8mo ago

Google must sell Chrome to end search monopoly, justice department argues in court filing

www.theguardian.com Google must sell Chrome to end search monopoly, justice department argues in court filing

Justice department urges court to force Google to share data with rivals as part of wide-ranging changes to end online giant’s monopoly on web searching

53 comments

to me, shaving Android off their business (suggested next step if this fails) would be way more impactful
- Why not both!
  
  good point, I guess one worry here is about the way in which this will affect Firefox (note Firefox here, not the Mozilla Fdn who have managed to Elon their own thing without help, seemingly)
- I'm worrying that whatever gets sold (Chrome or Android) might end up in the hands of someone even more scummy than Google.
  
  They would have to be more scummy and also at least similarly competent... Google can't innovate for crap, but they're pretty good at maintaining projects (when they don't randomly kill them off)
  If they stop work on chromium, or belief in the stewardship of chromium wanes, it'll fragment the ecosystem again. Which is sorely needed at this point - we need to get back to standards and away from centralized control
  Imagine Twitter/musk acquires them. Microsoft, Apple, and many other big companies directly or indirectly rely on a chain now controlled by a group known for mismanagement - are they going to wait and see, or are they going to diversify?
  
  Chrome, brought to you by Palantir, heck, what if Musk bought it?
  
  Is there any company more scummy than Google?
- I think Google is putting their eggs in one basket (Android) in preparation for them selling off chrome. They are already killing ChromeOS.
  https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-3500661/
  
  Android also becoming chrome OS in light of recent news of developing Android desktop mode and native Android compatibility with Linux apps, looks like they make hybrid OS that could do it all
- if Google was to sell Android that would be like a nuclear bomb dropping. I mean aside from budget Android phones people are going more and more to apple devices just because of the stability.

The next day, the Chrome division is sold off to a new company "Bloogle" and we're back to square dumb.
And before you think about applying for a job there, know that the new company is still demanding mandatory 5 days in the office

If Google does not set the price for 200 trillion USD and it can be really bought, then it will be probably M$ and they will change the search engine to Bing and integrate Coplilot or whatever the fuck it is called now into it.
- Pretty sure that would count as monopoly as well and the sale wouldn't be approved.
  
  And I was pretty sure them aquiring Activision Blizzard would count as monopolizing but here we are.

Why does it need to be sold to another big company, why can't they just break Google up so chrome becomes its own business?
- Chrome by itself would likely cost 100 billion dollars to sell, and then more to maintain, without any clear revenue except selling user data. Chrome is not a profitable product on its own. Not many companies can afford that.
  
  Well shucks, I guess it should just be made fully open source, the code distributed, and the business dissolved. Womp wooomp.
- Because chrome doesn't make any money
  
  Google could pay chrome billions just like they pay mozillla and apple..
  Besides it's not like that's really true anyway, chrome would make tons of money independently, it would just sell user data to Google or other parties instead of Google getting it for free. Chrome 'doesn't make any money' because it doesn't need to on paper, the same way a parking lot doesn't make any money for a grocery store, but if a third party owned the lot, the grocery store would just pay them to use it, or the individual people using the lot would.
  Chrome is the biggest browser and successfully collects data on billions of people, additionally, chrome development would absolutely be supported by all of the companies that build chromium based browsers like Microsoft, opera, brave, etc.

And what's to stop it from continuing to monopolize search engine usage just because it'll be owned by another company? Wouldn't whoever purchases it just continue operating it the same way, banking on the name recognition?
- MS is both wet and salivating right now.

The buyer of chrome could make bing the default search engine and re-enable whatever broke Ublock origin (the ad blocker)
They could also cripple gapps and gmail a bit. It would also be harder for google to unilaterally develop new web standards.
That would no doubt consternate a few at Google and knee cap them forcing web shit down our throats that only improves their ad business.

It will be another tech giant probably amazon or something.
Enshittification intensifies

I'll give them 5 bucks.

Good news, but does someone more knowleagable of these things know the likelihood of a Trump DOJ derailing this? I am hopefully as the original case was brought in 2017 under Trump, and his relationship with Big Tech is at best strained, but I truly don't know what to expect moving forward.
- according to Cory doctorow (pluralistic), trumps gouvernement will likely selectively enforce antitrust, so the Google case would go through, but cases against, say, tesla would be dropped.

Is there any company with the funds to buy this that would not become also a monopoly?

They should make it open source
- Well, it mostly already is. The Chromium project is essentially everything Chrome already has, except Chrome contains a few proprietary components (IIRC the tracking is proprietary)
- I wished I got a nickel every time someone argues Chrome should be open source, only to find out it always has been

I wonder what would happen to the 800 gorbillion Chromebooks if this sale happens

Google doesn't have to do shit. Ffs

53 comments