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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

#451
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

You're missing my point. In a perfect competition environment all profits go to 0. This is great for customers horrible for innovation. Innovation happens when there's enough capital to take huge risks and lose. Google had a ton of innovation attempts that flopped really hard and lost ton of money. Without the extra capital none of the attempts would have happened.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#452
post #338

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…

in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet No wonder nobody can compete, loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all. The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead wit…

Can you explain the cat thing? Why wouldn't cats who are not fed be forced to kill even more birds?

Is it because they would be focused on more efficient sources of food like mice instead?

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#453
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.

Microsoft has the most monopoly. Bundle azure with office365, bundle teams with office365, bundle windows with azure, pushing bing, edge, OneDrive on windows. Why no one investigate them? Because they stay under off consumer minds, and has good lobby

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#454

"make" Mozilla buy it, give em a heaping grant from the Library of Congress to keep the open web open, and be the engine behind every browser keeping things fair... sounds good to me!

Then instead of two browser engines we end up with one? That doesn't sound like a win.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#455
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…

> Android [..] everyone has access

One of the key issues. Google has not given me a phone OS. They have taken away my ability to chose a viable competitor, one that does not run on selling my data.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#456
post #341

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…

This has the same energy as arguing that gathering your private data to give you more accurate ads does not hurt consumers, it's in fact helping them! Google has been the one pushing for getting rid of the v2 manifest for browsers extensions, which just so happens to seriously nerf ad blockers. Because so many browsers are forks of Chromium v2 will disappear from a majority of browsers. Meanwhile if you try to use a…

> Because so many browsers are forks of Chromium v2 will disappear from a majority of browsers.

It rather sounds like a great marketing opportunity for anyone trying to compete with Chrome, whether they keep the v2 or just implement ad-blocking themselves.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#457
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…

They "gave away" to make more profits. It's strategic.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#458
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…

It tickled me how much power they have over the web. Do web standards even matter when Chromium's implementation is all that matters for 90% of users?

I never got over that one either: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/youtube-responds-to-delaye...

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#459
They all seem to have gotten rather cozy.

eg Just spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out why links in outlook open in edge even if browser is set to chrome. Microsoft chose to just ignore what browser you select (in their OS). It’s just so blatantly monopolistic behaviour

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#460
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your honor, I made a bunch of cool stuff, anti-trust should apply to me last!" That's obviously not how it works

You're missing my point. In a perfect competition environment all profits go to 0. This is great for customers horrible for innovation. Innovation happens when there's enough capital to take huge risks and lose. Google had a ton of innovation attempts that flopped really hard and lost ton of money. Without the extra capital none of the attempts would have happened.

I'm not sure I agree with you on innovation. One of the largest drivers of innovation, historically, has been war and desperation. In those circumstances, you generally can't afford to lose. So the idea of innovation needing the comfort of a soft landing doesn't really seem to fit reality.
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