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I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.
I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.
How is Chrome or Google a monopoly?
Google (the search engine) has a market share of over 85% worldwide. [0]
Google therefore controls what can be found on the Internet for 85% of search engine users. Recent updates, or Core Updates, have demonstrated how easy it is for Google to put businesses out of business by removing their visibility. [1]
It seems to me that this is a problem.
Ditto for Chrome, which has +60% market share [2]. A failed or deliberate update could make a website inaccessible to 60% of the population.
[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [1] https://retrododo.com/google-is-killing-retro-dodo/ [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.
That doesn't mean this makes any sense.
How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive codebase? What profit incentive is there in maintaining Chrome without Google's ad business? What about ChromeOS? How are they going to handle the extensions store and ecosystem? How is this going to impact web standards?
There's just a lot of significant unknowns surrounding this.
I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.
Bad for consumers, how? Financially? How does that translate to the current situation? The average "consumer" here is paying $0.00 for Google, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Flights, Docs, Sheets, Chat, Meet, Books, Scholar, Shopping, YouTube, News, Groups, Voice... how are you going to argue that this "monopoly" (?) is bad for consumers? Do you imagine Microsoft or Apple would've created better search, email, news, etc., or that the mom & pop shop down the store would've done that?
I can think of so many other arguments you could use to suggest the current situation is bad, but monopolies are bad for consumers seems like a really tough argument to apply here.
Edit: You need to argue more than "the current situation is bad". Because that in itself does not imply "removing the 'monopoly' would necessarily lead to the better outcome in my imagination." Exhibit A is all the behemoths trying to compete against Google and still offering objectively worse products.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users could switch from Google search at any moment, would you say search is not an actual asset to buy?
User has to choose search engine once. During every install of Chrome I see forced selection of search engine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forcing Google to sell their ad business would be the death of that company. After all, it's mostly an ad company...
They would just have to go back to their original business model before they became an ad company when they ran third-party ads on Google search. Granted, that may not get them enough income at their current scale. They would definitely have to scale back hard for that.
Forcing Google to do that would just hurt other websites income, not Google.
I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.
How is Chrome or Google a monopoly?
* Google effectively holds a monopoly of the browser market (Chrome). Apple (Safari) only exists because of vendor lock-in, and Mozilla (Firefox) is a vassal state; all "other" browsers are Chrome.
* Google shares a duopoly of the mobile OS market with Apple (Android vs. iOS).
* Google holds a monopoly of the video streaming market (Youtube).
* Google holds a monopoly of the malvertising market (Adsense, Doubleclick, et al.).
* Google effectively holds a monopoly of the web search market (Google Search).
* Google holds the vast majority of the email market (Gmail).
* Google is the absolutely dominant player in the consumer cloud market (Google Drive).
* Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the cloud photo market (Google Photos vs. iCloud Photos).
* Google shares a duopoly with Microsoft in the consumer office software market (Google Docs vs. Office 365).
* Google shares a duopoly with Apple in the digital wallet market (Google Pay/Wallet vs. Apple Pay).
I can go on, but with this being said let me ask you: Why the hell should Google not be split and cut apart nine ways to Sunday?
One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?". In my view it is, since you can't have a business or build connected hardware without an iOS app. And as for abusing that position for gaining market share, there are just too many examples starting with say, watches.