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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

#141

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile

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.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#143

Post by almatabata »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #72

I'm very confused. Chrome is just Chromium with Google's own Telemetry. Chromium is open and maintained primarily by Google. 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…

> 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?

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.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#144

Post by behnamoh »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #127
bityard wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the most chaotic alternate reality possible: Mozilla

Having it owned by a non-profit foundation would make a huge amount of sense, especially if that foundation was then immediately funded by a variety of companies rather than just one big advertising company. The obvious test for whether the browser is actually independent: what is the response to "let's add an ad-blocker by default".

> Having it owned by a non-profit foundation would make a huge amount of sense,...

OpenAI joined the chat...

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#145

Post by throwawaythekey »

dnissley wrote: post #112
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…

Firefox makes hundred of millions of dollars in revenue per year. If you assume the same revenue per user and apply it to Chrome's market size (about 30x that of firefox) then you have a top 20(?) tech company in revenue terms.

They will have more money than they know what to do with. But yes, going closed source does seem more likely.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#147

Post by dom96 »

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.

Why would you want all this stuff synced? The only thing I want out of that is passwords, but 1Password works just fine for that. In fact, I don't trust a browser to store my passwords securely.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#148

Post by ForHackernews »

cyp0633 wrote: post #131
fooey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then MS is such a giant that it will have to sell it after some time

Nah, MS doesn't own search, ads, email and half the rest of the internet.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#149

Post by NewJazz »

zb3 wrote: post #52

Chrome can't really be sold unless it'd mean Google is not allowed to maintain a fork of Chromium. 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 als…

I think this would be a very unfair action to perform so late in the administration.

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.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#150

Post by JumpCrisscross »

elmerfud wrote: post #44
hinkley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't see how that equates to a monopoly

The monopoly is in ads. Google uses its control of Chrome to act uncompetitively in advertising.

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