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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

#431

Post by Tepix »

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…

All of these companies provide values, that's why they are so successful.

In particular (as opposed to Google), Apple is giving us products where the user isn't just an entity that you try to get as much data from as you can.

Without Apple we'd be stuck with tiny initiative such as GrapheneOS on mobile, limited to a small subset of apps and phones.

With AI, Apple is also being privacy conscious, i think they are doing interesting work with their private cloud compute setup.

But does it mean that Apple and Google should get a free pass? Hell no!

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#432

Post by felixarba »

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…

I know it's not comparable to Google, but Microsoft did significantly invest in open source, they also open sourced .NET, made TypeScript, VS Code

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#433

Post by sho_hn »

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…

Google Office suite isn't open source, is it?

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#434

Post by hamilyon2 »

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.

Three hours a year of nagging window in rich countries will provide all the financing chrome, the web browser, will ever need.

We are talking about the most advertised, most installed most used program. Asking users to pay will do more good than harm

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#435

Post by nkrisc »

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…

Yes, target them all.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#436

Post by graemep »

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…

> The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is because Microsoft in the 90s was (belatedly) very worried about a world where Netscape held a lot of power, and realized making and giving away a slightly better browser would neutralize this upstart. Everything flowed from that one tactical decision by a couple of execs at MS.

There were free as in beer browsers before IE (although many were free for non-commercial use only).

Chromium is a fork (well, a fork of a fork) of a FOSS browser specifically developed to be a FOSS browser for FOSS OSes (primarily Linux).

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#437

Post by zelphirkalt »

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.

I think there are 2 products. Google Chrome and Chromium. For one of them: Good riddance! For the other: Well, actually you cannot really kill that, because anyone can fork it or contribute patches, so if the world thinks some change is needed, the world can make it happen. There is no need to be worried about the project. We could also put it under a copyleft license that obligates anyone to contribute modifications and we will be fine, if some company decides to fork it.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#438

Post by tadfisher »

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…

Yes, they provide those things. They also have an illegal monopoly on search, and use those free offerings to entrench their monopoly.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#440

Post by Tepix »

seydor wrote: post #379

Antimonopoly action is good for the market, but let's be honest nobody will make a better chrome, at best they will inject ads or turn it to a walled garden. It will be a bad thing in the end for us web developers , and we will lose the last open platform. Why is this considered a good move anyway? The obvious way to split google is to separate the buy side from the sell side of ads market

I haven't been using Chrome for a while because of the unacceptable privacy issues.

"We will lose the last open platform" - umm, have you heard about Mozilla Firefox? It works really well.

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