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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

#421

Post by arsenico »

dtquad wrote: post #375
wesselbindt wrote: post #306

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.

>monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers Why? "Big companies bad" are one of those fundamental truthiness we are all supposed to believe for some reason but as a European I wish we had more US/Chinese-style megacorps who have dominant positions in some fields that allows them to innovate or provide free/cost-cutting products in other niches. Maybe we should reconsider what we consider monopolies in the 21st century.…

Free products are not the consequence of megacorps existence. Free products exist, because you are the product. Big companies also doesn't necessarily mean monopolies.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#422

Post by anon-3988 »

xp84 wrote: post #388
MichaelCharles wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are bad. Splitting up monopolies is good for the consumer. 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 co…

> If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? I agree, this is a problem, but there should be a trivial solution: Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day. This money should go into paying to maintain it. Anything else is perpetuating the Trash Web as it's come to be. The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is bec…

> Anything else is perpetuating the Trash Web as it's come to be.

unless you ban "Free" products, this is going to keep happening. People seems to think that just because something is "Free" it must therefore cost nothing to make. I mean, downloading Chrome takes 2 minutes max and seems trivial to me? Whats the problem?

People think Youtube should just allow them to watch videos without any ads nor paying any money. Clearly, the consumer is not rational.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#423

Post by dataflow »

sabbaticaldev wrote: post #413
dataflow wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

you seems too afraid to lose your big tech salary

If you think I'm saying these out of some personal incentive you're sorely mistaken. I've hated so much of what the tech companies have been doing (very much including Google, like various competition things related to the Play Store). What I don't want to see happen are (a) the world getting worse as a result of a misguided belief that things would necessarily get better if X was done, and (b) regulators pursing a break-up and then losing and thus cementing the behemoths in place even more thus making it even harder to address other problems.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#424

Post by rdedev »

ozyschmozy wrote: post #309
jedberg wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be great for consumers. Google would be forced to make their products work just as well with other browsers as it does with their own. I only use Chrome to interact with Google properties. I'd love to use Firefox for everything.

I see a lot of people saying Google services don't work well on other browsers. Can someone give an example? I've been using Firefox desktop and mobile for a year and haven't had any issues with Google stuff. At least YouTube, drive, docs, sheets, etc. seem to work just fine

I have random loading issues when I try to play something on the YouTube shorts page. The audio would play but not the video. Refreshing the page sometimes fixed this

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#425

Post by rusk »

Sparkyte wrote: post #398
Ekaros wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Splitting monopolies is good. On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.

Chrome is like a service not a product it is effectively Google installing a window so you can see it's fresh baked goods. It isn't something they should break up because it isn't something that inherently makes money and nor should it.

That’s a “half baked” analogy if ever I heard one. With you on the service but the rest of it is just stupid. To align with your analogy Google would have to restrict chrome to accessing only their sites and services, which would be useless, compared to other browsers.

Google could do this if they wanted very very easily but they wouldn’t make any money because as you know they sell advertising, for things they don’t provide.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#426

Post by TrackerFF »

wesselbindt wrote: post #306

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.

There's a very vocal subset of people here that believe monopolistic entities arise due to how much better they are than their competition, and thus deserve to be monopolies.

The very same users believe that such companies aren't "bad" yet, but in some kind of intermediate stage between successful startup and evil MEGAcorp.

I don't know. I think it's the mix of nostalgia, and being too invested in their ecosystem/products. Fanboying, basically.

When Microsoft did it 25 years ago, it was bad. When Google does it now, it's not bad.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#427

Post by arcticbull »

Ekaros wrote: post #380
wesselbindt wrote: post #306

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.

Splitting monopolies is good. On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.

The product is never free, it’s just you’re not the one paying for it. This setup prevents new entrants from competing just the same.

[edit] the same way zero rating certain data traffic is still a net neutrality violation.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#428

Post by arcticbull »

infotainment wrote: post #395
Ekaros wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Splitting monopolies is good. On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.

This exactly. An independent Chrome’s best path toward financial sustainability is closing down the source code and selling everyone’s browsing data to the highest bidder. We all like to have a high minded ideal of some kind of wonderful fully independent for-the-good-of-society entity stewarding Chrome, but history has shown us that’s not what will happen.

But they sell everyone’s browsing data to the highest bidder already, how would this be different? That’s their… entire… business model…

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#429

Post by eterevsky »

m463 wrote: post #387
Ekaros wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Splitting monopolies is good. On other hand splitting "free" product is somewhat questionable. When the competitor don't have exactly viable business model. Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.

What if this browser killed lots of other viable browsers because it was "free" (yet supported by and supporting a monopoly)? You never get to compare the products that never got to exist. related, I think google supported firefox to have a "viable" competitor to chrome and prevent monopoly scrutiny.

It sounds like you want to artificially make the dominant product worse (i.e. non-free) just to make the life of competitors easier.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#430

Post by sebstefan »

SpEd3Y wrote: post #417

Arguably out of the big 4 (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon) Google gave the most back to humanity: Android, Chromium, Kubernetes, Google Office suite, the Go programming language, Tensor Flow, Alpha Fold (and Google DeepMind), donating to Linux, etc. All these are things everyone has access to precisely because Google is such a big player and can afford to lose money on innovation that fails. What did Microsoft and…

"Your honor, I made a bunch of cool stuff, anti-trust should apply to me last!"

That's obviously not how it works

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