the other hand has provided me with a lot of services I use
| daily for 20 or so years without really bugging me or trying to
| screw me over. They are not preventing adblock, just forcing
| going from uBlock to uBlock lite. If Google is a trash company
| what is this heavenly company that does such stuff better?
| vips7L wrote:
| Google has happily provided you with those services because
| they are stealing your data and invading your privacy
| secretly behind your back for 20 years. Everything Google
| does is to steal more info about you.
|
| It's baffling that you're unhappy with companies wanting you
| to pay for their product. Yes Netflix increases their prices
| and wants to prevent you from sharing your account, but
| they're not scanning every single email you've ever received
| or making the web worse for everyone to collect more data
| about you.
| arccy wrote:
| Well the companies can either: sell your data, or take your
| money and still sell your data. Don't trust the ones that
| say they don't sell your data, it's only a matter of time
| until they get caught. Even Apple only cares as much as
| they need for marketing.
| elif wrote:
| This one struck me as a weird one as browser waves come and go
| and I feel like opera is the big swell rising at the moment
| anyway. The competitive component is there and alive and well.
|
| What happens when this artificial friction causes chrome to lose
| network effect faster than natural, and we are ironically left
| with a different monopoly?
| glenstein wrote:
| Will for a while now market here has been firmly going in one
| direction and it's that of increasing Chrome dominance. I
| absolutely loved the old opera team, and I loved them
| reconstituting themselves under Vivaldi, but I don't love that
| they now both depend on Chromium.
|
| I do think the dynamics of browser market share it had in a
| previous time been subject to exactly the waves and frictions
| you mentioned, but it's too high stakes now. There's too much
| serious investment necessary, and so it's going to be
| responding to some business and economic dynamics Which will be
| different than the waves and frictions of yesteryear.
| ohso4 wrote:
| > Users don't pay for Chrome. There aren't ads in Chrome. There
| is no direct business model for Chrome. Unlike Safari and
| Firefox, nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search
| engine the default.
|
| _They track you. There IS a business model for Chrome:
| monetizing user data._
| inetknght wrote:
| > _nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search
| engine the default_
|
| And some people wonder how Chrome could ever make money if it
| were divested from Google...
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Would that be a better world than we have now, though, if
| Chrome was nominally separate from Google but still only
| exists because Google pays for it? It seems like the same
| thing with extra steps.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| I believe the default search payments are also part of the
| antitrust case, so likely those payments will also become
| illegal, also affecting Firefox and Apple/Safari.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I don't think it's illegal for anyone to buy defaults.
| Rather, just for large players with outsized market
| share.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If Chrome cannot be owned by Google (nor Alphabet) then
| that is an important separation. It means Chrome could
| auction off the rights. Much as Firefox offers non-Google
| search in certain markets, which happened in the US at
| least once.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| There isn't a business model for a company whose product is
| just chrome, though. Unless it's some kind of foundation or
| non-profit with a sufficient endowment to not need a business
| model.
|
| I'm no fan of Google, but--unless people really want browser
| subscriptions--I don't see how you can have a browser company
| today. They exist better as a byproduct of some other business
| model.
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| Browsers aren't a product because massive companies give it
| away and destroy the market.
|
| If any product was given away by massively rich companies
| there would be "no market" for it, _because it was
| destroyed_.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Well, I for one don't want to pay $15/mo for my browser:
| I'm happy for it to be the complement of some company's
| product.
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| Yet you pay for Netflix and your internet and phone bill.
| But these could be given away by surveillance advertising
| firms to snoop your watching, surfing, and calling
| habits.
|
| As the saying goes, if the product is free, YOU are the
| product.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| I think the saying is oversimplified (or else, chrome
| isn't a product but a byproduct). It makes a company to
| make the complement of their product cheap or free so
| that people can use their product more effectively.
| Google Search and Ads rely on people having a browser.
| Similarly, Apple's Phones and laptops are benefited by
| including a good first party browser. Imo, a lot of
| technologies are better as free byproducts of monetized
| technology than as being some company's products: there
| are endless lists of great technologies that never found
| a market or disappeared post-acquisition.
| adrr wrote:
| My ISP is selling my data as well. Netflix is snooping on
| what i watch for their ads. Chrome is free. Bigger fish
| to fry than my web browser snooping on me like your bank
| selling all credit card transactions your car snooping on
| your driving and your mobile carrier selling your
| location.
| blfr wrote:
| I don't pay for Netflix and a rival good (like ISP infra)
| is completely different from some compiled computer code
| (like a browser).
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Your phone provider does sell your information.
|
| The majority of Netflix users over the next few years
| will be advertising based users. That just doesn't bring
| in enough profit because people are not willing to pay
| enough subscription to cover what those things actually
| cost.
|
| Your hypothesis has a bit of a gaping hole where "real
| world user behaviour" sits.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Yet you pay for Netflix and your internet and phone
| bill. But these could be given away by surveillance
| advertising firms to snoop your watching, surfing, and
| calling habits.
|
| You do know most of those companies do both charge you
| and sell your data? Almost the only companies that don't
| sell your data are big tech advertising companies.
|
| "When you don't pay you are the product" doesn't mean "If
| you pay you aren't the product", you still are the
| product the company is just double dipping.
| dns_snek wrote:
| I'm so confused when I read takes like that. The only way
| advertising can be sustainable under capitalism is if
| every $1 spent on advertising generates >= $1 of profit
| for advertisers, keeping in mind that ad networks take a
| share of revenue, say 30%.
|
| This means that you as a consumer have to spend at least
| $1 (likely more - profit not revenue) for every $0.70 of
| value you receive in "free" services. Being supportive of
| ad-supported services is therefore financially
| irrational.
| arccy wrote:
| They only need to make money in aggregate, they might
| make $0 out of you, but $2 out of someone else.
| dave4420 wrote:
| Browsers shouldn't be a product because any modern
| operating system that doesn't come with a web browser is
| defective.
|
| A browser is an operating system feature.
|
| I mean, you can get alternative file manager programs. Pay
| for them, even. But most people will never bother.
| jen20 wrote:
| > A browser is an operating system feature.
|
| Microsoft fought and (largely speaking) lost an entire
| case about that assertion [1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Micro
| soft_Cor....
| dave4420 wrote:
| Yeah. I think that was the wrong decision. The problem
| was introducing features between IE and IIS and using
| that to extend their end user OS monopoly into a server
| OS monopoly. MS should have been blocked from the server
| OS market instead (or maybe some some of consent decree,
| I'm sceptical it would have been appropriately enforced
| though).
| tensility wrote:
| That's more or less also what Google does with Chrome in
| order to force folks to use it and only it. I know that
| well because I have Chromium installed for this reason
| alone.
| protimewaster wrote:
| Massive companies give away operating systems, but there
| seems to still be a market for them, so I don't think this
| statement is universally true.
| the_other wrote:
| > There isn't a business model for a company whose product is
| just chrome, though.
|
| This isn't relevant, from the perspective of the ruling.
|
| It might be relevant from the perspective of Chrome-the-
| business and from Chrome-users' perspectives.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| It isn't relevant that the thing you want to split off
| won't be able to stand on its own two feet? Wouldn't it be
| simpler to simply require Google to burn the source code?
|
| And what is the point of the breakup if everyone (including
| consumers/users) is worse off? Is the point of government
| to make people better off, or just to maximize the number
| of paperclips produced?
| Jensson wrote:
| > And what is the point of the breakup if everyone
| (including consumers/users) is worse off? Is the point of
| government to make people better off, or just to maximize
| the number of paperclips produced?
|
| In this case this is pushed by other tech companies that
| want to buy data from Chrome, or they want to move users
| from the web to their apps where they can be more user
| hostile.
|
| This is what happens when the government is controlled by
| corporations.
| chneu wrote:
| I would like to point out that your perception of what a
| browser can/should be is based on what Google has turned
| browsers into.
|
| What a browser is in 2025 is vastly different from what
| anyone thought they would ever be. There are major, major
| issues with the way web engines/web browsers function today
| and much of those issues stem from Google's near monopoly on
| browsers.
|
| There was a lot of very interesting and good discussion
| around this in some of the Mozilla/Firefox threads recently.
| Mostly about how browsers turned into something they were
| never meant to be, which has changed the way the internet
| works and how we interact with it.
| amrocha wrote:
| What do browsers do that they weren't meant to?
|
| The only thing that comes to mind is password management.
| But I would also argue that's a boon for normal users and
| trust in the web.
| darkwater wrote:
| > What do browsers do that they weren't meant to?
|
| For example, asking you straight on first launch to log
| into your Google account, for your "benefit".
| amrocha wrote:
| In a multi device world that makes sense though. If you
| save your passwords on your phone, you don't want to lose
| them all if that phone breaks.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Restrict extensions for "security" reasons. Which just
| killed most ad blockers in Chrome.
|
| Speed up the web with AMP that gives one company control
| over everything.
| danaris wrote:
| If Chrome cannot succeed on its own, but under Google it is
| an oppressive force taking over the vast majority of web
| marketshare, that is a _textbook case_ for antitrust action.
| That is Google using its dominance in one market (search,
| advertising) to expand into and dominate another market (web
| browsers).
|
| If a hypothetical Chrome Corp. couldn't figure out how to use
| the exact same data Google is harvesting with the browser to
| at least move in the _direction_ of profitability, then they
| 're hypothetically idiots.
| Jensson wrote:
| > If a hypothetical Chrome Corp. couldn't figure out how to
| use the exact same data Google is harvesting with the
| browser to at least move in the direction of profitability,
| then they're hypothetically idiots.
|
| Selling that data to the government and other corporations
| is user hostile though, and that is exactly what is going
| to happen when Google is forced to sell.
|
| I can see why the government would love this though so it
| makes sense they pursue this hard now,
| danaris wrote:
| I'm genuinely unsure whether it's better or worse now,
| with Google having the exclusive rights to that data and
| using it for its own purposes.
|
| (It's _probably_ a bit better, assuming the hypothetical
| sale is to all comers, but still...)
| snowwrestler wrote:
| > There isn't a business model for a company whose product is
| just chrome, though.
|
| Yes there is, it is the same business model Chrome has now,
| but with overt pricing. In other words if you can understand
| why Chrome is valuable to Google now, then you can understand
| what Chrome-the-standalone-business would put a price tag on.
|
| Google benefits from the data that Chrome collects. So
| Chrome-the-business would collect the same data and charge
| Google for it.
|
| But it could _also sell that data to other companies too._
| This would create competition which would lead to better
| pricing and more innovation. That is why it is a remedy for a
| monopoly.
|
| The history of antitrust is full of stuff like this. Standard
| Oil used to own all the gas stations in the country. AT&T
| used to be the only company that sold telephones.
| solardev wrote:
| I really _do_ want a browser subscription or purchase, so
| that its incentives are aligned with mine and not the
| advertisers '.
|
| Paid browsers used to be common in the past, and ones like
| Netcaptor gave us tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, etc.
| Opera was great too. Netscape itself used to be paid at
| first. It was big companies like Microsoft and Google tyring
| to EEE the web by giving away free browsers that killed the
| thriving browser marketplace and led to monopolies like the
| ones we have now.
|
| There very much can be a browser market and business model IF
| antitrust were actually enforced.
|
| Divest that shit yesterday.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Can you clarify? Does _Chrome_ track you, or do websites track
| you using cookies stored in Chrome?
| csande17 wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| Chrome consistently pushes to make it easier for websites to
| track you -- by being the slowest browser to incorporate
| privacy protections like third-party cookie isolation, by
| eliminating extension APIs used by ad/tracker blockers, and
| by adding new features which expose more fingerprinting
| surface to websites. This disproportionately benefits Google
| because Google runs some of the largest web tracking networks
| (reCaptcha, Google Analytics, AdSense, etc). Even if Chrome
| was separate from Google, Google (along with other ad
| companies) could probably keep paying them to sabotage users'
| privacy.
|
| Chrome also directly uploads a lot of data to Google. It's
| technically _possible_ to use Chrome without syncing your
| browser history to your Google account, but a surprising
| number of people I know mysteriously managed to turn on sync
| without knowing it. Other Chrome data-collection initiatives,
| like Core Web Vitals, also provide a lot of value to Google
| 's other businesses. Those are other products that Google
| could pay directly for.
| snackernews wrote:
| Is that a distinction without a difference from an end user
| perspective?
|
| Chrome's defaults are the main reason anybody is tracked by
| cross-site cookies any more, and that tracking massively and
| directly benefits Google's business.
| tgv wrote:
| By their own admission, "not only does Google collect your
| name and email address, Google also collects your physical
| address, your exact location, your contacts, advertising
| data, product interaction, search, and browsing history." [1]
| And that's Chrome (a Safari wrapper at that moment) on iOS.
| You may assume they collect at least as much on platforms
| they own.
|
| [1] https://techstartups.com/2021/03/18/google-finally-
| revealed-...
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure I get tracked that much more by Google while using
| Chrome than using Firefox? I still google stuff there and don't
| bother with privacy things because honestly in ~30 years of
| using the web I've yet to find a reason to care about ad
| tracking.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Google is a web business, that's their whole thing. They made a
| browser to invest in the web itself because what is good for the
| web is good for Google, and happens to be good for all of us.
|
| This is a panglossian take that belongs in the year 2005.
|
| Google is less a 'web business' than it is an 'advertising
| business', a 'surveillance business', and a 'finance business'.
|
| Consequently, it is false that 'what is good for the web is good
| for Google'. AMP, and the Ad-blocking prohibition are evidence of
| this.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Let's not forget the "AI assistant", which appears to lightly
| plagiarize the first three results on any topic, while adding
| some mistakes.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Nor WEI, which Ars Technica described as a "nightmare." The
| final solution to general purpose computing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
| mdhb wrote:
| Quoting from Wikipedia here:
|
| The stated goal was for sites to be able to restrict access
| to human users instead of automated programs and "allow web
| servers to evaluate the authenticity of the device and
| honest representation of the software stack and the traffic
| from the device".
|
| Which on the surface seems like a legitimate use case I
| have to be honest.
| user3939382 wrote:
| It is, just like having an armed policeman permanently
| stationed in your living room to protect you is a
| legitimate use case.
| ferbivore wrote:
| It's legitimate if you believe companies should have the
| right to provide or deny you service by arbitrary
| criteria and on arbitrary terms. This belief has some
| unfortunate real-world implications.
|
| The most likely outcome of WEI would have been - and
| might still be - that users of any operating system or
| browser that does not comply with the Trusted Computing
| agenda (secure boot, verified OS, full encrypted path
| from company servers to the user's screen & input
| devices) find themselves locked out of large portions of
| the internet.
| fao_ wrote:
| > "allow web servers to evaluate the authenticity of the
| device and honest representation of the software stack
| and the traffic from the device".
|
| That's not in the purview of a web server to do that, and
| quickly falls into the territory of violating
| 'neutrality' and 'anti-compete' territory. (i.e. it
| should not be possible for Apple or Microsoft servers to
| show content only to Microsoft or Apple devices, because
| that violates the law, it prevents competing software
| vendors from being compatible with them).
|
| It is strictly not appropriate for every single web
| server that my browser contacts to audit my software
| stack, just like if a bank phones me up randomly it's not
| appropriate for them to verify who I am -- the burden is
| on the web server to validate and confirm that it's
| identity and software stack is correct, instead.
|
| The job of a web server is to truthfully serve it's
| content and not to butcher or malform that content, just
| like a librarian. Imagine if you had to take your birth
| certificate and pictures of your flat's security system
| to a library every time you wanted to borrow a book!
| int_19h wrote:
| And that whole "war on cookies" where they keep pitching
| replacements that basically let Google (and only Google) do all
| the same things, so that they can then gatekeep it and pay
| others for the privilege of accessing some limited subset of
| that data.
|
| Regardless of why Google made Chrome originally, today, the
| main reason why it exists is to enable Google to track users
| more efficiently. And that is a bad thing.
| mrkramer wrote:
| They will never be able to kill cookies unless they bribe the
| whole industry and make them believe Google's cookie
| replacement technology will bring them more ad money.
|
| Tbh cookies are lesser evil than Google's make believe cookie
| replacement technology. And remember Google is not Netscape,
| Google is on whole another level of power and domination.
| Gud wrote:
| What do you mean? the whole industry are happy to be on
| Chrome. What Google does, the rest will be either praising
| or be doing begrudingly.
|
| A few of us are using Firefox. The few who remember the
| terror that web development was when Microsoft had the
| monopoly. At least they were mostly ignorant, not outright
| hostile towards the open web.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Yes, you are right Microsoft was worse than Google but
| Google is constantly hypocritical....they are always
| twisting the narrative so it suits them whether it is
| open web, advertising or politics.
| msmshazan wrote:
| Kinda ironic that "Don't be evil" is Google's former motto
| joquarky wrote:
| That was before they were absorbed by Doubleclick.
| esalman wrote:
| Defence contractor as well.
| beeflet wrote:
| The 'what is good for the web is good for Google' line
| certainly _was_ true in 2005 when the greatest threat to the
| web was companies like microsoft using internet explorer to
| adjust the de-facto web standards and privatize it in the
| "EEE" fashion.
|
| Obviously the most visited websites would maintain the web
| better than OS vendors, their buisness depended on it being
| open.
|
| We have a similar situation now, but with google locking down
| the most common browser (Manifest v3) and using extensions of
| web standards to maintain a dominant position.
|
| Disclaimer: I am a zoomer and not a web developer so my history
| may be off here.
| Voultapher wrote:
| Let's not forget their attempt to push web attestation
| through WEI https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-
| pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...
| megadata wrote:
| Attempt? Isn't that project still in full swing?
| Voultapher wrote:
| > A Web Environment Integrity prototype existed in
| Chromium,[2][3] but was removed in November 2023 after
| extensive criticism by many tech groups.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity#R
| ece...
| charcircuit wrote:
| Malicous bots are a serious issue that trouble site
| operators. Trying to come up with solutions to such
| problems doesn't mean they don't care about the web. If it
| allows web sites to spend less time moderating and users to
| spend less time reading spam that would be a win win for
| both parties.
| hkt wrote:
| Re: your first paragraph, this is exactly what Google does
| now. They maintain such an incredible pace of development and
| such a unilateral attitude that nobody can stop them from
| developing web standards even if they want to. When was the
| last time anyone said no to a Chrome feature and expected it
| everywhere else? Developers treat it as the go to to the
| extent that some don't even bother testing in other browsers.
| Google are showing Microsoft how it is done.
| OccamsMirror wrote:
| It makes you wonder if Microsoft had given developers what
| they wanted, i.e. modern CSS and Javascript support, more
| browser features, etc., would they have actually moved off
| of Internet Explorer?
| Ygg2 wrote:
| They did?
|
| AJAX of jQuery fame, is extremely similar to ActiveX
| XmlHttpRequest.
|
| The problem isn't XmlHttpRequest, but everything else
| they added/removed. Same with Google. The problem isn't
| they made request more secure, they made ad blocking
| impossible.
| wincy wrote:
| My custom user scripts from Tampermonkey that I used to
| make my life as a developer easier are just gone. I can't
| even access the extension to grab them, some of them are
| complicated workflow stuff that made my life easier in
| some pages that are poorly designed. Like I'm often
| looking at the contents of JWTs so I added a global
| function into my global scope to parse JWTs. There wasn't
| even a "hey we're getting rid of this extension back
| stuff up", it's just disabled.
| VladStanimir wrote:
| What do you mean? I have the new version of Tampermonkey
| installed and after turning on developer mode in the
| extensions section all my scripts work perfectly.
| https://www.tampermonkey.net/faq.php?locale=en#Q209
| Ygg2 wrote:
| What do you mean? I've ported JS code from ActiveX to
| modern (circa 2017) browsers. It mostly works with some
| renames.
|
| I'm not sure what your message is referring to.
| ruszki wrote:
| No, we wouldn't have moved. The two main reasons back
| during IE6 times were tabs, and as a web developer:
| debugging. Firebug was something which was way ahead of
| everything else.
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| It's kind of the new Internet Explorer.
|
| It doesn't matter what the standard is. It has to work in
| chrome because of its market saturation.
|
| That makes chrome the standard regardless of what any
| standards body says
| iav wrote:
| Mobile Safari exists though. Chrome is #2 on iOS and that's
| where the most valuable consumers are
| mohamedattahri wrote:
| There's a long, long list of APIs which are Chromium-only
| because Apple and/or Firefox rejected them: Bluetooth,
| Battery Status, etc.
| danaris wrote:
| > The 'what is good for the web is good for Google' line
| certainly was true in 2005
|
| ...But even then, it did not follow that "what is good for
| Google is good for the web".
|
| Just because 2005!Google does something that improves its
| situation doesn't mean that's automatically good for all of
| us, even if stuff that improves the web for all of us makes
| 2005!Google's situation better as a side effect.
|
| And 2025!Google is definitely not in that position. At this
| point, what's good for the web is only good for Google if it
| fits with Google's own plans and enhances their control.
| Gud wrote:
| Absolutely agree 100% with this. I would argue that Google is
| TERRIBLE for the web.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Advertising is a monetization modal. That's like saying that
| resteraunts are just credit card swiping businesses.
|
| Chrome is similar to other apps like X, Instagram, or YouTube.
| You click on the app. You are given a way to discover content
| and ads are shown along side that content. When you click on a
| site / post there can also be ads. Maximizing engagement on the
| web, means people will discover more content, which means more
| ads can be displayed.
|
| >AMP
|
| Unlike the other platforms I mentioned the web hosts content
| using 3rd party tech stacks and server which means that the
| user experience can be variable. AMP allows Google to provide a
| more consistent experience. It was optional and served to
| provide a better user experience for the users of the web.
|
| >Ad-blocking prohibition
|
| Google Search and Chrome have not prohibited ad blockers.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Advertising accounts for 80% of AlphaGoogle's revenue. That
| makes them Google's monarchy.
|
| Re: AMP. AMP is like Cloudflare. Whatever is good about it
| is, by definition, bad for the Web, because its model
| replaces the Web as-we-know-it with something closer to
| Compuserve.
|
| Re: Ad-blockers. It may not be a complete prohibition, but it
| is a hobbling of ad-blockers. It is clearly intentional, too,
| as evidenced by AlphaGoogle's recent anti-adblocker
| initiatives at Youtube.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >its model replaces the Web as-we-know-it with something
| closer to Compuserve.
|
| Companies providing web hosting is already an established
| part of the web for a long time. People want to dedicate
| their time to the problems the site has and not to the
| problems the infra has. Not every site is going to want to
| setup their own servers at hundreds of points of presence
| around the world. Being able to use someone else's for free
| allows site operators to improve the user experience of
| their site for users for free. Even if such a deal ends
| people can still connect and use the original site
| directly.
| hermanradtke wrote:
| > That's like saying that resteraunts are just credit card
| swiping businesses.
|
| You are being sarcastic here, but ironically you are not far
| from the truth. The core financial model of a businesses is
| not always obvious.
|
| McDonald's is a real-estate business. Costco is a
| subscription business.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I'm not being sarcastic. I'm providing an example of the
| reductionist thinking going on. Companies can about
| multiple things. McDonalds still cares about getting people
| to eat at their resteraunt.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Advertising is a monetization modal. That's like saying that
| resteraunts are just credit card swiping businesses.
|
| Ads aren't the mechanism through which Google receives
| payment, they're what Google is paid for. The actual claim
| your analogy matches is that Google is just an online credit
| card processing business. But nobody makes that claim.
| pcwalton wrote:
| Chrome does prohibit ad blockers on mobile.
| roenxi wrote:
| So who is going to step up and build something better than
| Chrome? If we knock Google out of the running 2nd place for the
| sort of investment they've made is pretty weak and largely only
| works on iPhones.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is an excellent analysis. Also, Google is actually a data
| business, building an AI, with a long time horizon view - and
| always has been. Larry's initial goal was to build the AI.
| Impressive tho they are, current AI products are mere ripples
| upon the surface compared to the deep currents of Google's long
| term plans.
|
| Given that, I actually don't see much resistance from Google
| leadership to abc.xyz divesting itself of Chrome. In fact, it's
| probably on some level been "worked out" - with the DOJ pushing
| for a meaningful, and symbolically meaningful, concession that
| was already negotiated as something Google could agree to, and
| maybe even wanted.
|
| Getting rid of Chrome could help them refocus their efforts,
| and unburden themselves from something that probably comes with
| a lot of issues. Cue the eventual press release, letter from
| the leadership, looking back on the decades of Chrome, and how
| they ultimate believe that a Browser should be owned by the web
| and the people itself, not by a company.
|
| It could be a significant, meaningful and positive pivot for
| the company as it faces changing situations.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Google does not want to get rid of Chrome because it is by
| far the best source of "signal" that they use for training
| their systems. For example Chrome browsing stream data is the
| largest signal used in ranking search results.
|
| Google deprecated PageRank in large part because interlinking
| was a proxy for user interest, and now with Chrome they can
| measure user interest directly in real time.
| keepamovin wrote:
| Will signal like that remain important with AI?
| belorn wrote:
| Googles behavior with youtube, by adding DRM to all videos, is
| a clear demonstration of the abandonment of the open web. If we
| are not longer using open standards, and no longer allowing
| alternative browsers, then how is that different from the
| closed down platform?
| xnx wrote:
| Google's core competency is machine learning. So far they've
| most profitably applied that to search (matching web pages and
| ads to queries), but is also applying it to automating all
| human work: drivers with Waymo, knowledge work with Gemini, and
| manual work with Gemini robotics.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > AMP, and the Ad-blocking prohibition are evidence of this.
|
| That's the crux of the argument. I don't need any further
| evidence.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I think what they said is not _technically_ wrong (excluding
| the "happens to be good for al of us part"). What is good for
| the health of the web really is good for Google, since they
| need the web to be sustainable.
|
| But, the problem is the opposite is not true. What is good for
| Google is often bad for the web as a whole. The only reason it
| "Works" is because of their dominance.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Exactly this.
|
| Google removed don't be evil. They created a web browser which
| originally was good back in the day d.g. Internet explorer was
| crap, Firefox was okay but very different world 2007 vs today.
| metadat wrote:
| > Panglossian
|
| I had to look it up, but what a fantastic word which applies
| perfectly to this context:
|
| _" Panglossian" describes something or someone characterized
| by extreme and often naive optimism, especially in the face of
| adversity_
|
| _Panglossian * \pan-GLAH-see-un\ * adjective. : marked by the
| view that all is for the best in this best of possible worlds :
| excessively optimistic.
|
| Example: Even the most Panglossian temperament would have had
| trouble finding the good in this situation._
|
| Thank you!
| Centigonal wrote:
| It comes from a character named pangloss in Voltaire's
| _Candide_ who takes the view that we must live in the best of
| all possible worlds.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > They made a browser to invest in the web itself
|
| But that investment isn't neutral. It's oriented towards making
| the Web a better place for Google to make money--not a better
| place for users to avoid being tracked by Google. Chrome's
| dominant position means Google can kill any new web feature that
| would help users, but hurt Google's bottom line.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| There's such a strong strain of dark side energy aimed at
| Google. It just feels so unhinged to me though.
|
| Blink-dev is an amazing mailing list of really good
| improvements being built intelligently, in well declared
| fashion, with lots of checks via standards bodies, fully open
| to discussion. There's very few places on the planet where such
| good work is so easy to see, and no where that it's so
| abundant. https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev
|
| What features has Google killed, do you think? How often has
| this been a problem, do you think? What other browsers have
| gone ahead, with Google holding out?
|
| Google wants a competent capable successful healthy web. They
| want there to be an open, standards & protocols system out
| there, a connected rich hypermedia internet, because everything
| else humanity has done with computing is proprietary and trying
| to rely on someone else's platform is existentially hazardous.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| >What features has Google killed, do you think? How often has
| this been a problem, do you think?
|
| Unless you've been living under a rock, it's hard to miss
| manifest v2 vs v3.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Agreed, that stings. Its extremely visible & painful. I
| want to believe there was some intent, to make extensions
| that weren't such an extreme hazard, so that the Google Web
| Store could be better. But it's obviously just a massive
| regression in user agency, and miserable, and directly
| undoes so much of the good that was the web.
|
| I still think this is, like, the one example. Its a bloody
| awful one though.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Chrome was never about user agency though. The ideal
| Chrome is to be an un-configurable window to the Web,
| hence the name (it is the window chrome).
| OuterVale wrote:
| > What features has Google killed, do you think?
|
| JPEG-XL pops to mind.
| arccy wrote:
| it was never alive enough to be killed
| larme wrote:
| > What features has Google killed, do you think? The problem
| is more like google can implement whatever feature they want
| and force it into web standard
|
| > How often has this been a problem, do you think? very often
|
| > What other browsers have gone ahead, with Google holding
| out? Google is holding out in a sense that no other people
| can implement a feature-complete browser. Google is killing
| the "open standard" web by make the standard impossible.
| youngtaff wrote:
| Sure there are a lot of people on blink-dev building good
| thoughtful features
|
| But there are also plenty of people at Google etc who are
| convinced that advertising is the only way to fund the web
| and so build features to support that e.g. maintaining 3rd-
| party cookies, FLEDGE / Flock / Topics (and the rest of the
| deceptively names Privacy Sandbox)
|
| Advertising is a massive invasion into our personal lives and
| via ad networks actors (sometimes hostile) can get access to
| data they have no rights to
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| This is a laughably bad take.
| motorest wrote:
| This blogger doesn't seem to be aware of all the privacy problems
| that Chrome poses by the way it was designed to track and monitor
| all users' history and input and feed it to Google, even in
| incognito mode. All the blogger had to do is open Wikipedia's
| article on Chrome to check the huge section on privacy. But no,
| apparently that is too much research to ask. In fact, the word
| "privacy" is featured a total of zero times in the blog post.
|
| It's hard to believe anyone can write a wall of text with so many
| assertions but fails to even touch on the central topic. You need
| to go way out of your way to be able to miss the point this hard.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Chris is a well-known CSS expert and founder of css-tricks.com
| which was a respected CSS site before it was sold a couple
| years ago. I believe he was also working on W3C/CSS specs as
| invited expert (and paid by who knows)? While you could say CSS
| and Web journalism/advocacy sites have some inherent interest
| and their share in making web tech absurdly complex and out of
| the reach of laymen (and browser entrepreneurs), it's sure
| shocking to see him act as a Google mouth piece so openly and
| brazenly.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| The issue with Chrome isn't its ownership by Google. The problem
| lies in the fact that Google search is integrated into the very
| fabric of the browser at all levels. This creates an unfavorable
| and, frankly, unchallenged system that hinders competition. It's
| the Achilles heel of unchecked capitalism.
| paddw wrote:
| What's unclear is who the buyer is supposed to be? Chrome's
| entire monetization is centered around its synergy with Google's
| ad business. Cutting off Chrome is so much messier, than the
| obvious, (although I fear it would itself have bad repercussions)
| decision to force them to sell Youtube.
| glenstein wrote:
| Exactly, this is my question as well. I was just thinking about
| it and thought although it's kind of silly, Google paying
| _them_ (the newly-divested ChromeCo) for search engine default
| status could be a primary source of revenue.
|
| I'm actually kind of curious about that as an option. Right now
| the distortion that makes Google any 800 pound gorilla is their
| leveraging of Chrome to channel users into their various
| monetized ecosystems.
|
| But there could conceivably be an interesting form of parity
| that comes from the browsers all depending on the same form of
| revenue, search engine placement. I haven't fully thought this
| through, so I welcome corrections. I suppose Google could quite
| easily give favorable treatment toward ChromeCo and effectively
| continue to flex its monopoly muscle. Google will need them
| just as much as before. I'm honestly just not sure.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a
| social negative, let it die?
|
| A billion or two dollars would fund development indefinitely.
| Don't sell it to anybody, make it a nonprofit with a fat trust.
| I'll say the same thing about Firefox: they got plenty of money
| from Google. They should have been able to save enough in ten
| or how ever many years to fund development for all eternity.
| Instead they paid it to themselves.
| Jensson wrote:
| > If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a
| social negative, let it die?
|
| Its just going to get more user hostile, that is the point.
| Google has a reason not to sell that data, Chrome company
| does not.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Yeah I don't quite understand either. Once you rip Google out
| of Chrome, it's just chromium, I don't think there's going to
| be a buyer interested in buying what they can already get and
| build themselves for free.
|
| A more appropriate ruling would be just force Google to stop
| distributing Chrome, not sell it but kill it. There's already a
| myriad of chromium reskins, so that wouldn't change, and that's
| all chrome will become if someone else buys it. Make the
| precedent that owners of a search engine can't also have a
| browser.
|
| I think just killing chrome would do more good than selling it
| off to become yet another sketchy chromium reskin with
| questionable privacy and crypto miners.
| est31 wrote:
| I agree. If Chrome is sold off, the new owners might think its
| uneconomic to maintain a (desktop) Linux port, keep it open
| source, or they might make it even less standards based than it
| is now.
| asadotzler wrote:
| And those users can then move to a browser that isn't screwing
| them over, that does support Linux and open source and web
| standards. Google Chrome is not the only browser possible
| except to Google shills and sycophants.
| streptomycin wrote:
| I don't get the negative comments here. It's pretty simple I
| think...
|
| - Google is banned from paying Firefox to be the default search
| engine -> Firefox has way less money -> Firefox development
| massively slows
|
| - Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome,
| rather than using it to indirectly profit from the web in general
| like Google does -> Chrome probably goes to shit and development
| massively slows
|
| So what now? Safari is going to be the leading force moving the
| web forward? The Chromium forks that are doing basically no
| browser engine work are going to suddenly find billions of
| dollars to invest in hiring developers? Someone will buy a time
| machine and go 10 years into the future to get a version of
| Ladybird that is comparable to what we have today in
| Chrome/Firefox? Just because you guys hate Google doesn't make
| any of those scenarios remotely plausible. And if you hate
| Google, there are much better ways to punish it than this.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Web browsers are probably complex enough at this point. Putting
| them on maintenance and letting new architectures fight it out
| might not be a bad outcome.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Putting hopes in someone else making an entirely new
| standards and protocols based hypermedia sounds outlandish.
| Whose going to go on a decade long quest to build something
| amazing to give away, again?
|
| I for one really tire of this spiritual vandalism
| masquerading as a hopeful pineing ask for a new beginning.
| The web rocks, is amazing. Sure there's some incidental
| complexity that's accrued, but the versatility & wide
| capability from a simple core are a glorious & powerful thing
| that I think only a fool wouldn't celebrate.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Silly, it's already started. An obstacle would give impetus
| to new solutions,
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I don't know specifically what you are referring to and I
| doubt many other folks have any idea other.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| You say it's "outlandish" to consider alternatives, but
| new ones are starting all the time. Every advance of the
| post-FLOSS era has started just like this. Big players
| getting out of the way can only help evolution along.
| int_19h wrote:
| "Development slows" is not necessarily a bad thing. E.g. quite
| a lot of people would _love_ development to slow wrt Manifest
| v3. It would also mean that web standards are less of a moving
| target for browsers playing catch-up (like Firefox).
|
| People can also pay for browsers. The only reason why this
| isn't feasible today is because it's hard to compete with the
| top-of-the-line stuff that megacorps offer for free - which
| they do precisely so they can maintain de facto control over
| web standards (or force the lack thereof in areas where this is
| advantageous). Lest we forget, many early web browsers were
| paid products (not just NN, but also Opera, for example), and
| Microsoft's original sin as a monopoly was offering IE for
| free, against which NN couldn't compete. But if Google is
| forced to ditch Chrome, and Microsoft is forced to ditch
| Edge...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| The development that slows will not be parts that allow
| monetisation. They have a rationale. They will be things like
| security that have no immediate bottom line impact.
| knowriju wrote:
| This is such a 'first-world' comment. A majority of the folks
| logging on the web in the developing and emerging world will
| be unable to afford paying any kind of subscription for their
| web browser over and above what they pay their ISPs for
| internet access.
| gabruoy wrote:
| Then unfortunately the internet will remain a luxury for
| people who aren't able to afford the cost. The internet is
| a product, not a charity or human right.
| asadotzler wrote:
| The UN disagrees
| zakki wrote:
| At least Safari has better privacy concern than Chrome. Let's
| see if Waterfox can substitute Firefox in the long run. I
| believe MS Edge will happily replace Chrome.
| roca wrote:
| How can Waterfox substitute for Firefox when 99% of the work
| that goes into Waterfox is actually done by Firefox
| developers?
|
| Almost the same argument applies to Edge and Chrome.
| keming wrote:
| > Safari
|
| This is a better answer than Waterfox or Edge. Like you said,
| at least Apple cares about privacy enough to defend it in
| court.
|
| Waterfox is dependent on Mozilla, which admitted to selling
| its users' data.
|
| Edge is an answer just for Windows, and the primary benefit
| to MS is getting people to use Bing, to sell ads.
| klooney wrote:
| > So what now? Safari is going to be the leading force moving
| the web forward?
|
| Even Safari is massively subsidized by Google paying to be the
| default browser. If those billions go away, engineering
| investment will be cut.
| stephenr wrote:
| In a scenario where Google no longer control Chrome, I doubt
| Safari's budget is at risk, the company had nearly $400B in
| revenue in 2024.
|
| Courtroom testimony implied that part of the reason Apple
| value(s/d) the deal with Google was a "peace deal" to prevent
| Google from doing what Google does and forcing Safari users
| on Google properties, to switch to Chrome.
|
| Of all the browsers that would be affected by the loss of
| Google funding, Safari is least likely to be affected.
| izacus wrote:
| The 400B in revenue is there to be paid out to shareholders
| not to pay for browser development when not needed.
|
| Apple only has a browser team because they need to keep up
| with parity for their OS.
| stephenr wrote:
| That logic could be applied to every app team at Apple,
| or indeed every other publicly traded software company
| Jensson wrote:
| No, because people tend to invest in what generates
| revenue. If Apple no longer gets billions from Safari
| most people would stop investing that much in it, so that
| is likely what is going to happen.
| izacus wrote:
| Yep, and it works out that as well. Without competition,
| they stagnate and lag.
| stemlord wrote:
| >moving the web forward
|
| What constitutes "forward" to you
| ripped_britches wrote:
| Wasm? It may seem like it's still just a browser but I'm very
| grateful that bad ass people have been working on it
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome
|
| Who would this be and how would they turn a profit from it?
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome,
| rather than using it to indirectly profit from the web in
| general like Google does -> Chrome probably goes to shit and
| development massively slows
|
| I kinda believe Chromium is already complete enough, and
| government can take over it, and keep in running in maintenance
| mode (security fixes through possible bounties) with minimum
| expenses, and it will be great product: reliable, performant,
| secure and without corp-crap-tech.
| glenstein wrote:
| A trouble with breaking up Google is I think from one perspective
| the impact it would have is not to reduce monopoly tensions but
| to increase them. Because now it's Apple Microsoft, Meta, Amazon,
| we will have gone from G.A.M.M.A. to A.M.M.A. (I no longer know
| what the new acronym is supposed to be, now that FAANG is gone).
|
| And I'm not sure that I would start with Google. I'm honestly not
| sure how I would rank the major players in terms of antitrust
| concerns, but I do think there probably should be an order of
| operations such that you don't go after the "wrong" one first,
| effectively consolidating the industry further rather than
| balancing it.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The acronym is done, BigTech has been easier to use for a
| while.
|
| I would rank MS the worst with Google in second place. But the
| advertising company currently has a lock on our schools, which
| I find unacceptable.
| DavidManningCA wrote:
| NotGoogleLobbiests.com?
|
| Great source.
| ForTheKidz wrote:
| > because what is good for the web is good for Google
|
| Counterpoint: funding via advertisement
| rafram wrote:
| The premise of this post is flawed. The government _is_ trying to
| bar Google from paying browser vendors to make them the default:
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24300617/doj-google-sear...
|
| > Other remedies the government is asking the court to impose
| include prohibiting Google from offering money or anything of
| value to third parties -- including Apple and other phone-makers
| -- to make Google's search engine the default, or to discourage
| them from hosting search competitors. It also wants to ban Google
| from preferencing its search engine on any owned-and-operated
| platform (like YouTube or Gemini), mandate it let rivals access
| its search index at "marginal cost, and on an ongoing basis," and
| require Google to syndicate its search results, ranking signals,
| and US-originated query data for 10 years.
|
| I don't think they're going to get all of that, but it's
| interesting, and it definitely doesn't line up with the "sell
| your car" analogy in the post.
| duskwuff wrote:
| What worries me is what's going to happen to Mozilla without
| those payments.
| juunpp wrote:
| Investment disclosure?
|
| Forcing Chrome to display a search engine choice doesn't even
| begin to solve the issue. Chrome spies on you regardless, and it
| also banned UBO and other ad-blocking extensions. It is a product
| made to deliberately spy on and harvest more data from you.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| The author is correct on this:
|
| _" Not so with the web. The web is a set of protocols and
| languages and file formats[...] Google, by virtue of having
| Chrome, invests heavily in the web itself_"
|
| Without a company like Google which functions like a public
| steward for the web there's little reason for anyone else to
| drive web development. The competitive market logic doesn't
| incentivize an open ecosystem because by definition there's no
| profit to be captured in it, it exists if you will because a
| benevolent player maintains it and makes money elsewhere.
|
| An analog to this would be if you'd judge Red Hat's dominance in
| the commercial Linux space the same way and forced them to divest
| from the operating system market. There would be nobody stepping
| in, because there's no money in linux itself. It exists by virtue
| of a entity making money on adjacent markets and all the linux
| development happens because it's beneficial for them to drive
| adoption.
|
| The only real alternative you could propose is straight up public
| funding, but a balkanized market is by its very logic not going
| to maintain the web, but vertically integrated alternatives, i.e.
| apps. It's something you can btw see in China which due to timing
| happened to leap frog over the open web and search and went
| straight to the hyper-competitive and for that reason proprietary
| world of platforms.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > An analog to this would be if you'd judge Red Hat's dominance
| in the commercial Linux space the same way and forced them to
| divest from the operating system market.
|
| But it's not at all how the linux ecosystem looks. Redhat
| doesn't dominate linux distributions and they can't corral
| everyone into using their money-making services by making them
| default into their distribution.
| Okx wrote:
| You've got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery
| stores to be the default lemonade. So we're going to
| force you sell your car.
|
| I don't think this is an accurate anaology. It's more like, you
| own the vast majority of grocery stores, and you make lemonade,
| and you force all the other grocery stores to only sell your
| lemonade.
|
| To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google
| shouldn't be paying to be the default search engine, but that it
| shouldn't own both the browser and the search engine.
|
| I think this harkens back to _the_ anti-trust court case, _United
| States v. Paramount Pictures_ , where the court ruled that the
| film studios cannot hold monopolies over the movie theatres, and
| that theatres must remain independent.
|
| Similarly, browsers and search engines being independent is good
| for competition because the internet is too important to let a
| single company dictate how it is used.
| the_other wrote:
| > To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google
| shouldn't be paying to be the default search engine, but that
| it shouldn't own both the browser and the search engine.
|
| If this is the real crux of the case, then is divesting Chrome
| going to negatively affect DuckDuckGo and Kagi?
|
| My hunch is "no", and also that search+browser isn't the crux
| of the case. I think the real crux is Google owning
| browser+ad/surveillance-network.
| asadotzler wrote:
| It's the scale. You can do all kinds of integrations at tiny
| scale that are not permissible at grand scale. I can own my
| store and sell my own-brand products in it but if I own most
| of the stores and use that leverage to force other stores to
| sell my own-brand products, that's a concern for competition
| and an opportunity for anti-trust regulation to step in and
| attempt to fix things.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > I don't think this is an accurate anaology. It's more like,
| you own the vast majority of grocery stores, and you make
| lemonade, and you force all the other grocery stores to only
| sell your lemonade.
|
| Yep. The rest of the article is equally disingenuous,
| desperately making up arguments and bad analogies.
| willtemperley wrote:
| The way they aggressively push Chrome on Gmail users with "Google
| recommends using Chrome" popups is enough to make me think this
| is exactly what needed to happen.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Developing a browser is fantastically difficult and expensive.
| How much of that is because of Google using Chrome's dominance to
| dictate web standards?
|
| If instead web standards moved at a pace set by a standards body
| not incentivised to spy on users, how much more competition could
| exist in the browser space?
| pfooti wrote:
| What makes you think a potential buyer would not be motivated
| to spy on its own users? Either it is profitable to do this
| (and therefore the owners will) or it is not (and therefore
| being forced to sell chrome won't harm googles bottom line).
| franze wrote:
| Besides all the good points in that thread about why Google
| should definitely be forced to sell Chrome lets ad another one:
| The Google Discover Feed in Google Chrome (and Android and Google
| App) is by now up to 80% of the Traffic News-Sites get. Basically
| it is Instagram for News and massively used. So Google now
| controls how Users consume the News. (Also you still need AMP to
| perform there...)
| glimshe wrote:
| I find amazing that, in today's web, the inaner a point is, the
| firmer is its proponent's conviction. Today's Google is the
| opposite of what is good for the web; it's a business led by a
| McKinsey bean counter and his henchmen, people who destroyed one
| of the most innovative companies the world has ever known and
| turned into a cancer who will only stop taking a cut of
| everything we do when it kills its host, the Internet.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think he's confused. Google has to sell Chrome for reasons
| unrelated to whether Google was paying to be the default on their
| competitors products.
|
| Google has to sell Chrome for reasons that don't even imply fault
| or wrongdoing. It lowers the level of competition to an
| unacceptable level for Google to own Chrome; and when Google owns
| Chrome, the temptation to do things like pay to be the default
| search engine in your competitors products in order to manipulate
| their behavior is too high.
|
| The fact that they were actually doing something like that is a
| separate problem. And it will not be fixed by punishing them, it
| will be fixed by telling them to stop doing it. This is a long
| overdue intervention, not a criminal trial.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > They have the right to do that, but that operating system
| exists to serve that company only and entirely.
|
| See, here and I thought the primary purpose of software was to
| benefit the users.
|
| About what you would expect from an article which sounds like it
| is going to play apologist to big tech monopolies.
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| Being forced to give away Unix was a great remedy for AT&Ts
| monopoly. "But that makes no sense! AT&T isn't a computer
| company, why should it be forced to stop making operating systems
| for profit?"
|
| Microsoft welded Explorer into the guts of its OS so they could
| say, after forcing it to be true, that the browser was an
| essential part of the system. But Microsoft made business
| software, why should it have to change IE? That's crazy!
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if this guy was some astroturfed paid
| lobbyist for Alphabet's PR firm. Would you?
| BrenBarn wrote:
| It's wild that the author points to all the Google people writing
| W3C specs as if that's a positive sign. I'm not quite pessimistic
| enough to say all those people are 100% corporate shills, but
| there's no reason to expect that the stuff that gets into the W3C
| via Google is somehow magically detached from Google's profit
| motives. Google's effect on web standards is largely just another
| form of icky "embrace and extend" shenanigans.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| Yeah, couldn't believe what I was reading. The author was
| already being charitable to Google, but that part was a big
| shot to their credibility.
| aktuel wrote:
| Could there be a better steward for Chrome in theory? Sure. My
| guess is that in practice the successor would be worse or about
| the same since it is all about money in the end.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" I'm not saying Google shouldn't be forced to sell Chrome just
| because it's only valuable to Google. But I do think Google
| should be allowed to have a browser."_
|
| There's a middle position here, and although Google won't like
| it, it may be better than Google having to sell Chrome off--that
| is upon first use would be to ask users if they want to disable
| all forms of telemetry.
|
| Right, many would choose to disable telemetry, but then many
| would not do so because they either couldn't give a damn about
| privacy or they may want to take advantage of say targeted
| advertising.
|
| Whatever happens, there's a fundamental problem that has to be
| addressed here and that's how to make the web a more equitable
| place for all players both big and small.
|
| One of the major problems with new technologies is that shortly
| after their introduction those who introduced them are often
| overrun by more business-savvy entrepreneurs who find it dead
| easy to monopolize the tech (we've seen this repeatedly from say
| the car industry through to operating systems--like MS and
| Windows, etc.).
|
| By the time government determines that a monopoly exists it's
| often too late as unwinding the status quo proves very difficult
| and disruptive (imagine Social Media if rules had been worked out
| before it had been introduced, if they had then the scene
| nowadays would be very different).
|
| When examining what constitutes a monopoly one has to look at
| what's involved. For example, economies of scale enter the
| picture--having say only one huge producer of steel would be a
| monopoly as there'd be no competition and steel--a critical
| commodity--prices would high so a better solution would be to
| have two or three large producers to encourage competition. This
| is what's happened in say the oil and motor vehicle industries.
| Moreover, it'd make no sense to strangle these large industries
| by making them comply with regulations that would enable the
| smallest of small manufacturers sans adequate resources to
| compete on an equal footing--everyone would end up worse off.
|
| The trouble with the web--perhaps more so than with any other
| tech throughout history--is that because of its intrinsic nature
| it's been easier for the powerful (Big Tech) to monopolize the
| tech. It's also meant that the monopolies that now run the web
| not only became so almost overnight but also they're now
| entrenched--set in concrete so to speak--which now make them very
| difficult to regulate. This all developed so very quickly that
| unfortunately it happened in a regulations-free environment.
|
| What makes the web very different to other tech--to say those
| that use physical materials--is that it's very scalable; that is,
| it's possible for huge monopolies such as Google, Microsoft, etc.
| to coexist with smaller entities without the smaller ones being
| stifled. The trouble is that that's not what's happened,
| monopolistic practices such as Chrome and like deliberately
| channeling web traffic to Big Tech's sites has effectively
| distorted the way the web works.
|
| One could argue that the simple solution is to use an independent
| browser but there are many reasons why this is solution is far
| from ideal. For starters, web protocols--many of which have been
| forced on web users by Big Tech--are now so complex and
| convoluted that designing a fully compatible web browser from
| scratch is a very difficult and challenging undertaking.
|
| In essence, the demands of Big Tech have been such that they've
| raised minimal entry level for participation on the web to a
| point where small players have had to sacrifice both their
| independence and visibility if they want their presence to be
| viable. That is, the present state of the web is somewhat
| analogous to those industries that require economies of scale to
| function--unless one owns either a 'steel mill'-sized
| infrastructure or at least has access to one then one's pretty
| much left out in the cold. For the vast majority who want to
| participate the obvious solution is to gain access to Big Tech's
| web--and that means they can only do so on its terms--terms which
| are often unfair and punitive if violated.
|
| No matter how one looks at it, the web nowadays is effectively a
| monopoly run by a few large players. The purpose of antitrust law
| is to flatten the playing field for all, so whatever regulators
| decide to do with Chrome they need to take these factors into
| account.
| jimmont wrote:
| It's interesting to see where the economics align with software.
| Web advertising paired with search and a browser. And it worked.
| I can't recall a better outcome supporting modern communication
| than Chrome and all it contains. The harmony between the
| business, software and market need was very well aligned. That's
| falling apart now due to LLM's taking over much of what
| previously was search, and Google's innovator's dilemma between
| AI/LLM and traditional search. While the revenues are stronger
| than ever this seems unlikely to continue long term. So the
| dynamic is changing naturally. Reminds me of how a strange
| contemporary religion where believers families take over a
| planet, resulted in this group building an amazing genealogy web
| service (familysearch.org). Or how US hegemony naturally leads to
| it's military, or how the theocratic monarchy of ancient Egypt
| was good for the masonry industry--even affecting modern tourism,
| or how Roman roads form the paths leading to today's major
| European cities.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| > You've got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the
| grocery stores to be the default lemonade.
|
| > So we're going to force you sell your car.
|
| This is b*llocks. Google financed being monopolist in cars with
| profits from its monopoly on lemonade, which they then used to
| perpetuate the monopoly on lemonade. We can't solve lemonade
| problem for now, but we can easily fix the car monopoly problem
| and break the feedback loop between the two.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is really about paying to be the default search engine. How
| that goes for Google depends on the details.
|
| If nobody can pay to be the default, then it's an absolute win
| for Google. This would save Google billions of dollars and many
| of those users will use Google anyway. Google is really paying so
| nobody else can.
|
| If other companeis can pay to be the default, then it's a much
| more mixed bag. It'll hurt Firefox and Apple because nobody can
| pay what Google can and with Google out of the picture, people
| won't have to pay as much anyway.
|
| Divestment of Chrome is a separate issue. I don't see how this
| can work as an independent business. People won't pay for a
| browser. Selling user data doesn't seem like a sustainable
| business. I know I wouldn't use that. t It's really time for
| browsers to become a common good.
| tgv wrote:
| > Selling user data doesn't seem like a sustainable business.
|
| Did you see Google's Q4 earnings? "Google Services revenues
| increased 10% to $84.1 billion, reflecting the strong momentum
| across Google Search & other and YouTube ads." That's by using
| user data. If Chrome is split off into a new company, there
| will be buses full of wooers.
| arcmechanica wrote:
| Better idea than v3
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Forcing Google to sell Chrome isn't enough.
|
| We need healthy alternatives to Chrome.
| jsmo wrote:
| Paid for by Google?!
| kweingar wrote:
| I've brought this up before, but I never got a response and I'm
| really interested what people think the business case is here. I
| keep wondering what a buyer would actually value beyond Chrome's
| userbase. Chrome is just Chromium with Google integrations,
| similar to how Edge is Chromium with Microsoft integrations.
|
| If a company acquires Chrome, they don't have many choices: re-
| establish Google integration deals (so the divestiture would be
| pointless), replace Google integrations with their own (becoming
| just another Chromium distro in a sea of Chromium distros), or
| just monetize the existing userbase.
|
| A Chrome acquisition doesn't include unlimited control over
| Chromium. Chromium is open source, with contributions from many
| organizations (who retain the copyright to their contributed
| code). Google can only sell what it exclusively owns: the brand,
| infrastructure, signing keys, etc. The real force behind Chromium
| is having a critical mass of engineers all pushing in generally
| the same direction. You can't necessarily just buy that,
| especially when you wouldn't own exclusive rights. Any other
| company is free to poach engineers and fork the project.
|
| Edited to add: if Microsoft sold VS Code to, say, Oracle... don't
| you think that another company would leap at the opportunity to
| fork the project? Would the userbase and the thin layer of
| closed-source Microsoft customizations really be worth that much?
| asyx wrote:
| I truely believe there is none. There is literally nothing
| people would pay for. We got ourselves into a situation where
| browsers have become so complex that they need an incredible
| amount of resources to get developed but the only way to get
| any money with them is to either sell the data of your users or
| have partners that do that (Google paying Mozilla for being the
| Firefox default search engine).
|
| I literally don't see a way out of this mess. In fact if Chrome
| needs to be split off from google, google has no need to keep
| Firefox alive anymore. If they just stop paying for the search
| engine default, Mozilla loses 75% of their revenue.
| dither8 wrote:
| Google would retain copyright to all of it's employees
| contributions to Chromium. Which I recall being 90%+ of
| contributions. The propsal PDF from justice.gov doesn't mention
| Chromium anywhere, so maybe Google will retain copyrights, but
| the sale would seem pointless if they do.
|
| The real question is to what level Google continue investment
| in Chrome after the sale. Remember both Mozilla and Apple will
| also loose out on the search engine deal.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Copyrights do not mean much here except that Google could
| license that code differently at some point, though the
| previous licenses are irrevocable so the "sold" Chrome would
| be the new main line, and Google's 90% of a browser fork
| under a new license could do something else. They'd certainly
| have to do some work to get it to be a browser again though
| because the 10% they cannot arbitrarily re-license is
| scattered around the codebase and some of it in critical
| parts of the system.
| apignotti wrote:
| > Chromium is open source, with contributions from many
| organizations (who retain the copyright to their contributed
| code).
|
| To contribute anything to Chromium or V8 you need to sign a
| CLA, afterwards there are very little rights you retain.
| kweingar wrote:
| The CLA just gives Google a license to use the code your
| contribute (and a license to any associated patents). You
| still own the copyright, and Google cannot sell the rights to
| your code.
|
| https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-individual
| blagie wrote:
| Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the
| default search engine.
|
| The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The
| differences are three-fold:
|
| - Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for
| placement
|
| - There can be no central directives to shove things like
| Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats
|
| - Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge
| in its web offerings
|
| In other words, if a business is split, the same economics
| work, but without all the shady, anti-trusty stuff. It's an
| independent company, without linked chains of corporate
| control.
|
| I think it most serves Google's interests to set up a second
| nonprofit similar to Mozilla to manage this, perhaps with more
| of a consortium model. Whatever Google can sell Chrome for is
| less in its interests than maintaining that the new Chrome will
| not be used against Google the way Google used Chrome against
| competitors.... If DDG were to end up with ownership of Chrome
| and switch from Google Search to DDG, I think Google would be
| pretty unhappy, while DDG's market cap of 75M versus Google's
| of $2T -- 2000 times higher -- would even out a little bit.
|
| One of the key points is that the EXACT SAME economics and
| business model can be evil and anti-trusty or good and fair
| depending on chains of control and collusion. If there is a
| colluding consortium (whether by backroom deals or by having
| related products in the same place), new competitors won't come
| in since they know they'll be crushed unfairly. Same economics
| without backroom deals, and you've got market competition.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| > Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be
| the default search engine.
|
| How do you image that working? Google is already banned from
| paying Apple to be the default search engine, so why would
| they be allowed to pay Chrome?
| asadotzler wrote:
| They are no more already banned from that than they have
| already been forced to divest chrome. None of this is
| final.
| knowriju wrote:
| If Meta buys Chrome (which is a real possibility) why do you
| think they will not try to push similar stuff like ManifestV3
| ?
| asadotzler wrote:
| Well, they won't be as effective given Google's absolute
| dominance in web properties and the reach of its
| surveillance advertising network. When Gmail or Docs
| mysteriously breaks in Firefox for 3 days peeling off 10M
| more Firefox users for Chrome, the web suffers. Meta won't
| be able to do nearly as much of that given their major
| effort is all in apps and barely on the web any more.
| gerash wrote:
| Most Google related threads boils down to these "woke"
| exaggerated cliched responses in the comments such as "evil
| trackers", "you are the product", etc.
|
| Guess what, Netflix tracks your watching habits. It's called a
| recommendation algorithm there. Spotify tracks your listening
| habits and so on and so forth.
| stephenr wrote:
| Neither Netflix nor Spotify make market dominating utility
| "media players" that can be used to browse any streaming media.
|
| What Netflix and Spotify do is akin to what YouTube or Apple
| Music/TV, or even online marketplaces like eBay/Amazon/etc
| does. Personally I'm not that keen on the "recommendations"
| most seem to generate but it's them analysing what you've
| interacted with on their platform and showing you things they
| think you might be interested in.
|
| Google controls the browser, search engine and ad network - all
| of which interact in some way with third party sites the user
| actually wanted to visit.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Trackers are not necessarily evil. But if you get a service in
| exchange for ads then yes, in this business transaction it's
| you who's being sold, you are the product.
|
| Whether to see it as good or bad is up to you (after all we
| sell ourselves e.g. to employers), but this observation is not
| "childish" or "woke", it's a matter of fact.
| ksynwa wrote:
| Is there a name for this line of argumentation? The guy is
| obsessing over how document is articulated and disregarding how
| Chrome's dominance and Google owning it empowers Google to be
| monopolistic by, for example, having disproportionate power to
| drive web standards, having Google as the default search engine
| in its already dominant browser, having popular Google owned
| services not play nice with competing browsers, etc., just
| because the document he is quoting does not spell it out.
|
| Side question: If hypothetically Google is forced to sell off
| Chrome, who would buy it?
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| I'm going to laugh if Elon buys it.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I just discovered that Google refuses to support any assistive
| tech on Workspaces unless the user is using Chrome:
| https://support.google.com/a/answer/33864
|
| They can't be forced to sell soon enough.
| snackernews wrote:
| Would selling change anything? There are a lot of sites and
| apps that only work in Chrome that Google didn't make.
| robin_reala wrote:
| This is monopolistic behaviour: it leverages a product
| (Workgroups) to force a minority group to switch to another
| product (Chrome). Most users of Workgroups don't have an
| option to change, because it's provided for them by their
| company.
| maxglute wrote:
| What else has Google sold and how did they end up? SketchUp
| dodged a bullet.
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| To be honest I think it does not matter.
|
| I wish they split search from Google. Either you are search
| business, or ad business.
| wruza wrote:
| I think that this must be done, but will have vanishingly small
| effect anyway. Browsers are software monsters and making one your
| lap dog through non-directly-financial means is a low-brainer if
| you're google.
|
| They will likely relax firefox live support afterwards to weaken
| its org structure, and new-chrome will seek contracts like
| search/etc and they will invent something like "feature requests
| with benefits" which aren't exactly illegal.
|
| The only true way is revolution against standards and grounding
| the cost of a browser to viable levels. It will be pain like 2->3
| or ESM, and likely much worse, but we made it through before.
|
| My only worry is that it will become even shittier to program
| for, because we lost sense of that 20 years ago.
| pjmlp wrote:
| There is no Web any longer, saying otherwise is wishful thinking.
|
| Everyone pushing for Chrome forks, and Electron garbage has
| effectively turned the Web into ChromeOS for all practical
| purposes.
|
| Firefox is no longer relevant, and Safari only resists thanks to
| Apple stance on iDevices.
| snackernews wrote:
| If Google sells are they also barred from making open source
| contributions to Chromium? From being the primary direction
| setter?
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| Imagine being such a bootlicker.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The author raises a good point, but tangentially:
|
| "if google doesn't pay for chrome, who will make it better? and
| who will make it secure"
|
| This is a valid concern.
|
| However, for those of us who remember the time before chrome, the
| web was dominated by IE, which kneecapped security and
| innovation.
|
| Its the same with mobile safari, a lack of competitors is bad for
| health.
|
| The issue is, google has embedded a shit ton of metrics gathering
| into chrome, which is hugely anti competitive.
| asadotzler wrote:
| They have also precluded Apple and Microsoft and Mozilla from
| improving their browsers in critical ways by spiking good
| initiatives and forcing the other browsers through sheer power
| of numbers to add garbage to the browser.
|
| DRM, wanna know who spearheaded that? and who fought against
| that-- and who won. and who all were then forced to go along
| with it. This isn't rocket science.
| ripped_britches wrote:
| So many flawed assumptions in this article
|
| How about Google making flutter? How is that not an awesome
| attempt to make mobile app development unified and easier for
| developers?
|
| Also, selling your car? No a more apt metaphor would be selling
| the lemonade squeezing equipment business that you also hold a
| monopoly in.
|
| I'm not arguing for the merits of forcing Google to sell chrome,
| but I think the articles points are off based either way.
| metalrain wrote:
| So what happens if Google sells Chrome? Who will buy it? Will
| they be as advertising/tracking heavy as Google is? Is there any
| other reason to own Chrome?
|
| Is it any better if Meta, Alibaba, Microsoft or any other big
| company with money to buy Chrome owned Chrome?
| youngtaff wrote:
| I actually think they should be made to divest YouTube and non
| search based ads businesses (what was DoubleClick etc.) along
| with GTM and GA
| fmajid wrote:
| The DOJ's proposed remedy is structural separation, which is
| really the only way to prevent malicious compliance. I'm actually
| surprised they went for it, given how thoroughly neutered
| American antitrust has become under assault from the noxious
| Chicago School.
| zitsarethecure wrote:
| IMO there is likely another agenda at play. For example,
| perhaps they will be told later that they could earn a reprieve
| if they "adjust" their search algorithm to silence critics and
| political enemies.
| Apreche wrote:
| Depends who it is sold to.
|
| If it goes to a terrible company like Oracle or Meta, then yeah,
| it will be bad.
|
| If it goes to say, the Apache Software Foundation, that could be
| fantastic.
| alangibson wrote:
| Google is emphatically not a web business. They are an
| advertising business. You should expect their priorities in
| product development to reflect that.
| npodbielski wrote:
| I started reading this article and was immediately hit how biased
| it seems, like in this meme 'leave multi-bilion dollar
| corporation alone'.
|
| Unfortunetelly we are in the times when any split of any of those
| multi-bilion dollar corp would be greatly benefiting humanity as
| a whole. How many people are taking their profits really?
| Hundreds? Thousands maybe?
|
| And that is it. What humanity have from existence of those? Like
| one thing?
|
| Some may say that we will have an AI, self driving cars or
| androids pretty soon. But ask your friends, or neighbours,
| ordinary people that work in non-tech jobs what they need. I am
| 100% sure that any those things above will be not their first
| need.
|
| Better heath care. Less work. More money. Less stress. Vacation
| to recuperate and relax. More time for hobbies. Just possibility
| to have relaxing walk in the woods without worry.
|
| Does any of those companies work on any projects that will help
| suffice any of those needs? Author of an article mentions 'good
| of the web' because probably his livelihood _is the web_.
|
| But regular person does not care if their banking application or
| Netflix app on TV dongle is written with latest CSS standards or
| with Jquery.
|
| Till that point in our history all big empires fell because of
| buearacracy and stagnation caused by millions of people trying to
| retain status quo. Momentum of conquest was not enough suply
| enoug resources to feed the empire. With the tech giants this may
| be first time in history when one entity will rule the entire
| human population caused by sheer momentum of technical
| progression it is making.
|
| Will this be a good thing? I am entirely sure it will not be.
| bloppe wrote:
| I'm not sure about having them "pretty soon", but what do you
| think AI, self driving cars and androids are for if not to
| alleviate people of work?
|
| Better health care is a tough one, I'll give you that.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| That's funny.
|
| As a disclaimer I work on AI research.
|
| Oh yeah. Definitely when we have discussions with companies
| to get funding we totally talk about how we're going to save
| the poor worker from all of these horrible jobs.
|
| There's one end goal. Get rid of people to increase profits
| for management and shareholders.
|
| People generally do not want to be "alleviated" of work, a
| great euphemism for being unemployed.
|
| There's far more funding in getting rid of people than
| increasing their productivity 2x.
| hackerbob wrote:
| If Google has to sell Chrome what stops another buyer from being
| even more profit maximizing then Google. What if a private equity
| firm like Silver Lake buys it?
|
| Some will say well the free market will do its thing and people
| will just switch. The problem is Chrome has a 60-70% market
| share. And like it or not anyone that is a professional developer
| will be at the mercy of this new buyer because like them or not
| they will own 60%+ browser market share overnight.
|
| Anyone who was old enough to remember what web development was in
| the 2000s and early 2010s remembers that was not a smooth or
| enjoyable transition going from IE to Firefox to Chrome. I
| remember those years it was the Dark Ages of desktop internet
| browsing.
| asadotzler wrote:
| Nothing, but at least they won't have the largest web
| properties and the most sprawling ad surveillance network to
| combine with that browser in ways that are evil and anti-
| competetive. Silver Lake won't knowingly ship a bug in Google
| Search or Gmail that breaks Firefox or Safari for a month,
| peeling off millions more of those users to Chrome which
| _magically_ works despite the other-browser breaking bug, then
| rinse and repeat once every 3-6 months for a decade until the
| competition has no users any more.
| yapyap wrote:
| Hard disagree, just look at the manifest v3 fuckery.
| tensility wrote:
| Solidly enforcing citizens' constitutional right to privacy seems
| a far better approach to addressing the problem of Google at its
| root cause.
| 7bit wrote:
| Has this man done ANY research before writing that article?
| Either he didn't, or he did an extremely poor job. I need to know
| which.
| almosthere wrote:
| We need legislation that bans all types of ads except for banner
| style. :) I don't care if the money motivation disappears - we
| don't need you assholes. I was with the web when it was powered
| by 56k modems. Greed-assholes can leave.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > we don't need you assholes
|
| You really need it. Food chain of your own paycheck likely rely
| on efficient ads at many points.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Who would even have the money, technical know how, and business
| acumen to buy, maintain, and make money with Chrome?
| bastawhiz wrote:
| You could make the same argument for the Linux kernel. Or
| Postgres, or Bitcoin Core, or CPython. So many companies have a
| vested interest in Chromium, v8, and Blink (especially by way
| of Electron) that it would be wild to think some sort of
| foundation couldn't be pulled together.
| johnea wrote:
| The article didn't really make a lot of sense to me.
|
| But I do agree: to edict the sale of chrome won't really
| accomplish much.
|
| This is reminiscent of the M$ anti-trust suite in the '90s. To
| edict for example, the creation of an "open standard" for word
| documents. Which led to the creation of .docx, which has been
| harder for 3rd parties to functionally incorporate than the
| original .doc format. When the corps performs minimally compliant
| reforms, with continuing antagonistic behavior, there seems to be
| no real technically specifiable solution (sorry, I didn't go look
| up some obscure word to mean the same thing). That litigation
| also had web browsers as a central element, yet nothing was
| accomplished in diversifying the operating system market, or the
| web browser market.
|
| To quote Cory Doctorow: capitalists hate capitalism
|
| And so does the US government. What they both love is the
| unbridled concentration of wealth.
|
| This is why similar comparisons could be made to the AT&T "break
| up", which was largely ineffective, with the clear oligopoly in
| telecommunications in existence today.
|
| I do agree with one aspect of the article: if goggle is a
| monopoly (it obviously is), then don't take tangential measures,
| break it up, completely.
|
| The semantic web, elimination of internet search via for-profit
| entities, widely applicable and enforced anti-surveillance and
| privacy laws. There are many approaches that could work. None of
| them will be applied, because they would lead to the very richest
| people making less money. The US will never implement any law
| with this consequence, period.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is reminiscent of the M$ anti-trust suite in the '90s.
| To edict for example, the creation of an "open standard" for
| word documents.
|
| That was not an outcome of the 1990 anti-trust suit, or any
| other anti-trust case against Microsoft.
| 93po wrote:
| Google being forced to sell would cost them billions of dollars.
| It makes sense that Google would spend at least tens of millions
| of dollars trying to convince the public at large that this is
| bad. I don't know the author but he's presumably a multi-
| millionaire and a bit entrenched in this space and has at least
| some connection with Google given his startup/company has
| partnered with them in the past. I'm not saying Chris is being
| dishonest, but he's probably not very unbiased in this. Combined
| with the many flaws in this writing, it doesn't seem very
| credible.
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