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DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

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Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#111

Post by NewJazz »

wildrhythms wrote: post #100
XorNot wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bookmarks, passwords, payment information, recent tabs, extensions... all synced with your Google account in Chrome. Firefox can't sync to your Google account. All that information is synced across the entire Google account system, to your Android phone, other Chrome browser instances and so on. Yes I know you could export your data from Google and pull it into Firefox's sync system, but that's a hurdle.

It is a hurdle to switch, yes.

But everything you listed (apart from integrating with Google's servers) can be done with Firefox.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#112

Post by dnissley »

cerebra wrote: post #3

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

The revenue and profitability of "the Chrome Company" is going to be far less than Google, since Google's rising tide is what lifted that particular boat.

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?

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#113

Post by aeonik »

rty32 wrote: post #33
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.

Very few companies would be able to manage a gigantic project like Chromium. 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. N…

I'll do it, if they agree to sell it to me, I'll run it.

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.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#115

Post by dwetterau »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #51
afavour wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Google also turns every link tap in their iOS apps into an opportunity to upsell Chrome for iOS when it should just open the link with the user’s default browser.

I'm shocked that Apple hasn't cracked down on this process through App store reviews. It's such an awful experience.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#116

Post by preommr »

vermilingua wrote: post #81
fooey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full circle of course is MS will end up acquiring it.

This is surely the only real possibility, and puts Edge's shift to Chromium in a new light; could MS have predicted/lobbied for this push?

If this actually happens, I think it would turn perception of Nadella from good CEO that got lucky with OpenAI to a certified shadow master that's playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#118

Post by adamc »

ninth_ant wrote: post #65
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.

It doesn’t matter if no one buys it, or if it doesn’t even continue to exist as a standalone business. That’s preferable. 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 contributo…

To the users who use chrome, it will matter. Not clear to me how strong Chromium will be if the Google efforts for Chrome go away.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#119

Post by wildrhythms »

kittikitti wrote: post #66
andrewflnr wrote: post #17

What would that even mean? Chrome doesn't make money. Who would buy it, except maybe someone who plans to do something even more nefarious?

Chrome makes enormous sums of money through ads. Also, these companies pay fortunes for default settings like search engines and other backroom deals. Someone could buy Chrome and ask Microsoft for 30% of Bing's search revenue to be the default search engine and Microsoft would agree.

What ads does Chrome make money from?

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#120

Post by teractiveodular »

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?

Quite the opposite, Google is the key sponsor of Privacy Sandbox: https://privacysandbox.com/intl/en_us/

Working out why they're doing this is left as an exercise to the reader.

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