Next please make Apple open up all the secret integration between iOS and Watch so that Fitbit and others can more fairly compete.
I'm trying to imagine all the operational implications and this particular suggestion feels hasty.
I'm open to hearing different opinions.
The 13th Amendment to the US constitution makes the sale of people illegal.
Seriously though - how would this ever work? Google cannot negociate on behalf of their employees or promise they will work somewhere if Google stops employing them.
I'm pretty sure everyone who worked at Universal Studios still worked there after Comcast bought them. I don't recall any staff being included when Google sold Domains to Squarespace, but they very well could have been.
Hell, if you've ever temped in tech, sometimes you wake up and find out you work for a different agency. "Yesterday you worked at Magnit. Today you work at TechPro."
Or it could be something in between - the buyer offers you a new contract and the seller says you'll be laid off if you don't take it.
Of course they can. Read your employment contract. It almost certainly can be assigned.
My employment contract says nothing about me needing to work at any company that Google decides I should work for.
It probably also lets you quit with short notice.
How would the Chrome Company deal with this?
Would they do closed source development going forward, no more free lunch for other browsers or shells using Chrome as an engine?
How much of a hit does this mean for employees salaries? They are currently making Google money, and now they're about to make Microsoft money.
How many would just be flat out laid off due to a lack of revenue, at least in the short term? Would it be a 50% lay off? Into a job market that's already bad?
They will have more money than they know what to do with. But yes, going closed source does seem more likely.
Google also pays Apple for the same reason.
Now it would probably be paying the Chrome company as well.
This is what the folks at Google have all feared and why they started to run away from the company, spurring up 'Google' competitors (including Microsoft & OpenAI) all bringing it down.
Google will appeal and fight back and either way will survive. But we have given Sundar enough time to turn it around and it's time for him to leave and a wartime CEO to step up.
It's possible as Sataya Nadella did this for Microsoft. Google needs to do the same.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/20/technology/google-search-...
Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.
The obvious test for whether the browser is actually independent: what is the response to "let's add an ad-blocker by default".
OpenAI joined the chat...
I meant incompetence at the company governance level, not technical.
There's massive technical competence in non-profits.
This brilliance is just wasted by leaders who sacrifice business acumen over the mission.
[1] https://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/2008/09/google-chrome.html...
I happen to be poking around the Chromium codebase the last few days. The size of the codebase itself is at the same level as all of our company's code. Something as important and critical as GPU rendering is only a small part of the entire project. You also have v8, ChromeOS, ANGLE etc to worry about, all requiring experts in those areas. Not to mention things like Widevine and other proprietary technology surrounding Chrome.
I have a few hundred bucks that I'm willing to put into the pie, but based on the financials, it's probably going to go bankrupt pretty quick.
Stage 1: Buy Chrome from Google, with its 65% browser market share.
Stage 2: Tell Google you'll keep them as default search provider for $5 billion per year.
Stage 3: Profit
The DOJ is working to ban search deals too, you wouldn't receive a single penny. The DOJ is incomprehensibly incompetent compared to the EU DMA/DSA.
how it could exist without getting money for setting the default search engine is certainly a question though
The user base
2. make your website the default
3. make it easier to access your suite of web services
Eg. imagine instead of defaulting to google everything you typed in the search bar defaulted to chatgpt. Imagine open AI could buy that at a discount
Anti trust activities are not about any one act (such as routing browsers to your site), it's more about whether the fates choose your company to end up in the DOJs roulette wheel.
The issue is that Google's dominance of the search/ad business is distorting the browser market.
This is my take, anyways (I'm not a lawyer or American).
>2. make your website the default
>3. make it easier to access your suite of web services
Chrome is not a search engine. Chrome doesn't have a "suite of web services."
That's Alphabet/Google.
Chrome is just the browser.
Third-party sign in with Google [1].
[1] https://www.google.com/account/about/sign-in-with-google/
Do they? I would rather not have a "browser account" and just back up my own bookmarks like I was doing 20 years ago.
Presumably yes. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.
> and just back up my own bookmarks
Nothing wrong about that. But again.. most people don't find that to be very convenient (I'd actually bet money that that there are is magnitude or a few times more people using Safari/Chrome/etc. to sync their data automatically instead of doing it manually).
I think presuming people want this is like presuming they want 3rd party tracking cookies or that they want their online footprint profiled by the likes of data brokers and palantir and so on. Uninformed consent is not the same as support. Adult humans are mostly smart enough to change their preferences away from convenience when they understand it has bad consequences.
This is how it should work anyway.
widevine and all the other DRMy bits.
Or, better yet, deprecate and disable all the DRMy bits. (One can wish)
Microsoft is already using the Chromium and changing the default search engine to Bing and shipping it as Edge. What else is needed?
This DOJ looks like they just want to pad their resumes with some grandiose case which might be bad for everyone else.
So the market/consumers decided (due to whatever reasons) that they don't want to use Mozilla's browser. Lets reward them for that failure by giving them control over someone else's browser?
But say it was forced to sell for peanuts because any large company proposal was denied by antitrust review itself, a forced sale of a US company's business to a non-US company under ownership by Chinese investors would likely not be allowed go through in the current environment either. Maybe some other "or something" at this point but it feels a bit like asking for a wildcard play from a very methodical and slow process.
There are a few American companies that could pull it off though; Oracle comes to mind? I know that they don't really work in the browser space, but they have plenty of money, and they work in pretty much every other part of tech.
MS owns an ad network that brings in ~$10Bn a year. Much smaller than Google, but certainly nothing to ignore.
MS owns outlook/hotmail which is wildly popular.
Does Microsoft own “half the internet”? No but neither did Google. Microsoft does own Windows which is a (already sued) monopoly touch point similar to Android. They own a browser. They own a cloud platform that profits from a growing internet. They own plenty of consumer facing properties and should not be written off in monopoly or antitrust discussions.
Personally, I don’t know if I agree with the idea of spinning off Chrome (but I know Googlers so I may be biased), but I understand the appeal on paper.
"Google Analytics is used by 82.5% of all the websites whose traffic analysis tool we know." https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/ta-googleanalytics
Google's adware is all over nearly every site on the internet.
I don't even know what the real-world equivalent would be: maybe if you had to drive to the NYSE in an NYSE-provided vehicle (that could track your behavior to judge how much money you were likely to spend) in order to buy shares from the NYSE who sat on the other side of every trade in addition to running the market.
The important part is ending the egregious conflict of interest where an advertising behemoth controls access to the internet.
Ideal result is that Chrome ceases to exist and Chromium continues as an independent open source project controlled by a nonprofit. Even if Google is one of the contributors, so long as they don’t control the product they will exert a lot less control over the web and how people access it.
TLDR just be like Mozilla
Mozilla is rapidly deciding they want to be an advertising and AI company at the expense of their primary product.
So, tl;dr: be like Mozilla used to be, not like they are now.
You can give money to Mozilla Corporation by paying for Firefox Relay, Mozilla Monitor, Mozilla VPN, MDN Plus, or Pocket Premium.
Should Google be banned from forking an open source project and/or just developing any type of browser at all?
The only reason Google "controls" Chromium is that they are spending the most money/development time on it.
It seems like you have no familiarity with any of this. If so, happy to help educate you. If I'm wrong and you're just trolling, it was hard to tell.
Please don't.
Do we really want incompetent management going into ad business? Declining market share, while raising management salaries and firing developers?
Could happen under Trump...
Why not? Chrome's team isn't as prone to distracting itself as Mozilla. But there is still a lot of ancillary nonsense they get up to that wouldn't be necessary if it weren't in Google. Starting, for example, with not giving a fuck about how their product impacts ad sales.
This quickly adds up to billions of dollars. You have the option to massively downsize, likely sacrificing product quality; or to sell something very valuable to a business-mined buyer. And there's really nothing a browser vendor can sell that isn't bad news for the users.
About the best option would be for Chrome to be spun off and then for Google to keep paying them for being the default search engine.
Why? I'm arguing you can downsize the portfolio without sacrificing product quality for most users. That should let one get by with fewer engineers and/or ones in lower-cost areas.
Browsers are massive. I'm pretty sure the complexity is exceeding the complexity of the Linux kernel. You can pull off heroics with fewer people, but if you want to build a company that brings in revenue, has a security team and a privacy team... all of sudden, it's a pretty big enterprise.
Google is paying Apple $20 billion per year just for that so financing 1000 engineers (which is probably excessive, a few hundred + contributions from other companies using Chromium might be enough) shouldn't be too hard.
Seems like the DOJ is angling that Chrome should be spun off as an advertising platform of some kind.
Seems so, so much worse.
This is illustrates the extent and magnitude of the problem to fix the internet. That regulators failed to give enough oversight of the internet and to regulate its monopolistic players several decades ago when these problems first became obvious has meant that they are now almost insurmountable.
Ideally, Google would be forced to divest itself of Chrome and that Chrome would become an open source project a la Linux. Clearly, that's very unlikely to happen.
For those who'd argue that Chrome would have no funding to further develop I'd respond by saying that it already works well as a browser and from observation that Google is channeling most of Chrome's development funds into anti-features that are hostile to users.
As an open source project that level of funding would be no longer necessary and its future development could progress at a slower pace.
Chrome's upstream (Chromium) is already open source. If Google is forbidden from sponsoring Chromium's development, and that of its proprietary downstream distribution (Chrome) who's going to fund Chromium's development? Even if forced to divest, Google will always have an outsized sway on any open source browser due to the engineer-hours they can spend on contributions. If they are blocked from even that, then the whole exercise would be anti-consumer IMO.
Incidentally, I don't use Chrome, only Chromium-based and Firefox-based browsers.
I think there’s a very very substantial underlying infrastructure maintained and funded by google that would disappear. This isn’t a GitHub project where you can clone and make install.
Google's entire existence is predicated on the ad-model internet existing, and internet users have overwhelmingly voted for this model of internet over the last 30 years.
People hate ads, but they hate opening their wallet even more.
How is that even a question. It's worth billions. User data, ability to inject ads, ability to drive the future of web and web-based apps.
Currently it’s probably worth bilingual because Google owns it. I expect it to rapidly lose value should that change.
There is no potential buyers for Chrome that are serious and trustworthy. Chrome is not a profit center. Mozilla can't make money on Firefox and seems to be losing interest in the project, probably for the same reason. There's no reason to think that anyone would buy Chrome, keep it freely available and make money on the product.
Worst case is that some one will buy it, slap ads on it or turn it into a subscription service. Still I don't see that being enough to fund the Chromium/Blink development. While I do think the adding of features to the web could do with a slowdown, we're talking Internet Explorer 6 levels of stagnation if Chrome is sold of to the wrong entity.
There’s probably a number of talented people out there who would love to drive that truck.
ehm... jokes aside. I think a more reasonable way is to setup a foundation, composed of biggest players in tech, also companies like Google, Meta, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, Linux Foundation, Apple and EFF. The foundation should steer the further development of Chrome. In that way Chrome will be owned by community just like e.g. Linux Kernel or standards like C++ lang spec.
If Chrome would be bought by a private entity, that entity would probably start milking the current user base straight away. Expect adds in bookmarks bar, more address bar spyware (e.g. sending all phrases to the cloud) and paid extensions web store.
The most used and advanced browser that we have today must stay open source. It is more than a program, it is part of global internet infrastructure. We should not destroy it by a foolish political decision.
They were the first company I thought of.
Just reducing the direct influence from one company would already be beneficial for the market. And maybe Mozilla and other browser will get something out of it too.
Somehow I think that if they will decide to stay in their niche, Cloudflare might be a good fit for Chrome
Splitting the surveillance giants into different vertical markets makes no sense at all, and this particular division illustrates it well. We might have had a chance if government, two decades ago, had worked towards creating new specific types of regulations that reflected what competition in the digital realm actually requires - for example prohibiting this now widespread bundling of proprietary client software with hosted services, by mandating that hosted services must only be offered through published APIs. Instead we got some token opposition of "selling off" (checks notes) a web browser that's ultimately "open source".
* Android
* Search
* Advertising
* YouTube
Smash it into tiny pieces. Then the same for Apple and Facebook.
We've been stalled for technological progress for 15+ years. Tear down the giants holding us back.
Also once they see the mess separating Google would do, theyd leave apple in tact
Since Chrome at its core is the open source chromium browser engine the ability for your competition to leverage what you do is already there. The dynamic here is fundamentally different than many other monopolies of the past due to this fact. It must be asked are people gravitating toward Chrome because they feel there is no other viable option to offer a similar experience or is it because they choose that because it feels to them to be the best choice to make in a free market.
If the edge browser was so much better and much better privacy wise or the kiwi browser or any of the others the internet can move fairly quickly from one choice to another when that choice is better. For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case. I'm also guessing that most other users also haven't found anything "better"
If Chrome was not owned by an ad company, the owners of chrome would push for instead of against privacy protections (see: firefox, safari).
The browser monopoly, which Chrome sells at a loss, enables the ad company. This is the problem.
Chromium does not get features Chrome does not need from Google. So anything against ads does not get upstreamed to Chromium.
Chrome also is a major browser vendor, whereas kiwibrowser and opera are not, which means the standards boards listen to them more. If those seats were not owned by an ad company, standards would likely be different.
What exactly do things like WebUSB and Web Bluetooth contribute to Google’s ad business?
(Except if you mean that any new and initially exclusive feature bolsters Chrome’s dominance further, in which case I’d somewhat agree.)
Google keeps proposing specifications like Web USB, Web Bluetooth, Web MIDI, Web Serial, etc., and both Mozilla and Apple keep shooting them down on privacy and security grounds. Meanwhile Google ignores the problems and builds them into Chrome anyway, and guess what happens? They start getting used to fingerprint and track people.
Who knows, maybe it’s just a coincidence that all of these technologies that advertisers can use to fingerprint and track people keep making their way into the browser owned by one of the world’s largest ad companies.
HID, mass storage devices etc. are required to be filtered by implementations, and why would I grant a random news or social media site access to my MiniDisc player, Arduino board, Bluetooth thermometer/hygrometer etc. when it asks for it?
The prompts are pretty scary/disruptive, and I've never seen any website actually try (unlike for e.g. web push notifications, which are fairly private but can be super annoying).
Part of the problem is that a vast number of users neither understand nor care about these prompts. They just click to make them go away.
There’s a few long discussions on the unsuitability of these specifications in the Mozilla standards positions repo:
Web Bluetooth: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/95
Web USB: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/100
Web MIDI: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/58
Web Serial: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336
Here’s some Hacker News discussion about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063
As far as fingerprinting/tracking goes, I have never seen a random site prompt for these features, only apps where it makes sense.
What does this mean?
> Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome — the most widely used browser worldwide — because it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, said the people.
The monopoly is in ads. Google uses its control of Chrome to act uncompetitively in advertising.
With what funding? Chrome loses money. Edge loses money. Safari loses money. Firefox loses Google's money. Brave loses VC money.
Without some endless source of money, funding you for an ulterior motive, you can't compete with them. Which is why:
>For all the downsides that Chrome has I don't see anything that fits the term better for my use case.
The anti-competitive practices ensure there can't be effective competition.
I do realize you can still use uBlock, but my understanding is that updates will be slow rolled, correct? Doesn't this open the window to malicious people to serve me mal-ads?
No, you can't. You can use "uBlock origin lite" which is the manifest v3 version that doesn't work correctly.
Working out why they're doing this is left as an exercise to the reader.
A better name for it would have been something like "anonymous user tracking / data collection", but "privacy sandbox" is probably a good marketing term to fuzz what it's really doing. To a normal user it makes it sounds like Google is doing something good and protecting them, while it's really just "please opt in to our new more anonymized tracking technology while still allowing us to track you".
https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/private-advert...
But we should still make it harder on them.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-doj-cookies-privac...
Blocking third party cookies this way still leaves Google’s tools which people voluntarily install with access to data that now nobody else has access to.
It's because Chrome used to be shoved down everyone's throat up until few years ago. Once stable base of users was made (by force and deception) the market took momentum
To fight the Microsoft monopoly. And we are lucky that browsers (Firefox&Chrome&SafariMobile) won on the back of DOJ action against IE. We could all be using Windows applications and a few lucky rich have a Compaq iPaq phones: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compaq+ipaq&iar=images&iax=images
Without Chrome would we have got Safari on the iPhone? I also remember WAP (uggggh) pages before HTML. In the alternative universe DOJ is fighting their 10th lost cause against Microsoft (who keeps getting away with their evil ways).
I say this as someone who has been back on Firefox for years at this point.
And more stable
Safari and Messages etcetera link to within the closed Apple ecosystem - just like Windows. It can be between difficult to impossible to send an email or create a calendar item unless you use the iOS apps.
I'm definitely no Google fanboi but every answer being "Google are arseholes" feels dishonest.
The Chromium developer team absolutely kick arse and being open source is a true gift. Mozilla is badly failing to compete. Microsoft failed to compete with their first Edge rewrite, and now ironicalky MS "competes" using Chromium open source.
And why did Chromium have to split from WebKit? As an outsider it just looked like "because Apple don't want to play nice".
The story is always simplified to Google greedy arseholes. A typical response: you can never ever ever satisfy open source proponents... The stereotype that every open source user greedily wants more.
Like everybody else. If the user wants Chrome on iOS, they can install it and set it as their default browser. To link to other Google apps, Google can use Universal Links[0] to directly open Calendar, Sheets, etc or open the corresponding App Store page if they haven’t been installed yet.
Google forked WebKit because they wanted to take it in a direction that was fundamentally incompatible with the direction Apple wanted to go: Google wanted more core functionality (process management, etc) to be written as part of the browser (likely to serve as a moat) while Apple wanted all that to live within the engine itself so third party devs could take advantage of it without having to fork a whole browser (just drop WebKit into your app and go).
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/allowing-app...
Yes - working code that everybody uses now including a major competitor - Microsoft. Where's the alternative timeline with a WebKit browser on Windows? Oh, Apple killed v5.1.7 Safari on Windows in 2010 - their choice. Windows Safari had its issues but it was a great browser when it was released. Virtually nobody has chosen to base their browser on WebKit - and they choose not to for good reasons. Similarly why nobody forked Gecko - they didn't want that code.
> without having to fork a whole browser (just drop WebKit into your app and go).
But Apple failed at that goal - saying that WebKit works better as an engine is just not what happened in reality. WebKit was certainly a worse choice for open source engine on Windows back when Windows really mattered. Nobody used it.
> likely to serve as a moat
That is just making shit up. If Google wanted a moat then they could have built a moat. History has shown that the multiprocess design of Chromium was no moat. You might argue there are other moats - and that is what the DOJ seems to be arguing.
Link to the reasons the Chromium team wrote: https://www.chromium.org/blink/developer-faq/
Edit: I guess I would also like to link to a great response to "you must be the product": https://danfrank.ca/most-businesses-dont-work-that-way/ and we should always refer to Spolsky's "comoditize your complement" https://gwern.net/complement
The reason I believe that moving functionality out of the engine into the browser serves as a moat is because it gives Google more power to exert its will on Chromium forks.
If Blink were fully independent, third parties wouldn’t be beholden to forking Chrome; they could just drop Blink into their bespoke UI. Google’s decisions in Chrome would be entirely irrelevant to these third party devs. As things are now, forking Chrome is for practical purposes required if you want to use Blink, and diverging from mainline presents a risk — the more divergent forks become, the more effort and developers it takes to keep up with patches. Few organizations have the kind of manpower required to move at the Chrome team's pace while also maintaining their own large sets of patches.
This means that every decision in Chrome that forks disagree with adds more maintanence overhead, limiting the bulk of changes to those that are skin deep.
Google may not have intended this effect from the outset but it’s certainly realized the leverage it gives them in the time since.
Thanks - I never discovered that - sorry.
> There is nothing even vaguely difficult about sending an email [] without using the Apple apps.
While offline, I can attach a photo to an email with the Apple mail app and Q it to send later. However Gmail pauses or fails if slow connection. I've always assumed (perhaps unfairly) that was due to an iOS API issue - but perhaps the Gmail app is buggy?
> or creating a calendar item without using the Apple apps.
Not sure what I'm doing wrong then - I don't even have the Apple calendar app installed and somehow I hit problems.
I guess I default to blaming Apple - over the last year I have found my iPhone to be unreasonably buggy. Or I could be emanating anti-tech radiation.
This is most likely a Gmail issue. How apps behave on an unreliable connection is entirely up to the developer.
This is not really google vs apple. You are describing webmail vs old school mail client. One uploads the attachment immediately, the other does not.
So while I don't have the specific answer I think there is a much bigger question here of is it free market choice that is gravitated everyone here or is it monopolistic pressure that is squeezed out the competition. Microsoft is no small player in this space they're just the suckier player as they lost their crown with Internet explorer when they effectively owned the market too.
The difference here is that Microsoft's reputation is beyond ruined in this product category due to Internet Explorer.
If it's really anti-competitive practices then I would agree but if it's just market forces then we should not reward those who've already mismanage their ability and their dominant market position to lose out in such a short period of time.
There are likely several reasons for this but I think the two biggest ones are its differences in philosophy: first, that browsers should be just one utility among many on a desktop OS and not try to set itself apart and second, to actively combat the internet’s hostilities on behalf of the user.
Chrome will never do either. It tries to be a distinct brand and platform instead of meshing with your desktop nicely and it’s not going to do anything that will negatively impact Google’s many ad businesses.
That makes it so Safari has a huge advantage over Firefox which is only the default on Linux, which has a tiny Desktop/Mobile install base compared to iOS and MacOS.
What's the difference whether Chrome is using WebKit or Blink from the perspective of most users? How would they notice that and why would they care?
However, recently there was a healthy thread about the massive trackers found in mobile apps[1] which wouldn't be a problem with PWAs since they live in the same sandbox as the browser (meaning no exfiltrating all the shit) but yet can one-click launch from the normal app mechanisms and (AFAIK) can be the subject of Intent handlers just like apps
Maybe there's some 0.01% of ads that would get blocked in the Firefox version that aren't in Chrome. But I don't see any regular users switching because they're noticing ads not getting blocked now.
Also, if that actually led significant numbers of people to leave Chrome, isn't that where we'd see "Manifest V3.1" or whatever that allows matching against CNAMEs?
Chrome is pretty central to Google's strategy. If we assume that people who want to block ads will (by switching to Firefox when necessary), then it's in Google's interests for Chrome to support ad blocking. If they're not going to get ad revenue anyways, they'd still rather it be happening on Chrome.
Also see a recent comment by a member of the Chrome team on why Manifest V3 was for performance reasons, not to cripple adblocking (I don't know if it's true, but it seems worth considering): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41815861
But everything you listed (apart from integrating with Google's servers) can be done with Firefox.
Google Meet is particularly Firefox hostile with camera/audio support, but I'm not sure how common it actually is.
In what way does uBlock work better on Firefox? I don't see any ads in Chrome. Ad block is more important to me than any browse. I use Kiwi on Android instead of Chrome, and would switch immediately on desktop if I saw ads.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...
I bought Ozlo Sleep buds recently. Really cool hardware that does exactly what they say they do. However, the device I read with at night runs Android 11 which is too old for their app (requires Android 12). I can configure and update the sleep buds through a browser with WebUSB...but only with Chrome.
Microsoft wouldn't have a the kind of vertically integrated monopoly where they control both the internet properties and the browser used to access them.
1) Chrome is spun out as a standalone entity. Google would originally have full ownership but be forced to sell down over time.
2) Google buys the Chrome traffic at a fair price
3) Apple sells their traffic to someone else, potentially an AI search player (Meta??)
4) MSFT makes a new browser in response to Chrome going closed source
Why would they? They can just continue why Chromium/Edge. Presumably the new standalone entity be able to invest as much into Google or even MS.
Really? Another one after IE, Native Edge, and Chromium Edge? I dont think they really need another one.
Call me old fashioned but I think browsers will advance faster when we don't have a chromium monopoly outside of the apple ecosystem.
Governments are kinda stupid in these cases, but I think Google would be able to argue, if forced to sell, that neither of those two companies would improve the market situation.
Sell it to Opera, except they're Chinese now. Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, the co-founder of Opera and CEO of Vivaldi, should buy it, that would be a hilarious outcome.
Only search has high propensity to buy right there from the interaction. Third party and even meta don't have that.
And, apparently, these guys[0] think that's a good thing.
[0] https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Publish_...
If Chrome were to be separated from the Ad business, it would be beneficial for privacy.
Not saying it couldn't happen.
If the decision drags on into the new administration, then the answer is probably Elon Musk.
Chrome is funded by Google search.
Why would anyone buy it without Google search?
The answer to your question is simple - because you can get funded by Google to keep its search the default
Further more, why would Google pay money to Chrome's buyer if they can simply spin up another browser used open source Chromium (which Google maintains), and start marketing that?
The other things are also simple:
Saying things repeatedly doesn't make them universally true.
You don't need to buy anything, it can continue to be free, why did you make it up???
Google would pay because they can't make another leader overnight. Also they might be banned from doing so.
1. Google must sell Chrome
2. Google must continue to pay the new buyer tens of billions for the right to be default engine
3. Google is disallowed from making a browser ever again
4. Google must abandon Chromium, and their engineers should stop contributing to Chromium because of #3
I feel sorry for Google. The Biden administration is absolutely clueless on how tech works and the Trump administration will hate Google regardless.
So, no, of course you guessed wrong again in your 1-4
On the main topic: do you see the the ability to leave does not not an asset make?
I'd provide an argument if the question was more coherent.
But that's enough of your trolling for me, goodbye
On the main topic: do you see the the ability to leave does not not an asset make?
Yikes.
The monetization is up to the spinoff or acquirer to figure out.
Only monopoles like google can afford to burn so much cash. And that's a clear loss for the economy.
Ever read the Transformer paper? Or AlphaGo? You know that two of this year's nobel laureates are from Google? A few years ago the Turing award was won by a Googler?
Company forced to sell cannot simply set an absurd price to evade regulators, as that would be plainly acting in bad faith
Whoever’s going to pay for the acquisition and the shit ton of ongoing development costs will have to milk it a lot harder than Google (unless the buyer is something like Microsoft, but what’s the point then). A browser alone, especially the type people here champion, is a bad business.
The DOJ knows this is pointless. The DOJ knows where Google's profits come from.
The DOJ is pretending that thr public still thinks about the internet in terms of Microsoft/Internet Explorer bundling.
Shame on you DOJ for wasting everyone's time and money.
But they won't have to build it, they'll just buy a chunk of Google's team with the Chrome trademarks and the chromium infrastructure and then scale back attempts to outpace the few other engine makers by piling on features only useful to an advertising monopoly and instead focus on the core feature set while raking in big bucks selling search and ad distribution to all the search and ad companies not named Google (and perhaps some even from Google too.)
Also note that Mozilla has been doing this a long time, and yet they’re effectively irrelevant in market share now. So they’ve done a terrible job.
Browsers are a specialized technology and skill set that isn’t easily found, nor can you just throw any old SWE at the problem.
"Selling" off chrome is probably not even really possible in any reasonable business way.
I wish you understood why that is funny.
I just have no idea how we get from here to there. And let’s be real, with Trump re-elected the chance of the DOJ following through with this is very low.
If this comes true, I take full responsibility for causing it.
If people aren't choosing to use Firefox, Brave, Edge, etc. even though many of the competitors get the benefit of free Google engg labor on Chromium and are not connected to the so-called ad machine, maybe they don't want like the alternatives.
While you can sell access to the existing installations (control over the update url), if Google continues to invest development into a fork (and just drops the information about it on Google frontpage) then that new fork will become defacto Chrome.
EDIT: To clarify, the value of Chrome is not only the userbase, but also its placement in Google products and importantly, the development effort on a scale few can afford.
Simply because the other two dominant personal computer OS vendors, Microsoft and Apple, will be allowed to maintain their browsers. The less entrenched company and younger company is getting singled out?
If they had more time to build cases against the more entrenched Apple and MS, maybe I'd give them some benefit of the doubt. But we can't assume the next administration's antitrust policy will be consistent or even sensible.
Google sells Chrome, then immediately forks Chromium and starts a new “completely unrelated” browser with all the same features called “Magnesium”
https://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/how_antitrust...
this is it ... chromeOS is dead
Sure, there's a userbase, but you need a business model to take advantage of it in the first place because the benefit was the Telemetry (Google's) and Google's Ecosystem.
Also, the article specifically mentions Chrome, NOT Chromium (which again, is open), so what incentive would Google have to maintaining the project without their own version of it? Would they be bared from starting a new one? Would someone else take over Chromium? Who would have the resources to do such a thing other than say Microsoft who currently uses a Chromium browser?
Why not just go for the jugular and separate Adsense from the rest of Alphabet? It's the main driving force in all their dark patterns for all other platforms (Youtube, Android, Chrome, Search...)
Granted, that may not get them enough income at their current scale. They would definitely have to scale back hard for that.
Forcing Google to do that would just hurt other websites income, not Google.
Surely they wouldn't auto-default Chrome to Bing and try to become an ad company.
It's not like they're selling ads in the Start menu or anything...
So we'd end up with even less competition? As flawed as Edge is it still somewhat new/innovative/different features that Chrome doesn't because MS has to try and compete with Google.
I wonder similarly if they are only selling the brand and the existing installation base. I do not see what is stopping them from just creating a chrome clone called Manganese and continuing.
It would be an interesting experiment though to see if the google version will regain the same market share or if chrome will maintain its current market share under the new stewardship.
Google kills all their other projects often enough that I don't think they are contributing to many spaces anymore so giving the technical assets to other companies would be interesting.
Because this is not the case about display advertising, but the one about search engines and search advertising.
But also, if you think the display ads business is the jugular, I don't think you really understand their business. Have a look at the financials. The entire display ads business is <10% of their business, and shrinking in both absolute and relative terms.
Like, who exactly in the new administration is a fan of Google? The Republicans have complained for years about a perceived bias. Trump vowed during the campaign that he'd prosecute Google if he won re-election.
They'll absolutely continue driving that case, if nothing else to use as leverage to try to force Google into making pro-conservative algorithmic changes.
For example, Bud Light being the official drink of the NFL.
Or Coca-Cola being the exclusive drink that can be sold at the Olympics and many other sporting venues.
Chrome has a 67% market share. You also missed the entire point of defaults being important.
Bud lights and coca colas activity isn’t enough to suppress competition. Google’s is, and the U.S. justice system clearly thinks so.
I am always baffled with the widespread use of Chrome.
On all my machines (including work) I use Firefox. Even on Android I disabled Chrome, so that the feed will have to use Firefox.
Chrome is neither faster nor more convenient than Firefox, so it is a bit of a mystery to me - I guess on Android it comes as the default.
Regarding features, things I’d miss include PWA, some APIs like WebUSB that let me flash microcontrollers in the browser and I think WebGPU is still only in Firefox nightly.
Most of those things are very specific to what I do. Most people don’t need PWAs. Most people have no need for WebUSB and most applications run on WebGL so that’s mostly an issue for developers.
It’s not like Firefox is bad but I think Google just managed to capture the market and now the userbase doesn’t have a good reason to switch to Firefox (most people don’t think about privacy if it’s not in their face. Very few people will have no passcode on their phone. But even less people will think twice before uploading the images of stranger’s kids to Google Drive because they happened to be in the background when you made a photo of your own kids even though google has no reason to respect your privacy).
That said, this might be my favorite of the DOJ remedies I've heard because it would probably do the least harm.
The only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together. There are many other better options out there otherwise, and they are all free. Breaking out Chrome from Google will not in any way benefit me as a consumer.
> The agency and the states have settled on recommending that Google be required to license the results and data from its popular search engine
> They are also prepared to seek a requirement that Google share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear.
It sounds like the end goal of this is to enrich other companies, not customers. And if the DOJ has their way, they want to crack open Google's vault of customer data and propagate it across the internet.
Not only does this sound extremely bad for consumers, the DOJ is trying to completely change Google's business model and dictate how they are supposed to make money. Regardless of how you feel about Google, this seems like a far overreach from the DOJ on finding and fixing market manipulation.
This is the point. Google's products integrate with Chrome better than non-Google products. Including its ad platform.
2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?
It’s not, other than Google has a way larger market share (especially if you count Edge/Opera/Brave/etc.) and has been (ab)using that position to push web standards in a direction that favors their business and that other browser vendors have to follow to keep up.
If Safari had Chrome’s market share and was throwing their weight around like Google does and Microsoft did with IE, it’d be the same argument and I’d also personally support forcing them to divest it.
Really the main difference is that Apple has a captive audience on iOS and no incentives to improve so they don't do anything with it.
It is a magnitude higher.
So instead of "10x" substitute "by a large enough factor or margin to make a significant difference". That is totally true globally speaking. Locally, in the US, you could however argue that apple abuses it's iPhone market share to sabotage competition (e.g. streaming, webstandards,etc). That just means you should sue both not neither.
The easy fix is to make them slow down development, but I fail to see how that's a good thing.
For a more practical example, Linux is also developed mostly by paid employees, but they are from many different companies and thus improvements can't be weaponized as easily.
Or they could do what Brave, Vivaldi and others do and simply use Chromium as a base.
Don't you even see the problem?!
Even Microsoft dropped out from developing a web browser, it literally has a larger scope than a whole OS.
But sure, enjoy your Chrome OS proprietary "open" web.
Not sure if you remember all the "native" applets that actually were proprietary before Chrome came on the scene and made JS fast enough to kill them... ActiveX, Flash, Java... Those were the dark ages, because of Google the web is more open and better than ever...
https://www.w3.org/membership/list/
It's a lot more than just Google...
my ad-blockers ruin plenty of websites. never met a site that was broken due to FF itself.
Apple hasn't been found to have a monopoly like Google has [1].
[1] https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-search-engine-ve...
Look at the EU, levying multiple billion dollar fines against Apple. But in the US, Apple is free to abuse customers since their market share is a few % short of a monopoly...
So far the US has had little desire to regulate big tech in any significant manner.
For example, Chrome has replaced IE as the corporate browser, due to the integrations with Workspace accounts and Authentication mechanisms. In order to use the fingerID on my/employer's macbook pro, I have to give my employer root/sync access to Google Chrome.
That only tells me that governments can no longer leave technical aspects of the internet (standards/APIs, etc.) to market forces. There are many historical precedents for such action such as flight/aircraft, RF spectrum management, road and maritime regulations, health/food standards, etc. There's a myriad of them.
Regulations would enforce interoperability and uniformity. To say this would stifle innovation is nonsense, it would be like saying that road rules and maritime law have stifled the development of motor vehicles and shipbuilding.
It's not like supporting a completely different OS..
Strange, thought it was Edge, as it integrates with MS products much better. Must be an US thing then.
Although Edge is Chrome plus OS search & telemetry integration so there's extra over and above just browsing.
- [auto-profile-login]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26200298
- [gSignin]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277
- [gSync]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?hl=en
> Keep your info private with a passphrase With a passphrase, you can use Google's cloud to store and sync your Chrome data without letting Google read it.
Thank you appealing to reasonable expectations, but Google, as their own docs make clear, ties uses together quite aggressively^W conveniently.
2) Whatabout Apple and Safari? Apple doesn't offer an email service supported in part by scanning email content for ads.
Apple has gone to some lengths to engineer a system where they can credibly(-ish) claim to "protect your privacy when you browse the web in Safari," [Apple private relay].
- [Apple private relay]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602
Google re-engineers their browser to prevent ad-blockers from working.
You're unwittingly describing the textbook definition of anticompetitive practices only made possible by abusing a dominant position.
> 2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?
Safari does not represent >65% of all web traffic. Also, there's the major liability of having a single ad company controlling the browser that the average internet user uses to browse the web.
You can still use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (and in fact the UI will (or at least used to) tell you that).
It's only different in the share of the overall market they hold - and it's notable that the EU has already acted to break Apple's monopoly over specifically the iOS browser market.
But then again, I wonder if part of the reason is that they can't make the law too prescriptive because that would create other problems politically (especially if it ever got pointed towards European companies)...
There's really no rational reason for third-party cookies to still exist. The only reason they're still around is because an advertising company's browser has like 97% market share.
That would have been nice in 2014 but in 2024 the big ad industry is ready.
The only ones who will hurt the most are the ones without tie ins to authentication systems like Google auth or FB auth or apple ID etc.
Although I'm sure theres plenty of mega databases which don't need overt auths to ID a user. And contextual ads work just fine.
The order doesn't mandate that. It mandates google SELL the data it has collected on people to third parties.
There are also privacy focussed, ad blocking focussed alternatives trivially available on the market....and people are not choosing them.
Any company which buys Chrome (Microsoft?) will have just as strong an incentive as Google to track people and run ads.
FWIW, Chrome has a 66% market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
======
Disliking a company doesn't justify any arbitrary policy against that company
It already owns Edge. I would rather bet on Meta or Amazon.
There's no way Meta or Amazon will (/should) be allowed to buy chrome.
Doesn't really seem like much of a win for consumers though... it's just trading one personal data hungry megacorp for another.
I suppose it would help Meta greatly expand their ad business, to places far beyond FB/IG.
>This law aims to promote fair competition and prevent unfair business practices that could harm consumers. It prohibits certain actions that might restrict competition, like tying agreements, predatory pricing, and mergers that could lessen competition.
>The Antitrust Division enforces federal antitrust and competition laws. These laws prohibit anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the benefits of competition.
Both are aimed squarely at consumer benefit. Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers *where those things impact consumer benefit.*.
Mergers and actions against competitors are obviously allowed in the normal course of business.
Lots of people have other ideas about what kind of antitrust law they'd like to see, but such a law has not passed the US Congress.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you#:~:text=T....
“Taxpayers” is an extremely broad category as well, though you need an appetite for it to argue through that clause.
Though I think you can easily make a consumer argument for Chrome being unbundled (competition for Chromes default search engine pick)
Monetizing browsers requires either subscriptions or (further) enshittification of the web experience. Forcing /market/ competition into the space will not be great for consumers, IMO.
Perhaps some antitrust action would help with this.
So, it's plainly written - ations don't have to actually harm consumers, the fact they could do so is enough - and the key criteria is that they might restrict competition.
You paraphrased incorrectly. The correct paraphrasing would be, “Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers where those things deprive consumers of the benefits of competition.”
Competition is the heart, NOT consumer benefit.
Start with the Sherman act and then see that "what antitrust means" has had a long, changing history. By the way, the European understanding of antitrust still includes harm to competition as well, which often pops up on HN (e.g. how does Facebook's action harm consumers? That was not the question!).
Yet, you have lots of people in this thread claim that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
It would be nice to have a completely open source browser that can be built with a simple one liner from cargo. Having several thousands of eyes on the code daily to check for telemetry violations, privacy issues, security, and performance daily in mostly a single language, small, and well structured browser repo would be phenomenal compared to the disjoint jumbled messes we have today.
Most developers work with a Unix mindset (do one thing well, with focus on simple and easily managed code), which tyically means telemetry is _wildly_ out of line (offers no real benefit for the basics while adding huge complexity), so privacy and security are naturally far better. Lynx like TUI browsers are a nice idea, but unfortunately sometimes an image is desired to be manually viewed, or javascript is required. It would be wonderful if javascript were simply dropped from most websites, but we don't live in that world, so we're stuck with the next best thing (disabling all js until explicitly allowed by the user).
These are the types of things people in software devs typically care about, which there are many in HN.
If we're serious about this, separate search and ads. Force ads-Google to pay search-Google for data on the open market, and let other people pay for the same data, make it transparent, and let consumers see exactly what's happening.
While we're at it, separate Google's display ad network from its RTB facilities, basically carving DoubleClick back out again.
Then watch the stock tumble.
Isn't that what we want companies to do?
I have two frustrations with this kind of decision:
1. It's not clear to me that the judge has any interest in creating value. 2. It does feel a bit like being punished for success.
It's one thing when it's ill-gotten success, eg via coercive contracts (like Android has with play services), and we should aggressively deal with that sort of contract! However, what often seems to happen in these types of cases is the judge identifies a behavior they dislike and bans it without really considering more targeting / surgical treatments
Just like for example how a car company can make cars without being a monopoly. Not the best example, but we’re so used to a monopoly it’s tough to imagine what a competitive browser market would look like.
What business model do we expect chrome to have? The same DOJ doesn't like Google giving Apple money for traffic acquisition. Why would that be allowed for spun-out chrome?
Why do we expect the rest of the ecosystem to remain static? What do you think Google's next move is if they sell chrome?
Who do you expect to buy Chrome? Not Facebook. Who else could and would want to?
This is a solution that has been proposed without really considering any second order effects. Or if they were considered, it was done badly (it would be easy to prove me wrong: they could just write up what they expect to happen, and it would have to be even mildly believable)
I do not have a solution for the business case I have to admit, but it has 60%+ market share I believe, I’m sure someone will figure out something to monetize this.
It might end up with chrome becoming a worse browser though, that’s not an unlikely outcome at all. But Internet as a whole would be better for it in my view, if google‘s grip got loosened a bit…
Sure, this has gotten worse over time (if Reddit is closed, goog can pay for access), but they've been a reasonable steward of the web. Chrome is good. I use it intentionally. (Generally, my devices do not come with it installed and I choose to install it)
There are lots of reasonable pieces of anti competitive behavior that we should be punishing. This one will make the internet worse for consumers
I’m not saying they are the worse monopolists out there though, just that I find the logic of splitting chrome sound, in the interest of a more open internet.
Safari works fine?? It's web kit based and is better for both memory usage and battery life iiuc
I almost exclusively use it on my phone. I also use it on my laptop (I have chrome FF and safari but primary use safari and chrome because I prefer them)
This seems to be working as intended. Apple makes a great browser that runs great on their devices and is beautifully designed. Chrome works everywhere (that is important to Google!)
We have choices!
Safari is amazingly fast and energy efficient, but I really really like the total cookie protection feature of Firefox. It’s unique to Firefox and I wish it would become the standard.
> It does feel a bit like being punished for success.
Nobody is being punished. Punishment would be like "you're going to prison because the thing you started turned into a monopoly". That's not what is happening. It's more like "whoops, you created a monopoly, time to reset, but you get to keep everything you reaped so far".
In this case, the "customers" are other companies.
Antitrust markets can be defined broadly or narrowly. In this case, the market was "general web search advertising" (among others).
Who are the consumers in this market? People and companies that want their ads placed where (and to who) it matters.
I'm sure everyone will be thanking the DOJ for their poorer Web experience, knowing that their sacrifice is allowing other ad companies to earn their fair share.
I only use Chrome to interact with Google properties. I'd love to use Firefox for everything.
"These actions are unavailable using the Edit menus, but you can still use: Ctrl+C - for copy, Ctrl+X - for cut, Ctrl+V - for paste"
So for some reason some functions are just not present in other browsers. I can guarantee they could implement these functions if they wanted to.
Could it be due to Firefox not supporting the clipboard APIs until quite recently?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard_A...
For how long, though?
The trajectory for Firefox doesn’t look good at all (and it’s completely dependent on Google too).
Apple are doing their share of anticompetitive shenanigans with Safari on iOS, although the other way around.
Everything else is based on Chromium and therefore not contributing to any heterogeneity of implementations.
Servo is upcoming, but so far it is fantastic in comparison to any other browser out there.
I tend to focus on any software that does not require 12 teams of people 6 weeks to determine how to build a single binary because of the use of 20 different programming languages and mixing and matching of paradigms and solutions to subconponents. I very much appreciate simplicity and look for highly secure and private programs that highly discourage JavaScript from ever being run.
Servo is finally a breath of fresh air in that regard.
Can you elaborate on this? I am using Firefox since it was released, and it is getting better, not worse.
And that is exactly why Chrome should be broken up/out. It is unfair competition. And you say there are many other well working options out there but that is simply not true. Googles web applications work best on Chrome and often break on non Chrome browsers. Mostly because of changes to those web applications and not because of random browser bugs. This is how you win people over and complete your browser world domination.
Exactly, we saw this with MS's IE 2—3 decades ago. That governments didn't learn from this and let it repeat with Chrome is so damn annoying.
Two decades ago IE6 was already 3yo, Safari 1 was 1yo, and it would take 4 years for Chrome to drop[2].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
When you use decades, it is implied that the precision is rough, interpreting it as exactly 30 years ago is just bad faith.
OP is correct - in the timespan between 2 and 3 decades ago, MS / IE implemented its full range of anti-competitive practices and at least partially through them became even more dominant than Chrome is today.
I thought that one had been retroactively deemed a pretty silly decision
No points for guessing why as it's damn obvious.
Same people = same mistakes.
There’s multiple browsers, and people might choose Chrome because it has a better ecosystem around it. That means it’s a better product for those people.
It will benefit you in many ways, including: Better compatibility of Google with multiple browsers, and a browser which doesn't actively encourage you to use Google products and services.
Indirectly, a reduction in Google's centralized power will make life easier for many people and organizations which offer you services and products (yes, I realize that's a bit vague and needs some elaboration).
No, the way you do that is to pass a law that says Google can't intentionally make their websites work worse in other browsers. That's not what the dumb DOJ is doing.
Then end goal is fostering competitions in a market where there is basically none. So yes, it obviously benefits would be competitors. That's the point.
This is good reasoning. It is overreach for a regulatory body to do something that could impact the business model of a monopoly. Monopolies are bad, unless being a monopoly is part of that monopoly’s business model and an important part of how the monopoly makes money, in which case nothing should be done.
Can you expand on this?
What is the problem with government regulating, say, the ingredients that can be used in foods, forbidding addictive drugs from being added to them? Or selling drugs that are completely fake or outright dangerous?
This obsession with small governments (and basically, libertarianism) doesn't really stand on proper grounds.
Why can't the government work for you? Maybe it's an inherent bias given that I'm from Europe, but I think the stereotypical utopia about "big government" is much more true for huge corporations (which have absolutely no safety mechanisms built in to prevent a paper clip factory going overboard in the name of profit) compared to the slow-moving, democratic, slightly corrupt governments. Only one of these have accountability in a humane form, while the only metric for corporate is a single number.
Isn't that kind of the complaint though? Google, by controlling the platform and therefore sort of indirectly controlling the entire web, can make it artificially easier to push you to their products, and push you away from others.
If I wanted, for example, to make a competitor to Google Docs, I'm not just competing with Google Docs, I'm also competing with the integration of Google Docs with Chrome, meaning that Google Docs can be artificially better than my product. While I don't know if Google has actually done this, it would be pretty easy for them to actively gimp any Google Doc competitor in Chrome so that you're more likely to use their service instead.
For the same reason proprietary cables aren't generally a monopoly problem: Apple hasn't been declared a monopoly. Google has [1].
[1] https://apnews.com/article/google-search-antitrust-case-5911...
I'm not sure your right though.
Alternatively, the Trump admin forces the issue, Google sells off Chrome, and Musk buys it.
> The case was filed under the first Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden.
I'm struggling to see how Google is truly behaving monopolistic here. Chrome is available for compile, and is part of other browsers like edge. It's like suggesting linux has a monopoly because almost all web servers run on it.
I see some argument for google paying firefox to be the default search engine, but is that worse than firefox not existing at all?
In terms of search engines, I think there's just a lack of good competition. The search engines I'm aware of are:
Google: Just works. The only problem is you need to add "reddit" to most searches to get actual real, human-written non-seospam text, but I doubt that's unique to just google.
Bing: I'm greeted with an uncomfortably flashy layout shift, a page full of american news and some popup about AI. They also cover up and censor for the CCP.
Kagi: Their website is literally broken right now and I can't even see the pricing or other pages. I tried safari, chrome, firefox and edge, the hamburger menu doesn't open. Ultimately though, nobody except the kind of audience on HN is going to pay for it. If I told anyone else about a search engine that costs $16/month to use, I'm sure they'd think i'm joking, irregardless of how good it may be.
Yandex: Good for the reverse image searching, but otherwise probably not good to use.
Most of this article is ads, and it's paywalled so I can only read the first couple sentences, so if this is addressed in it I apologise.
What do you want out of an alternative though - Better search or free? Because you can't have both. Ad-based search being free is exactly the reason it is bad. You get what you pay for?
Chromium exists - literally as a baseline for several other corporations to build a browser.
If you wanted to do something meaningful - you must separate search and ads, everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
Right now a healthy web ecosystem is Google's existential hedge, against all the closed platforms of the world coming to devour the web and Google's business.
Getting rid of Google as a patron for the web would be one of the most harmful damaging & awful things the DOJ could do this world. Strongly opposed, what a godforsaken heinous crime against humanity to consider leaving no one funding the web at scale.
IF Google is a monopoly that abuses search and ads, IMO it would make much more sense to split it like this: - Google Search - Ads - Consumer facing everything, so Chrome, Android, Pixel devices, Nest, etc... all together - YouTube
This kind of split would prevent Google dominating search, abusing their dominance of ads while also enabling their device division to become a proper competitor to Apple and Samsung.
Simply splitting off Chrome is weird, kills Chrome for absolutely no reason, does nothing to help consumers and most importantly doesn't prevent Google from dominated search and ads which is the whole point of the suit in the first place...
It's also strange that the DOJ is letting Apple, MS and Meta off the hook when those businesses clearly engage in anti-competitive practices.
If he's smarter than I think, then expect him to go after Google Search (the alleged source of anti-conservative bias). But if he's as dumb as I think, expect him to support the Chrome breakup, even though it would not advance his goals and wouldn't be coherent antitrust policy, because it would let him claim a "win".
Sure, Google doesn’t always prioritize developments that don’t align with its ad monopoly. Still, Chrome remains a polished & widely used product.
As far as I can see, it would be best to establish a "Chromium Foundation," akin to the Linux Foundation, with emphasis on advancing web standards, unencumbered by corporate priorities.
That said, the more entrenched monopoly Google maintains lies in its "Search Experience," integrated with complementary products like Maps, YouTube, Android, and others.
I don't see any other viable alternative that serves the needs of most users across the board. Bing doesn’t come close, and while private search engines cater to power users, the average web user rarely switches search engines. For many, Google Search has become the de facto entry point to the internet and their view of the Web.
why not to give Youtube instead tho? (even if the revenue/monetization of every single channel would be heavily impacted)
Android and chrome are necessary for google to live, so Youtube or something else would be better
100% bet, Trump gonna be easy on corporations that kiss his butt.
The main problem is that, thanks to Chrome's massive market share, Google is in a position where they can effectively dictate the future of the Web as a platform.
We've already seen a few instances of this: Manifest v3 and FLoC/Privacy Sandbox, for example, were met with widespread opposition, but eventually they made their way into Chrome; WEI, on the other hand, was withdrawn due to backlash, but make no mistake, it will come back at some point.
The current state of Web standards can be summed up as: whatever Chrome does is the standard. The other browsers have to follow along, either because their modest market share doesn't afford them the luxury to be incompatible with Chrome, or because they're based on Chromium, so they hardly have a choice. The only exception is Apple, but let's be honest, they only do so because of their own business interests.
Ideally, Chrome/Chromium should be spun off as an independent non-profit foundation set up to act in the public interest. Obviously there would be trade-offs: a slower development cycle, new features taking longer to be shipped, etc. But in my opinion that's far preferrable to having Google continue to exert this level of control over the Web.
Unfortunately, the current administration has two months left in its term, so it's not going to happen.
What should be done is having strong privacy laws, requirements for encrypting user data, 100% transparency on how user data is sold (require all buyer and seller information to be public), prohibiting sale of user data in most cases, super fine control privacy and security settings.
Google already does a good job on some of these things, and they and other tech giants need to be fenced in by strong privacy and user rights laws.
Corporations are good at still making profits when they have to follow laws that are inconvenient to them.
If members of the US Congress were prohibited by law from stock trading, that might help clean up the logjams preventing better laws.
Push notifications in PWA was one of the big big ones. Apple blocked it for years and years.
https://www.bbspot.com/2000/05/04/linux-kernel-delayed-by-mi...
(yes, that's 24-year-old humor, sorry.)
Every "normie" knows about edge, it comes with your new Windows. no one uses it, people know quality when they see it and everyone prefers chrome. If there was a better browser we'd use it.
The default should definitely be: Companies should be incentivized to create great products.
If the incentives include, get 90% market share, that's great! No one would put it the amount of work Google has if the incentives were small
The problem is these sprawling companies who make so many interrelated services and can suppress competition in one area (browsers, e-mail, video-over-the-internet) due to extreme profits in another area (ads).
Google (the search engine) has a market share of over 85% worldwide. [0]
Google therefore controls what can be found on the Internet for 85% of search engine users. Recent updates, or Core Updates, have demonstrated how easy it is for Google to put businesses out of business by removing their visibility. [1]
It seems to me that this is a problem.
Ditto for Chrome, which has +60% market share [2]. A failed or deliberate update could make a website inaccessible to 60% of the population.
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [1] https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
Quote: The Supreme Court has defined (...) monopoly power as "the power to control prices or exclude competition".
[https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/competition-and-monopol...]
There are billions of Web browser users and, from a fast Google search, 1.1 billion Web sites, still a large number if count only the ones that still have traffic.
So, billions of listeners and many millions of talkers. Without good, stable, universal standards, we'd have the biggest "Tower of Babel" problem in history.
Hypothetical examples:
(1) Maybe Company A wants to change the standards so that Web sites will have to revise their code. Hmm!!! Many millions of Web site owners will say "no way". Company A just left the party.
(2) Web site B wants to change their Web site so that only certain Web browsers will be able to use that site. Hmm!!! Site B won't get much traffic. Even if that site is Google -- people will use Bing, etc.
(3) Maybe Google announces that as of July 1, 2025 the Google search engine Web site will work only with Google's latest Chrome Web browser. Hmm .... There are billions of people who will want a search engine that works with the old, standard Web browser they already have -- "billions of people"!! Sounds like, with Bing, Microsoft's stock just doubled! And July Google's searches per day fell by 50+%.
E.g., I still like Windows 7 Professional. Occasionally I run Microsoft's Web browser Edge, and when I do there is a message that Windows 7 won't get updates for Edge and I should convert to Windows 10/11. I don't really want an update to Edge -- what I have does work; I don't like it; occasionally I use it to check some issues. Hmm!!!!
Microsoft, one of your most important business assets is that old applications will still run on the latest versions of Windows. So, I run Kedit, Object Rexx, Firefox, VLC media player, PhotoDraw, Media Player, PhotoViewer, Sketchup, Office 20??, IBM's OSL (Optimization Subroutine Library and a certain Watcom Fortran compiler), LINPACK, etc., .NET 3??, and I do not want to lose use of any of those old programs.
(4) Some company tries to have all the Internet ads flowing through their software, servers, etc. Hmm!! Sites have a file ads.txt that usually shows one heck of a long list of Internet ad brokers. Not easy for one company to dominate the ad market or even just the Web site ad market.
* Google effectively holds a monopoly of the browser market (Chrome). Apple (Safari) only exists because of vendor lock-in, and Mozilla (Firefox) is a vassal state; all "other" browsers are Chrome.
* Google shares a duopoly of the mobile OS market with Apple (Android vs. iOS).
* Google holds a monopoly of the video streaming market (Youtube).
* Google holds a monopoly of the malvertising market (Adsense, Doubleclick, et al.).
* Google effectively holds a monopoly of the web search market (Google Search).
* Google holds the vast majority of the email market (Gmail).
* Google is the absolutely dominant player in the consumer cloud market (Google Drive).
* Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the cloud photo market (Google Photos vs. iCloud Photos).
* Google shares a duopoly with Microsoft in the consumer office software market (Google Docs vs. Office 365).
* Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the digital wallet market (Google Pay/Wallet vs. Apple Pay).
I can go on, but with this being said let me ask you: Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday?
A bit unrelated but News Corp and Random House should also end up on the chopping block.
Indeed, why not?
You mentioned some as 'monopolies'. Let's go through them:
Browsers: as far as I can tell, the other browsers that 'are Chrome' are Chromium at most. Eg Microsoft is surely capable of forking Chromium, if Google does anything untoward.
Video streaming: I hear TikTok and Instagram and Netflix etc are popular for streaming videos, too? People also seem to be getting a lot of videos via telegram channels? (I don't know the exact numbers here. So I can't say anything definite.)
Web search: Google used to be really dominant, but they are arguably on a downward trend without any government interference: more and more people are using the likes of ChatGPT to fill the same niche in their lives.
> Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday?
Presumably because there's a presumption of non-interference in the markets? The same reason the government doesn't just lock you and me up for no good reason, or confiscates our property.
And the combination thereof is an unholy abomination.
Namely the unholy trinity of Browser + Malvertising + Search. Nothing can compete against Google so long as that trinity stands, and it protects all the other mono/duopolies from incursions with impunity.
In any case, it's easy to switch to an alternative search engine. Users seems to like Google Search enough to stick with it.
Yes. The EU "dominant position" terminology is better because otherwise someone will do an "well achscually" about it being a 90% market position or whatever. In practical terms, you can assume "monopoly" is used as "too big" or "too dominant" not, "sole player". It's best to just accept it.
They're not, technically. They're hegemons, which doesn't make them much better. In fact, I'd argue the situation is worse.
Chrome predominantly owns the web at this point. There are few contenders, and making a new browser is a lot of work (see the Verso browser). Google has the arguably unearned luxury of dictating what APIs and protocols the nebulous "web" should use, can throw a bunch of money at adding them quickly, and leave competitors struggling to keep up, effectively buying chrome's guaranteed superiority.
"But there are standards committees!" Yes, but it really doesn't matter when Chrome either uses its own APIs privately on its sites[0] or just adds new APIs without any committee consideration for people to use and fall in love with and demand that other vendors add them (or something similar, such as proposing a great idea at the committee, it's accepted, and the other vendors lagging for months or even years - see WebGPU as an example).
One might think "it's just a browser". Yes, but browsers are -for better or for worse - the global defacto for sending and receiving almost all of our sensitive data. Even "desktop apps" like Whatsapp, Signal, and Bitwarden all either use or have used Chromium to display their contents (via Electron).
Much of the community has asserted Google owns the web at this point, and I tend to agree. It's very, very hard for smaller vendors to have much of a day these days without Google getting theirs, too.
Google can use their web dominance to push another service of their, or cripple a competitor's in a completely different domain.
As an example: Microsoft is building Edge on open source Chromium. Are you sure Microsoft is the little guy that needs protection? I'm fairly sure they have enough heft that they can fork Chromium and do their own thing, if Google does anything sinister.
But in any case, there's still Safari with a substantial market share, too.
> "But there are standards committees!" [...]
I agree with you here: commercial standards are more important than whatever a standards committee says.
I agree that Google has a large share in many markets. I just don't see the monopoly.
They were already doing their own thing and they couldn't keep up with Google. Although, starting from a Chromium fork, it could take longer for the code to diverge.
In any case, it's really easy to use alternative search engines, if you don't like what Google offers. They are dominant, because people are happy enough with what they are getting.
I should ask a doctor about that, it keeps happening.
The direction of the tide has been obvious for 15-20 years and AMD fumbled it, they earned and deserve where they now sit.
If the tech was comparable maybe we could entertain the idea but Nvidia was just so absurdly ahead in tooling than AMD that the better dev team won.
For sure the better dev team won there, but on the long run, especially once CUDA becomes the only way to do "professional real world work", I'd like the hardware company to sell the hardware and the software company to sell the software, to avoid a dominant market position that hurts consumers and the industry, which is forced to pay premiums to monopolists.
I'm a bigger fan of the approach that AMD had over the years, their software frameworks are open and hardware agnostic, which resulted in improvements for everyone and not just their customers (e.g. Vulkan which came from Mantle, games with FSR or TressFX run well on all hardware, those with DLSS or Hairworks don't) and enable competition that brings prices down.
It's about protecting the customer and the market. Yes, Nvidia deserves their success - of course - but the concentration isn't good for the market. Companies exist to provide services and products to customers and should enjoy no special treatment from us, no matter how successful.
Also, any measure should be not as disruptive as to bankrupt the company or even put it in second place in the market. It's just about leveling the playing field.
That doesn't mean this makes any sense.
How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive codebase? What profit incentive is there in maintaining Chrome without Google's ad business? What about ChromeOS? How are they going to handle the extensions store and ecosystem? How is this going to impact web standards?
There's just a lot of significant unknowns surrounding this.
No wonder nobody can compete, loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all.
The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun.
There are no browsers left except the artificial ecosystem of Safari. Firefox is not a blip on the radar.
So, everything is chrome and chrome is the web standard. Having a single private company in charge of what is and what is not web standards is a little bit scary, as, like the cat, they don’t really need to see and serve the needs of the environment. They are fed at home.
Mozilla Corporation revenue is about half a billion, most of it coming from Google and only 2% (from what I found) going to the foundation. The foundation gets most of its money from Google as well, but separately, and the foundation's revenue is about 10% of Mozilla Corporation's. So overall over 90% of Mozilla's budget goes to software development and to cost centers that are associated to Mozilla Corporation.
Software development was 220 out of a total 425 M$ of expenses. General and administrative coming in second at 108 M$.
I don't know exactly what comparable software companies invest, but assuming that the 220 is entirely SWE salaries this seems appropriate overhead to my mind.
Edit, all of this is 2022:
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...
With 750 employees for Mozilla Corp, that's unlikely. Even if 80% are developers that would be $350,000 salary on average.
There's lots of hidden costs, licenses, insurances, computers/servers, email hosting, document editing suites; that's before you get to the big stuff like office space and social contributions. -- then there's managers, HR etc;
Anyway, it's a reasonable rule of thumb. YMMV.
Somewhat ironically that metric is often used to cut-costs on the long term budget at an increased expense to hire tempts when a team is understaffed for whatever reason. (I’m not sure if “temp” is the correct word for when a team of nurses is staffed to only function within the law when nobody is on vacation/sick. It’s what Google translate gives me for “vikar”.)
It is the only way to build a browser and push adoption.
The problem is not the lack of direct revenues. It is the lack of marketing budget and control of platforms (Chrome dominates on Android for exactly the same reason Safari does on Apple).
Firefox is a perfectly good browser, but has lost its market share because Google has huge marketing advantage.
Is it because they would be focused on more efficient sources of food like mice instead?
Essentially, in the wild, cats would be forced to hunt based on hunger, so they'd have to pick and choose what to hunt.
Since they're never hungry, they do it based on fun, and they can "out-starve" their prey who may be hiding but have a higher need to eat and thus: leave their safety.
IME cats are hungry as soon as they have finished their food.
Safari came into the world on a similar timeline so this isn't true
> The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead without risk of starvation they are free to hunt all birds in the territory for fun.
Please could you help me understand.
- If they don't _need_ to hunt for food, the frequency of hunting birds should go down (even if they still do it for fun sometimes)
- If they don't need to take risks to get food, why would they then take those same risks now for the purpose of entertainment? (That cancels out any meaning of there no longer being any risk in killing birds, so why mention it at all?)
My understanding is that you are implying that cats not having to kill birds out of necessity leading to them now being able to do it for fun is a bad thing. Is that correct? And if so, I don't follow that logic because of my above two points.
- Instinctively, cats will hunt.
- Lack of care about food source will make cats outlast prey who have to leave safe areas to find food.
- Lack of care about food availability can (and has been proven to) cause cats to hunt more often, not less- as the "cost" of going for a hunt is basically zero; there's no consequences for failure and even success is met with satisfaction but no "cost".
Anyway,there's better info on this subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_predation_on_wildlife
The Wikipedia article was also a good read.
Ding ding ding. This is a classic monopolist strategy. It poisons the market for any other potential competitors by removing all possibility of profit from the category.
It's kind of eyebrow-raising that more people in this thread don't notice this. And instead just assume of COURSE browsers can't be funded except by a monopolist using it to shore up their surveillance business.
That's what happen when you let anomalies like this become the norm. Antitrust actions should have been taken against Google 15 years ago, and at that point it wouldn't have undermined the whole web because back then didn't yet control the entire web (but the trend was clear and that's why action should have been taken).
The web existed before Chrome, and will continue to exist afterward.
(The browser is different in that it doesn't need a separate download to acquire the code and makes partial code downloads easy. And from search to opening an app is a single click and very quick.)
Web - available in 1993, content authoring/hosting become available through blogger, wordpress, etc, in about 7-10 years. Authoring tools Frontpage and ColdFusion were available in 1995, Netscape Composer in 1997. In other words, one could build a basic website with a bare minimum of technical knowledge with the help of widely available tools within 5 years of the web becoming available (it would take many more years for the web to become pervasive).
Mobile - It has been 17 years since the iphone was launched, 19 years since Google acquired Android. To my knowledge, there are no easy ways for a non-technical person to author a basic app, let alone one that runs on both platforms.
Anyone who follows standards discourse would probably appreciate the prospect of this open source codebase having independent stewards much more than any fears over maintenance resources.
---
[1] https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2022/mozilla-fdn-202...
https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-poten...
Long road towards independence, but moving in the right direction at least.
And the default spot in the search bar is valuable to people outside of Google. Even if we assume that Google is overpaying, Mozilla could keep operating as is with another entity paying significantly less...
I agree, this is a problem, but there should be a trivial solution: Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day. This money should go into paying to maintain it.
Anything else is perpetuating the Trash Web as it's come to be.
The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is because Microsoft in the 90s was (belatedly) very worried about a world where Netscape held a lot of power, and realized making and giving away a slightly better browser would neutralize this upstart. Everything flowed from that one tactical decision by a couple of execs at MS.
I'd argue that a browser should be a part of the OS or be a paid product, but funding it with ad money from under the same corporate umbrella is a gross practice which promotes things like... Google nerfing adblocker plugins, and Google trying to kill cookies in favor of something only they control. (Although on that last one, by some miracle their hand was stayed and they backed down.)
Of course the DOJ can't ban the idea of a browser funded by ad money (and most are) but separating it from the other side of the business which should have zero say in how it's implemented, that's common sense to me.
unless you ban "Free" products, this is going to keep happening. People seems to think that just because something is "Free" it must therefore cost nothing to make. I mean, downloading Chrome takes 2 minutes max and seems trivial to me? Whats the problem?
People think Youtube should just allow them to watch videos without any ads nor paying any money. Clearly, the consumer is not rational.
I pay for all my games, all good services which ainuse. I try and donate to open source project wherever and when I can. But I couldnt care less about FAANG like companies. If they want us to be good to them, let them be good first.
Hell, its just the other day we were talking about Youtube showing ads to paying customers. I really dont care whether a company is big or small. When companies are bad, they just are. That is it. I dont lose sleep over using FreeTube for watching youtube videos for free. Paying will solve issues, yeah right!
Edit: Language
There were free as in beer browsers before IE (although many were free for non-commercial use only).
Chromium is a fork (well, a fork of a fork) of a FOSS browser specifically developed to be a FOSS browser for FOSS OSes (primarily Linux).
How do you do this for something that's a basic necessity at this point? There must be a free browser because so many services depend on their user having access to them through one, and browsers aren't in the category of product where you can provide users a basic browser without features and then selling them a better version. If it's not Chrome that's free, any other free issue would inevitably run into the same issue. If not bankrolled by a company, browsers would need to be government funded
The response is further in OP’s comment:
> I'd argue that a browser should be a part of the OS or be a paid product
I am getting Microsoft flashbacks now. There is no way that bundling browsers with OSes and making all the others paid will have negative side effects! Oh wait... The 90s just called, it is Netscape and they would like to have a stern word.
You mean like government funded food, housing, health care and other basic necessities?
Making browsers paid would create all sorts of problems for people with lower incomes if not properly considered. Note the last part of the sentence, thank you.
The argument that browsers somehow "need" to be free because they are a necessity makes little sense. Compare that phone or laptop the browser is running on is not provided free of charge either. A working automobile is arguably a necessity in large parts of the US and I don't see anyone handing out cars.
Of course this could also be done for browser but still would leave people vulnerable.
To get back to the US. So you think it is a good idea to add yet another expense to vulnerable incomes in a country where there is much less of a safety net?
Of course you can define "subsidies of some degree" to prove your point, but that doesn't change the fact that most people in the world generally have to pay for things, even necessities. The major exception being basic education which seems to be universally provided for free.
I have no idea what sort of a burden paying $5 for browser software would place on poor people, but I am sure that society would find a way, much like it does with other necessities. I also disagree that a browser financed by advertising is less of a burden to the vulnerable. The advertising revenue comes from the products they purchase.
- Various benefits and subsidies for various necessities like rental support, support for child care, etc.
And to make it extra clear, a lot of these need to be requested through digital portals these days as well.
$5 might not seem that much to you (I am assuming you are talking about a monthly subscription here), but I assure you it is a lot if you have to reconsider every single purchase to make sure you will make ends meet.
And I am fully aware that there are workable solutions to make it less impactful. I do however disagree with the simple sentiment of "just make browsers paid software and be done with it" without those considerations.
If getting people to pay for stuff they use were trivial then advertising wouldn't be as big as it is.
We also don't pay for open TV which is ad supported.
This isn't a single decision that someone madennn it's actually very natural.
We don't pay for most of the web, not only browsers. Indirect monetization is great because making a consumer open his/her wallet takes a lot, no matter the price.
Not knowing anyone who admits to having done something, doesn't mean that thing never happens.
It's easy to just say "well, a company should charge money for a browser", but a company is free to write their own browser and charge for it right now. Chromium though, is bound by its open-source license and its copyright is owned by thousands of different contributors.
Sure, it's BSD licensed, all future development could be done closed-source. Note that the name "Chromium" would need to stay with the open source side of the project, so it would be more like a closed fork than a re-licencing.
99% sure you could just keep using the name "Chrome", though, and stop releasing code into chromium instead.
(I'm, of course, speaking in the context of xp84's suggestion that the browser should cost money. It's a fine idea, but I don't see how it applies here.)
If you want your project to remain the currently dominant web browser, you better keep developing APIs people love, you better keep doing it faster than your competition can keep up with implementing them, and you better keep dominating the web standards committees.
Doing this from a position of a Chromium fork is orders of magnitude more difficult than just buying Chrome (and then keeping up pumping money into it at the rate Google has been doing).
Hey look, an incidental collision with my point!
I'd argue that Google specifically doesn't have nearly the obligation to keep doing these things as long as they are the ones who own Chrome, due to how many other things they can do to put their finger on the scales.
For instance, they could do things like:
- Show overwhelming amounts of ads in everyone's Gmail and say "Switch to Chrome for an ad-light experience."
- Or limit YouTube to 360p in non-Chrome browsers.
- Or only show the sponsored Google Search results (no organic) to non-Chrome browsers (let's be honest though, most non-nerds never click non-sponsored results anyway, and could scarcely find them even in the current Search UI).
- Or limit any new features on Google Workspace to Chrome browsers.
Google can maintain the Chrome near-monopoly using leverage from their other monopolies and near-monopolies. And they can use the Chrome near-monopoly to preserve and expand their marketshare of those other products. A very neat virtuous cycle (for Google). I don't think it promotes the health of free markets or consumer choice.
What a brain-dead idea. Having to pay for something does not affect the openness of a platform. You just create a de-facto tax that benefits no one at all.
As an aside, maybe this is part of the issue. We have been privileged to enjoy some of the most advanced and complex software created for free since basically their inception. Nobody every paid for a web browser.
But then look around the software industry and every software of even remotely similar complexity need to be paid for, or are a kept free due to a convergence of interest of people who can make money out of it (most notably: Linux).
Now, a web browser could be seen exactly the same way Linux is: Many, many, (many!) company makes ton of profit from people have access to a web browser, therefor, they should be fine with paying people to develop it. And in some way, considering that chromium and firefox are open-source, this is what could happen. But it does not really happen. Google is bankrolling both FF and Chromium, and they have basically total control over Chromium development. Who else is even giving remotely even money for 1 FTE for FF or Chromium ? Thing is, no company would do it for Chromium because it is seen as a Google product, so why pay them for something they will do in any case. Company could have financed Firefox, but now that it is the underdog (and that the Mozilla Foundation makes questionable decision), it doesn't seem like a very good investment.
This is in many way crazy to me that almost every tech company heavily really on people having free access to a web browser, yet nobody is really trying to finance one. But I do think it is a political issue, and that, maybe just maybe, separating Chromium from Google would actually give incentive to the rest of the industry to finance the development of a browser that is not directly own by neither of them. Again, some what just like Linux.
> Nobody every paid for a web browser.
Sure we did! Back in the day when the choices were Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera, many people -- me included -- paid for Opera. I continued to do so up to version 5 in 2004 or 2006, can't remember, when I noticed that Phoenix aka. Firebird aka. Firefox were good enough for me. Have been a Firefox (and derivatives) user ever since.
I think it cannot get much worse than it currently is, with one company dictating the web's future and raking in the money from that. So while there are significant unknowns, probably the result will be something at least a little bit better. I am a little worried about Chrome being only fake sold, to some company that is indirectly controlled by Google again.
Whatever decrease we see to our browsing experience will be worth the gains I expect to see from dealing a blow to a monopoly like Google.
keeping chrome alive isn't the goal, keeping the web not being at whims of a single company is.
Bad for consumers, how? Financially? How does that translate to the current situation? The average "consumer" here is paying $0.00 for Google, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Flights, Docs, Sheets, Chat, Meet, Books, Scholar, Shopping, YouTube, News, Groups, Voice... how are you going to argue that this "monopoly" (?) is bad for consumers? Do you imagine Microsoft or Apple would've created better search, email, news, etc., or that the mom & pop shop down the store would've done that?
I can think of so many other arguments you could use to suggest the current situation is bad, but monopolies are bad for consumers seems like a really tough argument to apply here.
Edit: You need to argue more than "the current situation is bad". Because that in itself does not imply "removing the 'monopoly' would necessarily lead to the better outcome in my imagination." Exhibit A is all the behemoths trying to compete against Google and still offering objectively worse products.
Chrome is pushing ManifestV3 with extreme prejudice and Youtube pushes ever more malvertising by the day. Why can Google do this?
Because there is no competition.
Malvertising? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malvertising
Also, have you missed how terrible e.g. Edge is for user privacy? It's trying hard as heck to compete, and even playing dirty to get there. What happened to competition making things better?
There are so many things I could say in response to this, and at the risk of getting off topic: is it your belief that if you put the average user (not you, but the average user) in front of a default install of all the major browsers and had them use the browsers for a while on completely unaffiliated websites, they would find Firefox better than the others based on its merits?
Even as a privacy-conscious techie (and former Firefox user) who has repeatedly tried to switch back, I've found Firefox to be objectively worse in general, regardless of the website.
Yes, malvertising. There is no such thing as non-malicious advertising in this day and age.
>Also, have you missed how terrible e.g. Edge is for user privacy?
I mean, Edge is Chrome.
The only saving grace is that it all goes to Microsoft instead of Google, which probably isn't as damaging because if you're using Edge you're probably using Windows already anyway.
Google has been the one pushing for getting rid of the v2 manifest for browsers extensions, which just so happens to seriously nerf ad blockers. Because so many browsers are forks of Chromium v2 will disappear from a majority of browsers. Meanwhile if you try to use a non-Chrome browser like Firefox a lot of websites are buggy and outright don't work. Opening images in issues broke in GitHub for firefox a year ago and they still haven't fixed it.
You are being *very* naive if you think that Google having this sort of monopolistic power over the web does not hurt consumers.
> You are being very naive if you think that Google having this sort of monopolistic power over the web does not hurt consumers.
No, I think you're being incredibly naive if you think the outcome you imagine would necessarily come to fruition without Google being a "monopoly" (however you define it). It didn't happen for Microsoft (Chrome is an angel compared to Edge), and nobody has managed to create comparable solutions for so many other products Google offers that have nothing to do with the browser or search.
Google was also caught giving special treatment to google-related domains in chrome, and had to revert the advantages around cookies that they gave to themselves.
It rather sounds like a great marketing opportunity for anyone trying to compete with Chrome, whether they keep the v2 or just implement ad-blocking themselves.
But in reality it just doesn't work out that way, the negatives from abusing their monopoly can be overshadowed by the power of the monopoly itself, for example Google promoting Chrome every time you you gmail, google search, or youtube. Or making their services not work well in non-Chrome browsers.
Or in the case of microsoft, their monopolistic behavior is overshadowed by the fact that too much important software only works on Windows. It's a tale as old as tech.
It was bad because it effectively ended innovation in the browser space for decades by pushing Netscape out of business (and discouraging others from entering that space).
Similarly, many consumers are unaware of alternative search engines, if Chrome pushes Google as the default. This kills innovation and puts more power in Google's hands as to what parts of the web get promoted.
Many a business owner can tell you that when Google changes their search ranking it can have an effect on the bottom line. This is also bad for consumers, as only bigger businesses which have the dough to pay for many Google ads get returned in a search.
I could see a similar argument being made by plantation owners in the past "we are lodging these guests from africa for FREE", they don't even have to PAY to live in the houses we offer them! There is only the small detail of the activities they will have to do in OUR fields, which will kill them off in 10-15 years, but that is another matter which should not be confused".
"Deals" of the kind google and facebook offer are not to the consumer's advantage. Insisting on not having a facebook account is akin to choosing not to use the paved asphalt roads the society makes available to you. I could "choose" not to have a facebook account, but it would lock me out of effectively both my friends group and my family's daily communication.
Seriously?
> "Deals" of the kind google and facebook offer are not to the consumer's advantage.
Again -- explain how "splitting up" the "monopoly" would realistically get you out of this situation? Pointing to something and saying it's bad doesn't imply your solution would solve the problem.
All products which lose money and are propped up by money firehoses from other parts of their dominant owners, are products that enjoy an unfair advantage in the market leaving less marketshare (often strikingly less) for anyone who might be better.
Is it your opinion that every product is monetizable, and should be if that would make it self-sufficient? Do you not feel some would just get killed entirely if they couldn't be subsidized through other products?
I feel that when a company is in a super dominant, dare I say monopoly position (Google Search is the most obvious example) with one of its product lines, it usually is destructive to free markets when they aim the money firehose at another, money-losing product. It does this by driving out competition against that second product, which results in less choice for consumers.
I don't think it's necessarily a problem when a company that isn't a monopoly subsidizes another product. I agree that's pretty normal.
> It does this by driving out competition against that second product
Again, we come back to my question: what about when that product would not make money on its own?
That is, in fact, what it means. "Free" (in the transaction sense) means you didn't pay money for it. Just because Krispy Kreme hopes you buy some donuts while you're in the store doesn't make the loss leader donut not free. Just because Google gets something other than money from the deal doesn't mean that the product isn't free.
I know you specified in the transaction sense but it's almost never a one-off interaction. The ecosystem and repeated interactions shape things.
Yes, enthusiastically yes. With the exception of maybe search, products like gmail, docs, and sheets are basic projects tossed out into the ecosystem for free to suck up all the oxygen for minimal dev cost. How is an upstart supposed to compete with a better mail/doc/spreadsheet app if the basic use case is covered for free by some loss leader funded from a different vertical?
Most of these classes of apps have been stagnant for decades.
Meta & TikTok decidedly don't have monopolies, yet still come under fierce scrutiny for their pervasive handling of consumer behaviour & data. What seems to be less evident to people is that Google's monopolies give them far greater reach in these areas than either of the other two. The majority of that reach is entirely invisible to most: I think if this negative impact was more visible it might drive home the downside of these particular monopolies.
What the DoJ should be pursuing is having Google divest YouTube. Now we're talking real change.
Splitting Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, etc up all at once and into multiple separate pieces each would be great for consumers. But that's a huge undertaking, and the bigger the changes required, the less likely they are to happen. Taking it one step at a time, with the first step being Chrome and Google search (two products that strongly push users of one to use the other) being split up, is better than no progress at all.
At the very least, the biggest force in killing adblockers (Google gradually gutting them in Chrome) will have fewer means to kill them in browsers. That's a win for consumers.
We (public) don't know that. Google never splits YouTube's costs out, only revenue, and the only reason I can think of is that it's losing money. IMO it's highly likely that YouTube costs a lot to run (just imagine the costs of storing zettabytes of videos, 99.9% of which will get watched less than 10 times ever, in 4K, and be ready to quickly stream them anywhere in the world) and Google lose money on it, but compensate with user data they use for their wider ad business. People complain about YouTube ads today, and how expensive Premium is; maybe a future independent YouTube can cut costs, shed some old/unwatched content, and become profitable.
Goggle would compete with other search engines for being the default search. So this would have knock on effects on search as well.
So I don't see how an independent Chrome would be much different.
Why? "Big companies bad" are one of those fundamental truthiness we are all supposed to believe for some reason but as a European I wish we had more US/Chinese-style megacorps who have dominant positions in some fields that allows them to innovate or provide free/cost-cutting products in other niches.
Maybe we should reconsider what we consider monopolies in the 21st century. I'm already using ChatGPT and Perplexity more than Google.
Capitalism without regulation can’t reach a stable equilibrium.
On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.
You never get to compare the products that never got to exist.
related, I think google supported firefox to have a "viable" competitor to chrome and prevent monopoly scrutiny.
Antichrist seems like a typo here. Perhaps you meant antitrust?
At first it was a free market success story, now it’s not
We all like to have a high minded ideal of some kind of wonderful fully independent for-the-good-of-society entity stewarding Chrome, but history has shown us that’s not what will happen.
The new Chrome company could stop contributing back to Chromium if they wanted, but it would mean they'd diverge from the other browsers backed by the OSS project which is one of their big advantages.
I'm not saying they wouldn't do that or it wouldn't work out, but it's not an obvious win.
Google could do this if they wanted very very easily but they wouldn’t make any money because as you know they sell advertising, for things they don’t provide.
The problem isn't the Browser it is the other services it has that makes it a monopoly.
Don't let, "Oh we sell off our loss leader so we are not a monopoly." fool you. It has YouTube, office solutions and even every other software under the sun.
Without Chrome being managed or maintain it becomes vulnerable exposing customers to viruses or attacks. It is a service because it stores passwords and manages bookmarks in a secure location for Google products. It is ingrained.
To me this sound like Edge wants to be king, but oh wait Edge is also part of a monopoly. So should not Microsoft experience this too?
Monopolistic practices are not necessarily monopolies, but rather require regulation to encourage fairness.
But to come back to the original point I was making, is that it’s really not akin to a bakery window. If I wanted to allow the metaphor to be further tortured I’d allow “Sears” or something.
But it’s more than that, as Google’s business model is largely parasitic to what users would be doing anyway.
They’re not considering this because of Chrome’s market share, but because of Google’s power in the search engine market. Indirectly killing Chrome may be acceptable if it makes the market for search engines more competitive.
Having said that, I don’t think it will matter much as long as Apple and, in particular (because they also have a search engine) Microsoft can ship browsers with preconfigured search engines with their OSes, but we will see.
[edit] the same way zero rating certain data traffic is still a net neutrality violation.
Look at the new entrant browsers out there: all of them are based on Chromium. The existence of Chrome as an OSS project enabled competition in practice - the cost of entry is orders of magnitude lower when you have a mature browser engine at your disposal.
We are talking about the most advertised, most installed most used program. Asking users to pay will do more good than harm
Seems like a good reason for a product to die.
The very same users believe that such companies aren't "bad" yet, but in some kind of intermediate stage between successful startup and evil MEGAcorp.
I don't know. I think it's the mix of nostalgia, and being too invested in their ecosystem/products. Fanboying, basically.
When Microsoft did it 25 years ago, it was bad. When Google does it now, it's not bad.
There are a lot of other browsers.
A lot of people use them.
Most people use one of them.
They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good.
But no.
There is a monopoly.
It is bad for you.
Only we the State can save you from it.
A lie repeated a thousand times becomes truth.
Would it make users smarter about their choice ? Probably not. But at least, they could smell there is an actual choice.
Monopolies tends to maintain users in ignorance. This way, although they can look elsewhere, they won't feel the urge to do so.
Users must be helped to make their own choice, not guided to make the monopoly's choice. And that must be done before the choice is made.
As long as there will be monoplies, this tension will exist and people like me will continue to explain that the State is the best way to push the balance in favor of those who don't get the importance of the choice.
The problem is not that there is a dominant player. The problem is the dominant player uses ignorance and subtle strategies to make sure users saty with it.
There is market dominance: Chrome has 65%, Safari has 18% but that’s because of iOS, and the few others have the rest. It’s false to say there are "a lot" of other browsers when nobody can enter the space anymore.
> They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good.
Most people don’t choose their browser, they just take whatever comes preinstalled. Even then, Google pushes you to use their browser every time you use their services: I know a lot of non-tech people who use Chrome on iOS not because they chose to, but because they got a pop-in on Google that told them to do so.
> It is bad for you.
The current situation is indeed bad for the consumer, even if it’s not a monopoly per se.
In fact, windows keeps on making it the default for many file extensions and still no one uses it
You have to have a much deeper understanding of tech to understand why they're bad, yet the examples of why they're good are obvious when a consumer stays within one ecosystem.
In UK you have to subscribe to so many channels just to watch football. Because apparently this would stop monopolies.
One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?". In my view it is, since you can't have a business or build connected hardware without an iOS app. And as for abusing that position for gaining market share, there are just too many examples starting with say, watches.
That sounds like “marginally more expensive”, and certainly not a monopoly-abusing position.
Google, in comparison, absolutely dominates the search and ad markets and sucks all oxygen out of them to keep any competition from springing up by controlling distribution and limiting choice. They e.g. paid vast amounts of money to Apple to make sure users don't get a free choice of search engine.
If you wanted to compare the Apple Watch with this it would mean that Apple would make exclusive deals with all stores (online and IRL) selling watches so that consumers would only see Apple watches everywhere they go and would need to look in the basement or on an obscure subpage to find any watches from a different manufacturer. Clearly that's not the case.
That said I'm not a fan of Apples walled garden either, I think this should be addressed (and in the EU it is being addressed). It's ridiculous to have this super powerful hardware and I can only run sanctioned apps on them instead of being able to install any kind of software I like.
I think worldwide numbers are skewing your data there, for antitrust only the US numbers matter and those are 59% for Apple on mobile.
Apple has exclusive control over a market (AppStore), which has almost 2 million different products (Apps), 820,000 suppliers (app publishers) and over 1.3 billion customers (active iPhone users) which conducts more trade ($1.1 trillion) than the entire GDP of Luxemburg.
If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.
But the choice isn't between Apple and not having a phone. Android exists, and as long as its a viable choice, Apple isn't a monopoly.
Not only is Apple a monopoly, they become one, and maintain it illegally.
US Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets[1]
The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market[2]
I really don't think you can give a rational explanation other than the courts are mentally troubled. They should have cracked down on both Epic cases or neither.
Anticompetitive behavior would be if they used their power to make it more difficult for people to buy Android phones e.g. by entering into exclusivity deals with cell service providers or electronics stores so that you could only find Apple products there (i.e. T-Mobile would only sell iPhones with their contracts and you wouldn't find any Android phones except in some small speciality shops out of town). That's what Google is doing in its markets among other things, i.e. pay tons of money to ensure all virtual store fronts are only stocked with Google products and everything else is hidden behind.
Apple does of course show anti-competitive behavior to a degree, i.e. they purchase the entire production capacity of the most advanced semiconductor fabs to have exclusivity and preserve their edge, but again there are still other players in that market and competition still seems possible. If you want to compare that to what Google is doing in the search and ad space it would translate to them locking up almost all semiconductor suppliers in exclusivity contracts for 10 years so that no other company could ever build any advanced chips in large numbers.
The relevant markets includes, but is not limited to that.
> Anticompetitive behavior would be if they used their power to make it more difficult for people to buy Android phones
Anti-competitive behaviour includes, but is not limited to that.
Either way regulators are taking action.
US Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets[1]
The European Commission has fined Apple over €1.8 billion for abusing its dominant position on the market[2]
Well, no. You can install games on your computer however you want.
If Steam was the only possible way to do so, then yeah I would say Valve had a monopoly.
(It's worth noting that Apple has already gotten in trouble for this - the EU has fined them billions and forced them to allow alternative app stores. Hopefully US regulators take inspiration and force them to do the same domestically.)
Epic tried to make this case already, but the judge ruled that the App Store is not a market that Apple can have a monopoly over.
> If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is.
This level of certainty is not warranted.
They are both markets in and of themselves, Apple themselves refer to it as a market place and it's a place where trade in particular goods occurs.
You can argue it shouldn't be a market subject to anti-trust laws but US and EU regulators would disagree.
> > If that's not a monopoly i don't know what is. > This level of certainty is not warranted.
Again, you can argue that it's a 'legal' monopoly, but 'legal' or 'illegal', it is a monopoly.
Monopolies are not illegal, but creating or maintaining a monopoly through anti-competitive means is and regulators in the US and EU are acting.
Steve Jobs wrote that "Apple would “force” developers to use its payment system to lock in both developers and users on its platform." https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
What is illegal are anti-competitive practices that a business might employ in an attempt to create or maintain a monopoly. A business that violates these laws might already be a monopoly, or it might not be one.
Buy different hardware then. You know these things when you buy the device. It isn't a secret. If the device doesn't meet your needs, there are alternatives that do. The fact that there are adequately substitutable products available other than iPhone destroys any concept of "monopoly." Saying Apple has a monopoly on iOS is ridiculous -- they _are_ iOS.
I opened my local configurator to buy a 13" M3 MacBook Air.
Memory, update from 16GB to 24GB -> +230€
SSD, update from 256GB to 2TB -> +920€
There's no world in which you can tell me Apple has a monopoly on laptops. C'mon.
So they’re a monopoly because you can only buy Apple laptops from them?
You may argue that the relevant market is for "computers" as a whole, however it can be argued that bundling hardware and software to charge high prices is a classic monopoly behavior nonetheless.
Saying Apple has a "macOS hardware" monopoly is like saying Dyson has a "Dyson motor monopoly"
Companies get to choose what their products are, full stop
Microsoft was forced to unbundle IE, so why would this not be possible?
But... funny you brought up Tesla, because Tesla also had this exact problem! Tesla had the supercharging network, which they own and manufacture. But superchargers aren't just a product, they're a platform.
Tesla had a monopoly on superchargers, until they pre-emptively opened up the network and open sourced the connector. If they hadn't, IMO it was extremely likely they would've been forced, eventually.
I also have some information about the wetness of water.
Clearly textbook price gouging from the monopolistic auto manufacturer, Aston Martin.
Granted, the appropriate response is to demand a Mac from this company, but it still highlights that a Mac isn't a luxury item the same way an Aston Martin is
Then you pay, because they basically force you to use their hardware, software, connectors, formats, billing services, etc every step of the way.
These things take a long time, though. I think the Apple one is just not as far along.
This makes web tracking and attribution impossible to anyone who is not Apple. Users might be happy with it but I think it is similar anti-competitive behaviour to what Google are doing.
Why is this considered a good move anyway? The obvious way to split google is to separate the buy side from the sell side of ads market
"We will lose the last open platform" - umm, have you heard about Mozilla Firefox? It works really well.
Yet I often forget which one I'm using until I look at the shape of the tabs.
Chrome and Chrome-related employees of Google worrying about their future compensation under a smaller company.
Don't worry, I'm sure that Chrome / Chromium will be picked up by several big players together, Microsoft is involved via Edge, ... I don't see much changing.
I think that government should limit its interference in the market as much as possible, but Chrome is just so monopoly-oriented from the get go, it's no wonder it will deservedly get split off.
Also, look from the bright side, multiple large players have it in their interest to keep Chrome / Chromium alive, so it will survive the death of Google and it's main ads business.
Chrome Web Store
ChromeOS
Chromebook (somewhat intertwined with Android)
Chromecast (discontinued, sort of; succeeded by Google TV Streamer)
Web.dev (not Chrome branded, but probably wouldn't exist if Google didn't start Chrome)
Also, I have to wonder, if breaking off Chrome makes sense to the DOJ, does breaking off Android also make sense? Is that the next piece that they will propose?
That's obviously not how it works
For example, Google doesn't have to change Chrome in any meaningful way to maintain (or even grow) it's market share. So, they don't. Browsers haven't changed much in a good decade and a half. That money is much better spent on marketing.
We're not in a perfect competition environment ; profits are not to 0. There is an incentive for innovation.
Monopolies stifle innovation just the same. Imagine having an "amazon basics" product as your competitor. Or competing with something that embeds well in a closed off ecosystem like Apple's or Google's when 90% of your target demographic will value that integration.
Innovation breeds from a middle ground
The goldilocks is closer to 0 than not
Competition drives prices down to the lowest sustainable point but not to zero. If one company drives prices below a sustainable (profitable) point that’s market failure because it starves the competition. It’s the thing Google did and the reason we have anti-trust law.
Google created a situation where they had no competition. Necessity being the mother of invention suggests that they innovate less in the absence of competition. Monopolies are poison to innovation.
In particular (as opposed to Google), Apple is giving us products where the user isn't just an entity that you try to get as much data from as you can.
Without Apple we'd be stuck with tiny initiative such as GrapheneOS on mobile, limited to a small subset of apps and phones.
With AI, Apple is also being privacy conscious, i think they are doing interesting work with their private cloud compute setup.
But does it mean that Apple and Google should get a free pass? Hell no!
WSL is my favourite Linux distro...well favourite is too strong. It's the one I hate the least.
Don't you get it? The whole initiative is a trojan horse.
You also give up your identity; you cannot make a Google account from a VPN without providing a non-voip mobile number. Privacy has value too.
Google should allow this free tier where your privacy is invaded and monetized or a paid tier where your privacy is intact but you pay money for that.
All the permissively licensed works posted on the Internet, especially those in the public domain, speaks otherwise.
It's up to you to decide whether you want to trade your legal rights to "free of monetary charge" services, but please don't paint all the other "free with no strings attached" things with the same brush.
this is absolutely illegal in europe... and probably in the US as well.
How does it work with, say, a SaaS company? Does every employee and contractor retain a perpetual license to each line of code they wrote? If that company ever looks to sell, what intellectual property does the company actually have?
Technically, there are two kinds of copyright - I'll translate loosely from the Czech law, I'm not sure about the exact English equivalent. There are "person" rights and "property" rights. You can never rescind your "person rights". But that only means that no one can claim you're not the original author. That's about it. You can transfer "property rights" via licensing as you wish. The license can be exclusive and you can give a right to further transfer or sublicense the work to the licensee.
Also, each work is copyrighted by default. You're not allowed to use something that you just found on the internet if you're not granted a license.
The world's biggest ad and surveillance company having control over the most widely used browser on the planet is a recipe for disaster. That's the only thing that matters in this discussion.
So your argument is that Bell Labs should have never happened since it's the result of a monopoly?
My argument is that Monopolies are trade offs. In a world without monopolies you have very little innovation in peace time. Monopolies are bad for consumers but the trade off is that they can afford to innovate and push the world forward. It's not as black and white as people like to think.
Getting rid of all monopolies and having a market in perfect competition will make Bell Labs impossible and all the innovation that came from there. A ballance is required. "There are no solutions only tradeoffs" - TS
Edit: Clarify my question about Bell Labs happening.
Yes! next question please. ;) No in all seriousness. that's not what they said.
> My argument is that Monopolies are trade offs. In a world without monopolies you have very little innovation in peace time. Monopolies are bad for consumers but the trade off is that they can afford to innovate and push the world forward. It's not as black and white as people like to think.
I find this argument funny, as it states: "not as black and white as people think" to then paint a black and white argument... Yes monopolies are not always bad. But one can't be serious and not acknowledge that for the most part they stifle innovation.
Also, I would say some of humanities best inventions and innovations where before monopolies. But hey, that's just my "black and white" view on history ;)
I fail to see how my argument was black and white when I say there's a trade off. Can you please tell me how my argument is black and white? Maybe we have different understanding of what a black and white argument means.
> So your argument is that Bell Labs should have never happened? It was a bad thing for humanity?
A person can appreciate the contributions of Bell Labs while still agreeing with the decision to ultimately have broken up the company.
This was my idea but answering 10 comments I left this short and indeed oversimplified version of my thoughts. I have since edited the comment to be clearer.
> The world's biggest ad and surveillance company having control over the most widely used browser on the planet is a recipe for disaster. That's the only thing that matters in this discussion.
And no, I don't buy that innovation can only happen through monopolies with a savior complex. That absurd amount of money those monopolies acquired through questionable means? It's going to lawyers, lobbyists, investors, and C-suites. It's being used to stifle innovation and uphold the status quo. Without the breakup of AT&T, the internet as we know it might not have even existed.
(I agree with your earlier sentiment that Google has a history of giving out more than other companies you listed.)
Fair enough :) That's one way to think about it ^^ If this would have been a debate I would agree. But I don't have time for a debate so I threw an idea out there and expected people to do their own research and figure out if my idea has any teeth or not.
I initially encountered the idea in Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Feel free to dismiss it or research it further. I do not have time to provide statistical evidence :)
So noise? Ideas like this are exceptionally cheap and you didn't present any convincing arguments for doing any research. This is like _the_ problem with online discussions.
But to answer your question.
1. Microsoft gets left alone - Really? You may want to ask the closest adult near you about this.
2. Amazon - The government has looked into Amazon multiple times. It’s hard to see where Amazon does anything to illegally use its monopoly (they don’t use their shopping advantage to cross sell AWS in any way, or Vice versa). Amazon is genuinely not a bad monopoly (they have pushed down prices), but they are a terrible monopsony (basically destroying retailers that are not Chinese knockoffs), but monopsony protection laws are weak to non-existent world wide.
3. Apple - Apple is not a monopoly in nearly anything, which makes antitrust action against them very difficult. The EU has better laws around this, which has allowed them to force Apple to do the right thing in many cases (USB-C, opening up the App Store, although Apple complies in the worst ways possible, even though compliance has often been beneficial for them, like in the case of USB-C connectivity), but US laws are far too rigid to be able to really do much with them, as long as they are not monopolies.
This doesn't belong on this site. Find another way to say it.
They could’ve simply referenced the case directly.
Isn't AWS directly sponsoring Amazon by essentially letting them run the biggest online retailer for free, which other retailers can't? And Amazon in itself is a terrible monopoly because it has unfair access to all user purchase data, while also selling their own amazon products on their platform.
It happened to something related to an internal game studio (???)
When I was there, our department’s use of the internal system for creating sandbox accounts (Isengard) was charged against our profit and loss.
If you are a big enough customer, you can get rates similar to what AWS charges Amazon.
Amazon literally uses the marketplace data to determine which products to make Amazon Basic versions of.
I think the better argument of "Google isn't getting targeted" is that literally all of those companies have been sued in the past (and will be in the future and probably currently have cases being worked against them).
So does BestBuy, Kroger, WalMart, drug manufacturers, and literally ever single other industry where there are generics, private brands, and copycat products/services of all types.
It can be train operators and rail, fiber owners and ISPs, insurance companies and pharma, or an App Store and apps, social media and ad delivery.
US antitrust law doesn’t cover this, but I believe in EU there’s stricter pro-competition enforcement (I don’t know enough to pinpoint the exact laws behind, but some markets really work here. Writing this post from a 10GBit symmetric residential line for €24/mo). At least you don’t see as much of this kind of false choice and nefarious market makers.
Sorry I can’t explain it better.
First, it's not possible because to do this you'd have to outlaw sales analytics. You'd have to ban companies from making decision on what to sell and what to price things at based on what is happening in the market. Even if you pass a law that says that, you'll never be able to prove a company did or didn't make a decision based on sales data. Imagine going to a grocery store in November in the USA and seeing 18,000 cases of sardines but no breadcrumbs or stuffing boxes because the ordering guy isn't allowed to know what is selling well and what is selling poorly. That's insanity.
Second, market efficiency. The cornerstone of the economics of trade is that goods should be produced by the most efficient producer and sold by the most efficient seller to a market where they get a good return. By blocking companies from doing this, you're saying pricing should be made blindly, and you can't change based on what other actors do, what the market does, what customer want, because that would be "unfair". In the 90s I was part of a small business that built and sold PCs. Dell's volume ability absolutely destroyed the small-business PC maker industry, including mine. That wasn't unfair, that's economics.
On topic, it seems like the US is focused on competitors ie preventing horizontal collusion and preferential agreements. At least after reading up a bit, that’s where EU is different, which considers vertical ones equally, such as supplier and distributors. In any case, that’s where antitrust seems to fall apart in practice – that depending on how you slice and dice the “market segments” you can craft a narrative where it’s impossible to prove even obvious perverse markets like health insurance - pharma.
I've got some bad news for you: 2001 was 23 years ago. It's possible to not just be a legal adult (18) but also old enough to drink (21) and still not have been born yet when that was going down.
Similar thing will happen now: none of these actions will be pursued nor enforced by the new government.
Slight aside on the original post:
* Microsoft did just fight off a huge government battle on Activision. I believe they lost a battle on Teams bundling. Last week the FTC announced they were looking into Azure.
* Apple, their store & mobile browser has been a topic of monopoly discussions for years.
* Amazon wasn't allowed to buy Roomba just this past year. They've had tons of inquires over the past decade.
Wondering if you or someone could explain this. I looked up monopsonies but still confused.
Monopolies are bad, and it's not because some players were not punished that others shouldn't be (they all should).
Maybe this sets a precedent, and they are all targeted.
One of the key issues. Google has not given me a phone OS. They have taken away my ability to chose a viable competitor, one that does not run on selling my data.
I never got over that one either: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delaye...
Regardless, if the shareholders receiving stock in the a spun off company, so is not like their investment disappears. No one (should) care about some personified "Google" as if a particular corporate structure that happened to exist was actually a human being.
Also, Youtube prints an absurd amount of money, it isn't like this is some sort of change that is happening just at the moment that it finally making some money.
Microsoft gave us (counting only OSS and things they effectively gave away):
1. Microsoft Basic, the first language of a large number of developers in the 35+ age group. This was effectively given away which is part of why it was so popular (it was a small, fixed-price fee instead of the per-unit licensing)
2. TypeScript
3. C# and the CLR
4. Visual Studio Code
5. Since 2010 they've made large contributions to Open Source.
Commercially they've also been strong competition to enterprise players like Oracle and IBM and of course have done a huge amount for gaming.
Apple are narcissists, they're all take take take. They do, however, provide very strong competition which pushes other players to improve.
Windows, Office (Excel), .NET / C#, Vs Code, Visual Studio, free GitHub and more?
But I do agree C#, VS Code and TypeScript are nice Microsoft OSS/Free gifts to the world.
Visual Studio has a free version.
Windows can be used for free (unactivated) if you're okay with the limitations.
Doing Apple's work for free.
Microsoft: VSCode, Typescript, ONNX/ONNXRuntime (TensorFlow is pretty much dead), Github, npm (they bought it but so did Google with Android - m$ still paying repo/packages hosting bill)
Also worth to mention Meta: Pytorch, LLama, React, React Native, Segment-Anything
“A computer on every desk and in every home”
There is no reason to expect the DOJ to pursue antitrust suits against all potentially relevant companies at the same time for analogous reasons. These are complex, labor-intensive cases that frequently play off precedent established by other earlier cases. The idea that Google is being "targeted," by implication unfairly so, is out of line with how complex antitrust law can be, and the simple fact that such cases are typically serialized rather than prosecuted in bulk.
If you want to go that path, then Apple also “gave” iPhones to humanity, as well as AirPods, iCloud, iTunes, and is a primary reason that mouse-based graphical interfaces exist. Microsoft “gave” humanity the largest home operating system, the dot net programming languages, Microsoft Office, Xbox, and more. Should we give them all a “get out of jail free” card for their good deeds?
The other 3 all have antitrust lawsuits currently going. Google’s is just the furthest along.
> What did Microsoft and Apple gave us
Chromium was in the wild for five years running on WebKit, and the Blink engine they use today is an evolution of that codebase, not a rewrite. Of course, Apple did not create WebKit from scratch, it was based on KHTML/KJS, but it was WebKit that Google Chrome was built on top of, not the previous project.
Google has two billion lines of code that determine the course of your daily life. It processes incredibly sensitive information, like every interaction you have with another person in a digital medium, and has a rootkit on basically every phone that collects "anonymous usage data" that is processed in a completely opaque manner and is subject to information "requests" from illiberal and sometimes even totalitarian governments, and a few open source contributions aren't going to change that.
Open source at Google is driven by engineers and contributors, not by executives or strategy. It's a fig leaf over one of the world's largest, most valuable, and well-guarded code bases that absolutely will not be made open.
Google has been proved to be a monopoly precisely BECAUSE it gives away so much. By entrenching themselves with free products that outcompete just about anyone, they get access to a massive firehose of data that they then monetize with no competition in sight
Long story short: Giving away free stuff to cripple competition who don't have scale is anti-competitive (see: Microsoft IE case)
And iPhone? Changed the world. [4] People have a hard time remembering pre-iPhone days. Samsung literally copied the iPhone. A judge in South Korea, in Samsung's home jurisdiction even ruled that Samsung copied iPhone. Android would still be a failed camera operating system if it were for iPhone leading the way.
* Kubernetes -- we lived just fine without it. * Chromium? Who cares. My life isn't any different with or without it. * Google Office? Aa cloud-based productivity suite? Nothing groundbreaking there, another competitor could have (and have) built the same thing. * Go programming language? Apple gave us Swift and Objective C -- languages that are used for software running on over a billion devices. Go is a niche language. If Go didn't exist, humanity wouldn't notice.
We can have a difference of opinion on the relative merit of these details, but the idea that Google gave the _most_ to humanity is absolute nonsense. Amazon for example, empowered many small sellers around the world -- giving them access to a logistics network that would be impossible for a small business to recreate. Instead of selling on Main Street, sellers now can sell to literally any street in the world. I'm not the biggest fan an Amazon, however that being said, their contribution to humanity is enormous, especially in logistics. It has also changed publishing forever in ways that provide a significant benefit to independent authors -- many of whom have made careers out of self-publishing because of Amazon.
I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but their contribution to humanity is undeniable. Excel is probably the most important piece of software ever written. I'm sure others can expand on Microsoft's contributions to humanity.
By the way, I'm not saying all of these companies are "good" or altruistic, I'm only rating them on "contribution to humanity."
[0] https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_16921... [1] https://multimediaman.blog/tag/apple-laserwriter/ [2] https://www.futureplatforms.com/blog/death-of-the-ipod-and-w... [3] https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/seven-ways-itunes... [4] https://www.vox.com/2017/6/26/15821652/iphone-apple-10-year-...
Most of them are tools for making money for Google. Some others are on similar level that others are contributing to open source and the world. I mean you get Microsoft Office for free too, and even with more services than Google. And, most of Googles contributions started out one or two decades ago, but are just now moving into more harmful directions. Which is a relevant point with Google. The company today, is not the same it was 10-15 years ago when they were still heavily gaining goodwill.
> Yet Google gets targeted while Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are left alone.
They are also getting targeted all the time. Microsoft had a long, deep anti-trust-process around two decades ago, which still sees some restriction imposed onto them. Apple and Amazon do see some targeting, but more outside the USA or by competitors, which means there is less demand for official influence on them, at the moment. Additionally, their specific influence is simply not as big and harmful as Google has it on some parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._...
It seems none of them bothered to read Kagi’s outstanding suggestions on the topic. [1]
Kagi’s argument is simple: Google should give public access to their Search Index so that any company can take advantage of the core machine directly, under some terms of agreement. Like an API.
Google's sole business is to make people look at content they don't want to look at (ads), and I find it deeply problematic that they not only control the operating system and software distribution platform for a large fraction of devices, but now also the browser and by extension the standards of what used to be the open web.
eg Just spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out why links in outlook open in edge even if browser is set to chrome. Microsoft chose to just ignore what browser you select (in their OS). It’s just so blatantly monopolistic behaviour
While I agree that monopolies era bad for consumers and that the position Chrome currently have is pretty much a monopoly I don't think this particular move would be good for consumers in the short and mid time-frame. Maybe in the long run this is the correct decision, but this will cause quite a lot of pain for quite a lot of time.
I think one of the ways this could backfire against the users is that removing Chrome from Google will create a 'power vacuum' in the web standards. Currently Chrome is this de facto standard, for better of for worse. Removing that can create a situation where we have a couple of competing standards.
In my opinion the problem with this kind of competition is that making browsers will become significantly harder, because now instead of just copying Chrome you will have to implement several standards. And this is why I expect the web experience to become significantly worse in the short term.
And you know what will happen when the web experience degrades? Every company will push their own app. And even more experiences/services will be locked behind an android/ios app with the excuse "we want to deliver a great experience to our users". And this is WAY worse for users than the monopoly Google has in the browser.
Maybe a better solution would be for the US government to create/adopt a web standard and create a rule that says "if you want to sell to the US government you need to be fully compliant with standard XYZ". This way you create a goal that everyone can work towards.
As far as I know this is how the government handle this situation in the medical sector, where they have HL7 to create the relevant standards. And I'm fully aware that this brings a lot of problems to the table. The first one is that definition of standards for the web will become a political topic, and this is never a good sign. However, I think this is really the only option if we want the web to be a place with fair competition.
“If Mehta accepts the proposals, they have the potential to reshape the online search market and the burgeoning AI industry. The case was filed under the first Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden. It marks the most aggressive effort to rein in a technology company since Washington unsuccessfully sought to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago.”
The thing is chrome isn’t as sticky or important as the ads marketplace. Google would be wise to let chrome go and hold on to the cash cow that is the ads marketplace where they make most of their money.
- When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.)
- They have special APIs and features that they get to use, and nobody else. Only because they own Chrome. [1]
- They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more advertising: see Manifest v3, FLoC.
- Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience.
This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android.
- AOSP (the open source counterpart of Android) is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP.
- Most third party launchers/stores struggle to implement features because they are only available for Google themselves.
- The signing in with Google thing from above continues here too: you sign in to Google system-wide.
In principle there is nothing wrong for example with a shared account for multiple products from the same company, many even prefer it. The problem only appears when this gets concentrated into too much power and can be leveraged in ways that distort the market and hurt consumers.
To me this option seems more practical. And we already have some precedence for this kind of solution.
For aviation we have entities like EASA issuing standards like ED-109 and for healthcare we have the HL7 organization issuing the HL7 standard. Another example in the healthcare industry is the DICOM standard created by the NEMA organization. This is not a new idea.
I'm not arguing this approach is without problems. But we are already doing this for some pretty important topics, and I don't see why we couldn't use the same strategy for an "open web standard" that all browsers have to implement.
Seems reasonable they’d push for a browser standard as well…. Even though we kind of have one.
But most people seem to think that just removing Chrome from Google would fix this issue. People seem to forget that Chrome isn't the only tool Google can use to steer the web standard in a particular way.
The Google crawler is probably an even more effective tool in shaping the web standard. "To be indexed by Google your page needs to comply with these requirements" puts A LOT of pressure in everyone working in the web.
This is why I think creating and enforcing a web standard is the only practical solution to this problem.
Wrong? Or at least where's the citation to back this up?
"UNIX Standard" presumably means POSIX which was a work of the IEEE, not a government body. If some government had something to do with making it happen, I'm not aware of that. At the time (1988) UNIX wasn't used much outside of academia and niche industries.
It didn’t sound like the US government made it, just pushed for it and probably contributed to the initial versions
And that's one aspect of one product. Company-wide list would be probably impressive in the worst way possible
I sign in browser-wide and I do takeouts regularly. I don't see my browsing data.
> It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP.
And back when they were part of AOSP I never saw these example apps in the wild. Every vendor ships their own phone app. Every single one.
There's some "hey we compile a extremely old and vulnerable version of AOSP"-style Android distributions, mainly advertised for builtin su/Magisk or "degoogle", which did use these example apps, though.
I agree with other critics, they are toxic.
I always enable every data collection option in my privacy page, because even if I don't they get the data anyway, so why bother?
I do see my entire Google Search history since 2006.
- the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world;
- the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc
- browsers aren't really a self funding product
- having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructing adblockers), is Not Good
Splitting it off solves the latter problem but immediately raises the question of how to pay for it. A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain Chrome?
A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.
No there was never a browser choice mandate in the US
You can surely do better than these examples. Nobody would be better for lack of action against IBM, and lack of serious action against microsoft continues to hurt us today. C'mon. Break these useless, unproductive fuckers up.
Their monopolistic behavior in Windows led to their current browser, mobile, cloud, and game console dominance.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/sep/07/microsoft...
I expect there will be some material constraints that emerge in what browser features they're actually allowed to ship as shipping without a browser also seems to be anti-consumer.
That's the difference.
If they're not competing well, then that's entirely their fault. Microsoft is not at any kind of disadvantage here.
The original comment was saying that Google is able to perform anti-competitively because they control the most popular browser.
The followup (which I responded to) is saying that the existence of Windows as the most popular OS, and Microsoft’s control over the default browser there, mitigates this anti-competitive potential.
The fact that Windows is not the most popular OS (and that, in fact, the most popular OS is controlled by Google) undermines that argument.
Linux is not the most popular OS in any context that includes doing searches with the thing, unless you include Android, but Android just uses Linux for the kernel mostly, and an OS is more than a kernel.
I’m not clear on what they meant by Linux. But if we use a definition of “Linux OS” that includes Android and is restricted to devices which people typically use to perform searches (aka consumer devices) (since that was the original topic), then Linux is mostly Android and it is a kind of pointless distinction to make.
If we want to use some definition of Linux that precludes Android, and covers all devices that use the Linux kernel, then we have a bunch of servers, streaming boxes, smart lightbulbs, whatever.
If we want to use a definition which is, like, what I think everyone means when they say Linux in the context of market share: GNU/Linux or BusyBox/other/Linux (I was hoping to avoid the GNU/Linux meme, but here we are), then that doesn’t have much market share.
It's actually more embedded in Windows than Google is in Android.
If you change your default engine in Android it changes across the OS.
In Windows, there are dialogs that say "search bing for" embedded into places like the right click menu when you have text highlighted that remain even after attempting to express a different search choice. Another example is the search bar in a new tab.
Not that I disagree with the overall point, but this is something the DOJ does not do. They would just look at the current laws and decide who to prosecute based on their interpretation of events.
I'm not sure this is fundamentally true, but regardless of whether it is or not, our political systems have followed an historical path of development such that it behooves political leaders to think like this, and encourage their followers to.
The best thing about open source is that cooperating on it is very easy.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al...
Sounds almost like Firefox.
Seems like it didn't work though.
If another entity buys Chrome, they’re only doing so based on the belief of increased future value/revenue from it. Google doesn’t want to sell it because they see more future value in it. If Chrome sucked, there’d be no antitrust case. So this is all a “you’ve done too good a job, now give it all up.”
I don’t use Chrome or Chromium based browsers because Safari works well for all of my use cases. But I want to see alternatives prosper. I don’t think needing Chrome gets anyone there.
Yeah... Because massive companies use them anti-competitively as a moat against other companies, and as a loss leader to enable massive data collection and vendor lock in.
"browsers aren't really a self funding product" is a symptom of dysfunction, not the inevitable conclusion of a fair market.
The synergistic effects are so strong that most users would prefer there to be The System, in which everything works together and there's no risk of incompatible choices. They don't necessarily care which system.
The market in things like, say, file explorers is tiny. There's a few shell replacements (free), Midnight Commander and clones, and maybe over in the corner someone making a few thousand dollars a year from an Explorer replacement.
There are probably plenty of such examples.
After the separation, Google won’t have an incentive to promote Chrome - so it’ll lose market share eventually, and Chrome won’t have an incentive to require things like Google accounts or use Google search by default - opening space for other companies to compete.
Specifically, this one:
> browsers aren't really a self funding product
What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?
The new Chrome company will struggle for a year or two then Apple will try to buy it but lose out after Oracle submits a higher bid.
We're in the worst timeline, so I could see that happening.
In all seriousness, I kind of wish that someone could build a sustained non profit like apache to take over chromium - if Google or Microsoft or others want to custom roll their own flavor fine, but Google being for-profit has been making decisions against the best for everyone browsing the web (such as the new plugin stuff around adblocks) (conflict of interest)
Maybe you could carve out a niche that's willing to pay, the same way C# did before dotnet core. But for a mass product the best-case scenario would be something similar to today's Opera.
However what it would do is open up the market to competition. Right now Google is spending a lot on Chrome development and Chrome advertisement. Opera and Edge both have given up on their own engines because they couldn't keep pace with Chrome development, and Firefox kept its engine but can't compete with Chrome's ad spend. If Chrome had to compete on a more even playing field there would be more room for diversity and competition. That could be a net positive, even if it makes Chrome worse.
So who would buy “Chrome” when they can get Chromium for free and fork it?
There was a "Gold" version they sold at retail for some time that had a WYSIWYG editor in it, until they made it standard as part of the Communicator suite.
What if the browser had a similar model? The manufacturer pays a certain 'browser development fee' into escrow, then on first boot, the copmuter shows a browser ballot, which gets set as the default, and the fee goes to the chosen browser developer? There's probably a bunch of problems with this approach, and, at least initially, wouldn't break the monoculture, but it might be a good starting point for how to fund browser development.
so, an utility.
create a (partially?) state-owned steward with a legislated mandate to develop the browser, self-funded via extra tax on digital goods and services.
I don’t think these engineers have the right incentives, and their interest is not aligned with mine. I don’t really care what they do to Chrome and their efforts benefit me only indirectly. I am also not convinced by the "best browser" thing, even using it every day on my office computer. So, meh. I don’t care too much either way but I won’t lose anything if Google has to spin it off.
Create a consortium or interested private entities but let's not give such an important piece of technology to governments where meritocracy is non-existent (also based on personal experiences).
Just wait until you have to justify IT expenditure to a for-profit corporation that isn't solely focused on technology.
Government screws things up because it's (by design) slow. Business screws things up because f*ck your needs, we need to get a check to a retiree who never even worked here.
Either your business is spending the economically optimal amount on IT or you're running at a net deficit disadvantage.
Note that the economically optimal amount may not be what people want or expect, which is why in general we rely on (mostly) free markets and not centralized human planning like the USSR.
The problem with this is that people think that the net deficit disadvantage matters.
It doesn't. Companies are now owned by shareholders that are set up to not have to care about that company within a fairly short period of time. They're not owned by people who have any pride in "winning" that market or an existential threat to their finances if things go poorly. Most publicly-traded shares of companies on stock exchanges are owned by pension and retirement funds, and the person at the head of that fund has exactly one job: make money for the members. If that means gutting the company they hold shares in like a fish, while simultaneously setting up to exit the position, that's what that means. The company's net deficit disadvantage is not the fund's net deficit disadvantage, and that's by design.
Now, that has massive economic consequences for the people who are at the company (and, y'know, actually do the work), and for customers who relied on the product or service, but the fund has made money. Whether its members spend it on anything that will create more economic value over time is another matter. For example, fast-rising homeowners insurance rates in places in the Southeastern US that have been popular with retirees over the last few decades would indicate that they aren't spending it wisely, but, hey.
But even then one party in the government wanted to defund PBS for being too liberal
But not everything must be for-profit. Free/Libre/Open Source Software is a prime example. Projects like GNU, Linux, GNOME, KDE, WebKitGTK, LibreOffice are sustainable for a long time.
Brave is into crypto scams and advertising scams, so I guess you're right there. Their revenue is also tiny.
The rest aren't what I'd call "real" browsers, most don't have the same level of functionality and compatibility as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge... Servo for example is literally just the rendering engine Firefox gave up on.
Konqueror and Epiphany are Webkit based, so presumably benefit from Apple's funding of Webkit.
Ladybird and Servo aren't real browsers yet, and have so far been funded by grants which doesn't seem to be long-term stable.
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-poten...
If 90% of the contributors were non-Google, then it would effectively be controlled by non-Google, because they could fork it and their fork would still get 90% of development.
See Terraform for a live example.
The only reason Google "controls" Chromium is because Google funds almost, but not quite, 100% of its development.
On a similar note, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from investing equal or greater amounts and forking Chromium (well, arguably they might already have with Edge). Except that they're benefiting from all of Google's investment, for free. Why turn down a massive developer investment from your competitor with no strings attached?
They are, see how both Safari and Firefox, the 2nd and 3rd most popular browsers, have brought in tens of billions of revenue per year. Safari is immensely profitable, Firefox too would be if Mozilla wouldn't be run in an absurdly poor manner.
> the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc
What is the huge value gain that e.g. Safari being integrated into MacOS is bringing me? Why couldn't webviews be backed by a browser of my choice?
The point was that developing Safari isn't what makes apple the money, it's setting Google as the default search engine of the default browser. So if Apple would stop maintaining safari tomorrow and would switch to preinstalling Firefox, they would still get the Google money (for setting Google as the default search engine of their Firefox installation). So Safari isn't profitable for Apple, as was claimed before.
Similar for Windows.
The exact way Safari itself is immensely profitable is under scruity in this exact DOJ case!
> As set forth in Section IV, the PFJ prohibits Google from offering Apple anything of value for any form of default, placement, or preinstallation distribution (including choice screens) related to general search or a search access point.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...
To what extent and I holding a stupid belief, and why? I think I might like to be talked out of this, if reasonable. Want to try?
You can use Firefox 3, programs don't rot.
In this specific case I'd be willing to bet that Firefox 3 probably doesn't handle current HTTPS/TLS standards and might not be able to browser the modern Internet at all (let alone display modern webpages, HTML5 video players, single-page web apps, WebRTC live calls, etc.)
Put it behind privoxy. All those SPA blogs exist solely due to google. No google - no SPA.
- Why would Google (which famously didn't index Javascript well, and liked clear super-optimized URLs) have contributed to the existence of single-page applications (which used to have terrible drawbacks for SEO)? Where's the incentive?
- And what is a SPA blog? That seems like such a far-fetched idea.
I don't do web dev, but from what I've heard, web devs also suffered trying to support multiple conflicting browsers, and Chrome's dominance actually makes life much easier.
This article accurately captures all tech monopolies, Apple included.
Even for the matter of the browser, Apple does not have the same push as Google does. Yes, Safari is the default browser on a phone. But outside of the mobile world, Safari is a rounding error.
No, but they're trying to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42185080
In order to dive any further, it would have to begin excavation.
The YouTube videos in higher bitrates (like 4K) is generally due to Firefox's ability to hardware accelerate things, and there's a bit of difference there, yes. But on Linux and macOS (moreso in sequoia), I see no extreme CPU use. Just testing it on Firefox 132.02 on Debian Testing with Radeon 550 with open drivers, While I see a spike in CPU load, there's definitely some GPU load is also being produced, pointing to at least some GPU acceleration.
On the other hand, Intel N100 with on board graphics can visibly struggle at 4K as far as I can tell. That one runs Firefox ESR though, I need to retest.
I don't use WASM based Google Workspace tools (docs, sheets, etc.) heavily, but they don't crash when we use it on other pepople's documents that we collaborate on.
Just look at Microsoft and their internet strategy, they chose the other route; push their internet browser(IE) down their massive distribution pipe called Windows and then introducing their search engine to this massive userbase. Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. And now Google essentially controls the Web in the more than half of the world.
No, Google was better, then they used Chrome as an extremely powerful moat to protect their situation. Google at first was like magic compared to the Altavista of the time.
No portal, no news, no header, no login, no advertise with us, no punching monkeys.
It was a refreshingly different take on the web at the time.
It’s not that Yandex is particularly better in any way, it just chooses to not filter the content one is looking for.
Headquarters: Moscow, Russia
Every argument I can think of is just worse with Google (spying, propaganda, censorship, security etc).
My neibhours never heard about the need to “denazify” us from Google’s home government.
War is much much worse than google. (Btw. Kagi is nice alternative, where you are the customer, not the product)
> what is the concern
Additional inteligence channel for their three letter agencies.
When somebody asks Yandex for data, decision making is done in such environment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable...
(such environment also suggests how accountable are the people requesting said data)
Plenty of people think Trump is "literally" Hitler... Maybe your neighbors don't think that, but plenty of people do.
Who's going to buy Chrome that also doesn't suffer from the same anti-trust problems? Who would want to buy Chrome? Who would want to fund Chrome?
What browser would Android ship? In one view I kind of like the idea that Google would have to shop around and 'buy' a browser for its OS (competition good!), but also that seems ridiculous and easy to fall right back into the same trap.
This is interesting question especially when companies are usually just use Chromium instead of creating new browser (not even making hard fork of Chromium).
Open source browsers are either bad and non-competitive, or they're Firefox and still get criticism for being in the pocket of Google.
[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/products/chrome-enterprise-p...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-30/enterpris...
Hmm. It's a good question, and I don't know the answer. I think there's a compelling argument that the problem is the scale of the harm. That is, even if the new owner has the same problems, the new owner won't also be the largest web company. So the problem still exists, yes, but becomes smaller. In particular having the #1 web browser strongly tied to the #1 web company has a lot of problematic dynamics that the #1 web browser being owned by the #25 web company doesn't. Maybe that company would be more open to forming beneficial relationships with the #2 and #3 web companies, for example.
[0] Unless if today you take Chromium and make your own browser, and it still has all the stuff in about logins and tracking.
Why would Google continue to fund Chromium development without Chrome?
If FF can get millions for its default search option, Chrome can easily command more and if Mozilla can afford to venture into other product areas with their budget, it doesn't sound impossible to have a self-sustained chrome development once you eliminate all the non-essential feature work that helps only Google.
Chrome is only the default on Pixel devices...
WRONG
Before a couple of weeks ago where a Google Play Services update changed the first set-up process, almost all global (non-CN market) devices forced Chrome as default: Xiaomi, OnePlus, Realme, Motorola, Oukitel and whatever other weird brands there are left in the Android world. AKA anything other than Samsung
I have yet to see evidence that Google uses browser sync data for advertising.
Go do something in chrome (look for cruises maybe), then delete the activity from myactivity.google.com, then wipe and reinstall chrome. You will see that you aren’t advertised based on that activity yet it’s still in your chrome history.
Then you probably don't get out much:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al...
Another major point highlighted by Fishkin and King relates to how Google may use Chrome data in its search rankings. Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, lists “chrome_trans_clicks” as informing which links from a domain appear below the main webpage in search results. Fishkin interprets it as meaning Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which to include in the sitelinks feature.”
It could be marked as chrome because Firefox doesn’t support it (without a default-off config value) and Safari technically implemented it at a later date than Chrome, with non-chromium Edge supporting it years after chrome.
This would indicate Google is using chrome to tell it when (via its support of the ping property) but wouldn’t indicate they are decrypting and analyzing chrome sync data.
This particular example is a bit misleading as those apps are still available; they're just unbundled from the system image: https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/unbundled_apps/re...
I don't think Google owning Chrome is really a factor here, but just a raw traffic question where FF Mobile has basically zero uptake. The experience they serve on FF Mobile is just the "we arent subscribed to validating that all of our shiniest JS works with this version of this browser".
The extension spoofs the user agent and arbitrary obscure features that only trigger on specific queries may be broken.
Google does do the effort of validating on other browsers where the traffic threshold is higher, including Firefox on Desktop. If they didn't own Chrome nor Firefox they still wouldn't really have incentive to spend more time supporting the tiny fraction of users.
- They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more hardware and software lockin to their platform: see unexportable passkeys
Can't say I've noticed that, but YouTube definitively feels like it's getting an especially slow-loading version on Firefox.
Here are more:
- (jumping off of your second point...) Play Services does more than just handle stuff you sign into as a user -- it's also a dependency for everything from push notifications to screen casting. This actively poses issues building competing platforms, in that in order to give developers a path to shipping in your ecosystem you have to provide functioning alternatives to all of those ancillary features. The compatibility issue also impacts user adoption, and then the user adoption and the barren marketplace impact each other... Even the combined resources of Amazon and Microsoft weren't enough to overcome this. (Facebook did, but I'm also not sure forking the OS into a separate VR platform is necessarily the same thing.)
- It also comes with integrity checking, so even if you do find a good third party image, and sideload Google packages, numerous things won't work unless you take part in a dumb arms race that ironically requires you to also root your device. By which I mean a feature that was originally built for banking applications is now used everywhere from streaming services (as an additional layer of DRM) to gacha games (for anti-cheat). This is actually the entire reason I dropped Pokemon Go, personally.
Obligatory link to the excellent Ars piece on this topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
Pedantically, their resources were never combined. They independently tried to compete, and they independently failed.
For what it's worth though, Amazon seems to be doing tidy business with entrypoint tablets and FireOS, which is a fork of Android, but still one they own.
Microsoft's exit of mobile was a short-sighted decision IMO. They have the entire office suite. They have windows and Windows has essentially become an app store model too.
I can easily imagine a future where Microsoft leaned in hard on Microsoft Mobile-exclusives for Word/Outlook/Excel/Teams/etc., bundled it with the rest of Office/Windows subscriptions, and had every office worker in the world carrying a windows phone for their work device.
I know, I know - everyone wanted only an iPhone. But it feels to me like Microsoft didn't try very hard.
I'm talking about Windows Subsystem for Android, which leveraged Amazon's app store.
Though honestly, their application strategy since Windows 8 has been fascinating. Watching them:
- ship Linux and Android app support
- replace their first-party browser with a Chrome derivative (and inherit all the PWA support of its parent)
- ship first-party support for .NET and PowerShell on other platforms
- ship React Native builds for Windows and macOS
...all suggest they're really trying not to get into the same hole as what happened with Metro, by giving you a lot of different ways to build something that can then run on modern versions of Windows -- regardless of whether that's even necessarily your goal.
What's the difference, and where can I find this extension?
The most recent example being Gemini now deeply integrated into Chrome. Had Gemini been a stand-alone product, it would have to fight for every user. Now billions of users have it at their fingertips.
Huh, I wonder if this is why I have perceived a drop in quality from Google Search. What a stupid move from them -- not only have I stopped using Google Search and now pay Kagi (yes I know money still flows from Kagi to Google but even still) and have been evangelizing Kagi as well as taking every opportunity to shit on Google Search.
Great job G, you made the product worse and made me a customer of someone else
That's OK: these days, the phone (voice calling) app is only useful for receiving calls from scammers and telemarketers. I wouldn't miss it.
I know the focus by the DOJ here seems to be more on search and less on the technical control that Google has over the web experience through implementation complexity, however I can only hope that by turning off the flow of free cash more "alternative" browsers are given some space to catch up. Things like manifest V3 show that Google is no stranger to tightening the leash if the innovation of web technologies impact their bottom line, I'd like to have a web where this type of control isn't possible.
They driven these numbers up to ensure that no one except them and their leashed pets could repeat it.
And here we are, you can have ten internet-enabled apps with texts, images and videos, basically the same functionality, but you can only copy nine of them.
You can’t even keep up with a simple fork.
Of course it can and it is done: Linux Foundation Europe runs Servo, GNOME Foundation runs WebKitGTK and Epiphany, Ladybird Browser Initiative runs Ladybird.
This is not an issue though is it?
Like all those magazine subscriptions make their money off ads. The idea that a business can't survive on its own is fine, no?
If it's a singular tech giant then that's a problem but if chrome had contracts with like a dozen+ companies then it sounds really sustainable.
This is not quite the same, if a single magazine starts to become more ads than decent content it is not insurmountable for another company to start a competitor. It's not ad income itself that is bad, it's that in the case of a web browser it is insurmountable for a company to start up a competitor from scratch. It wasn't always the case, but because google has dumped so much engineering in to chrome they've effectively pulled up the ladder behind them.
Sure, we can have the original web with text and the occasional embedded photo. But if you want what amounts to a full blown operating system, with a rock solid sandbox, plus an extremely performant virtual machine, that’s going to be a high bar.
I can't see anybody else. They are all monopolies and is gonna screw it up big time for us consumers.
This seems like a 'lets pretend to hurt google' thing.
No one complained about Chrome.
Exactly, who on Earth could build a competitor? You're describing the problem!
The ability to take stunning losses each year without worry, knowing that it pays dividends in the value to search, ensures competition can't flourish. So it is anti-competitive.
We need to make Google play by the rules so that we can set an example for the rest. Not recreate the same problem with another company so that we will have to do the same after a decade all over again.
Cos at that point, nothing will change for the consumers except the brand logo of the company that is doing crazy things.
If it can't stand on its own, it's not competing fairly.
Not to mention, Its impossible for Chrome to be a standalone business without being even more outrageous to consumers. And they will be even more evil against users. Mark my words.
If we do this like this, we are just replacing the logos of companies that own Chrome. Not the end result. We need to fix the root cause.
It's true that Google adds a lot of things to Chrome or their own benefit or even the potential detriment of others like Mozilla.
That being said, they also do a tremendous amount of work to push the state of the web forward and, most importantly, they release Chromium 100% free and open source. That's not to mention the other incredibly impactful free projects that have stemmed from it like V8/NodeJS, Electron, Puppeteer, Chrome Devtools, etc.
On the flip side, it's been argued that Google's control over web standards is too strong and they can essentially strong-arm other browser vendors into implementing whatever they want. It's also been argued that Google pushes too fast and makes it impossible for other vendors to keep up, leading people to use Chrome if they want the latest + greatest web features.
But when we look at the other browser vendors, I personally feel like Google seems like a much better alternative. Mozilla feels like a dried up husk of the company it apparently once was and Apple pushes a buggy, closed-source, locked-down browser which has been purposely held back from critical features in the past (I think they did that to try to keep users off web apps and keep them paying Apple huge app store fees).
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Anyway, I certainly have very mixed feelings on this one. My main hope is that this doesn't spell the beginning of the end for Chromium because I truly believe it's a piece of software that has provided immense public benefit.
Youtube needs to profitable somehow, and advertisers are the best way to do this. If Youtube couldn't generate the revenue through advertising, what else can they do?
It's insanely expensive to do video streaming, hence why Google invests a lot in the new compression formats today, WEBP, Brotli, AV1.
Do you just expect them to just do all of this for free?
Video streaming is extremely unprofitable sure, but in its care it tries to leverage its market share with Chrome browser to benefit. And you are not allowed to do that when your market share is big.
In what way
