DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#41

Post by afavour » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 10:58 PM UTC

elmerfud wrote: post #16

So I understand trying to break up monopolistic companies to provide better competition in the market which is generally better for the consumer as a whole. This strategy of saying Chrome should be sold off seems strange to me because unlike other monopolies Google's monopoly with Chrome is fundamentally different. Since Chrome at its core is the open source chromium browser engine the ability for your competition to…

People gravitate towards Chrome in part because of Google’s heavy marketing of it. Whenever I sign into Gmail in Safari I get a pop up about a “better experience” awaiting me.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#42

Post by XorNot » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 10:59 PM UTC

elmerfud wrote: post #16

So I understand trying to break up monopolistic companies to provide better competition in the market which is generally better for the consumer as a whole. This strategy of saying Chrome should be sold off seems strange to me because unlike other monopolies Google's monopoly with Chrome is fundamentally different. Since Chrome at its core is the open source chromium browser engine the ability for your competition to…

I genuinely have no idea what "missing features" or incompatibilities keep people on Chrome compared to the benefits of uBlock just plain working better on Firefox.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#43

Post by mattigames » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

steego wrote: post #13

cerebra wrote: post #3

This...doesn't seem like a good idea.

Not to be dramatic, but from a security perspective, it feels a little like the scene in Ghost Busters where the EPA inspector orders a Con Ed worker to shut down the containment system. I'm trying to imagine all the operational implications and this particular suggestion feels hasty. I'm open to hearing different opinions.

Buying the browser should come with most of the engineers that actively work on it, or at least the ones with most experience working on it, maybe even give them a tiny part of the shares of whatever company gets to own it, or perhaps with a contract for at least for a couple of years (and then could return to Google or whatever), and if possible include some incentives to make them focus on working on security bugs over new features, which tbh I think there is just too many every year.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#44

Post by elmerfud » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #23

elmerfud wrote: post #16

So I understand trying to break up monopolistic companies to provide better competition in the market which is generally better for the consumer as a whole. This strategy of saying Chrome should be sold off seems strange to me because unlike other monopolies Google's monopoly with Chrome is fundamentally different. Since Chrome at its core is the open source chromium browser engine the ability for your competition to…

Isn’t Google refusing to make changes that boost online privacy because it’ll tank their ad revenue?

But I don't see how that equates to a monopoly. They certainly have the ability to direct their development of their product in the way that they want. Since the core foundation of their product is open and available to every other competing browser they could implement better privacy protections while still leveraging all of the other benefits of Chrome.

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"

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#45

Post by lofenfew » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

curiouscat321 wrote: post #5

Who would possibly buy Chrome? Letting any of the large tech companies purchase it (the only possible buyers) would just give someone else monopolistic power. Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.

firefox gets along fine

how it could exist without getting money for setting the default search engine is certainly a question though

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#46

Post by citizenpaul » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

A much better decision would have been to require them to fund some amount of the various open source competitors so there can be alternatives. Makes as much sense as forcing them to sell a thing that has no market.

"Selling" off chrome is probably not even really possible in any reasonable business way.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#47

Post by winterbloom » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

curiouscat321 wrote: post #5

Who would possibly buy Chrome? Letting any of the large tech companies purchase it (the only possible buyers) would just give someone else monopolistic power. Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.

How would they even sell it, chrome is based off of chromium. What is there to sell exactly? You can already fork chromium

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#48

Post by incognito124 » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:00 PM UTC

rvz wrote: post #4

That really does not come as a surprise and that was totally expected. [0] As soon as Chrome started to become more of a platform (for their extension API) with many other companies using it in their own browsers, it tells you why they had >90% of the search market for years. 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…

You really like making predictions about the future

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#49

Post by rahidz » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:02 PM UTC

curiouscat321 wrote: post #5

Who would possibly buy Chrome? Letting any of the large tech companies purchase it (the only possible buyers) would just give someone else monopolistic power. Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.

A consortium of various tech companies, plus non-profits? Instead of it being in one corporate hand. One can dream of the EFF and Mozilla plus a bunch of other stakeholders owning it.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#50

Post by afavour » Mon, Nov 18, 2024, 11:02 PM UTC

I don’t really understand how this would work and the article doesn’t really give me enough detail to know. But for me, Google abandoning their plans to disable third party cookies tells me everything I need to know: their ad business calls the shots and an ad company having monopoly over the browser market is an unequivocally bad thing.

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.