DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly

Alphabet’s Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker, says the DOJ is pushing “a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.”

I'm honestly curious how this would "harm Americans".

This is the last antitrust win we'll get for years, isn't it?

I know Trump doesn't like Big Tech, but I doubt his admin will punish them meaningfully, but just rail about censorship.

Ehh just fight it for a month pay king trump some money and bam their golden.

If they're allowed to choose who they sell it to this won't change anything

Just...please for the love of whatever diety do Microsoft. Fucking sick of their shit recently with One Drive.

What company could actually afford to buy it other than Google, Meta, or Amazon? Unless they are forced to sell it at a loss, which is fine with me.

Don't fucking let Musk buy it though

They should force it to become a worker cooperative. It's the only solution that doesn't allow for corruption

People wondering what Chrome has to do with a search monopoly:

The obvious benefit is that they can default the user's search provider to Google.

But the more nefarious benefit is that, by controlling both the client and server, they can unilaterally decide the future of web standards. They don't have to advocate for proposals, gain consensus, and limit themselves to well-supported standards the way other companies do. They can just do it, gain the first-mover advantage, and force others to follow suit.

If they don't like HTTP/2, they can invent their own protocol and implement it for their search servers and Chrome. Suddenly, using Chrome with Google Search is way faster than using Chrome with Bing or using Firefox with Google Search. Even if Microsoft and Mozilla don't like the protocol, they now have to adopt it or fall behind.

This has happened. QUIC was deployed in 2012. Firefox gained support in 2021.

They're doing the same thing with Privacy Sandbox, and you can also look at browser feature compatibility tables to see how eager Google is to force their own interpretation of every not-yet-finalized web standard as the canonical interpretation.

Edit: Also, JPEG XL vs. WebP.

Step 1: Buy Chome

Step 2: End development

Step 3: ???

Step 4: Profit? Non-Profit Firefox?

sell it to Microsoft so they can finally have a web browser that people use

Sounds like they are preparing for this by killing off ChromeOS

https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-3500661/

There's literally so much else they should do, google docs, sheets, drive, phones, maps, earth, calendar, play store, translate, etc.
Good work, continue please.

Why is everyone acting like this is a thing that will happen? All they have to do is wait roughly 90 days and it'll all go away.

Hot take: they sell Chrome but keep Chromium.

Sell it to me, I'll buy it for one dollar.

ABOUT FUCKING TIME!

Who would buy this and how would they monetize it? In browser ads? A freemium paid model to remove the ads?

Is the DOJ the only working system in the US now?

Big doubt anything actually happens.

The Reuters article suggests prohibiting payments to Apple so that Chrome users on their hardware default to Google search. What about default settings to Firefox? Similar agreements finance a large portion of Mozilla's revenue.

They should force google to kick sundar, the harmful thing, what made all google software, and services shit since it is the ceo...

>sell Chrome to open search monopoly

>Chrome isn't a search engine but a web browser

Nah I rather they not get deeply vested in figuring out as revenue...

Trump will let this go through and behind the scenes force a deal where X buys Chrome

Like someone commented in another fediverse community: this court case can really only keep going for two more months, after that it's anyone's guess what will happen to the court: Alphabet could bribe someone in the DOJ to make the case disappear or (and this is the funny one) law and order could breakdown completely, rendering the case, the court and all the rest of society moot.

Admittedly, I don't know enough about monopolies and antitrust laws to know how much this matters. Can someone ELI5 this and give us more info?

Yeah, see all this stuff happening between now and inauguration day. See, we did something. Too little, too late. If there are ever free and fair elections in this country, and the Democrats return to power, they better get their fucking shit together. The dismantling of the Federal government will be almost impossible to reverse.

What the what?

"sell your browser, that'll limit your search monopoly"

. . . HAH?

What does Chrome have to do with search? 🤔

Hey look, some boomers who don't understand tech are trying to do a thing with a tech company. Sell Chrome? What a stupid idea.