741–750 of 1001 posts
Chrome doesn't have a business model to make money. If it gets calved off into its own thing, it'll either need to find another line of business to supplement the cost of building and maintaining a browser, or it'll go bankrupt. Close-to-nobody is willing to pay money for a browser alone, so it's unlikely they'll be able to float a business on selling the browser itself.
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 has been proved to be a monopoly precisely BECAUSE it gives away so much. By entrenching themselves with free products that outcompete just about anyone, they get access to a massive firehose of data that they then monetize with no competition in sight
Long story short: Giving away free stuff to cripple competition who don't have scale is anti-competitive (see: Microsoft IE case)
I'm totally fine with this, but I wish they would do the same thing with Apple. Google's platform, at the very least is open and I can run my own apps. 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 st…
> One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?" I opened my local configurator to buy a 13" M3 MacBook Air. Memory, update from 16GB to 24GB -> +230€ SSD, update from 256GB to 2TB -> +920€ Textbook monopolistic price gouging.
The conflict of interest between owning search , being a provider of user identity/login , and effectively owning the entire internet ads marketplace , and being a provider of the "user agent" (remember when people thought of that way!?) is immense. This should have happened years ago. TBF, I worked in Chrome almost 7 years and I didn't see anything outright nefarious. I don't know how user-hostile decisions (like br…
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You raise some very important points. Specifically, this one: > browsers aren't really a self funding product I feel the same. I also feel the same about a modern C library and C compiler (and C++, if you like). They are essential to build any modern system and applications. Yet, those are also (mostly) no longer self-funding products. What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?
> What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome? The new Chrome company will struggle for a year or two then Apple will try to buy it but lose out after Oracle submits a higher bid.
We're in the worst timeline, so I could see that happening.
People here seem to be underestimating the advantages that Google gets just because of Chrome: - When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.) - They have special APIs and features that they get to use, and nobody else. Only because the…
The problem is this: - the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world; - the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc - browsers aren't really a self funding product - having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructi…
They are, see how both Safari and Firefox, the 2nd and 3rd most popular browsers, have brought in tens of billions of revenue per year. Safari is immensely profitable, Firefox too would be if Mozilla wouldn't be run in an absurdly poor manner.
> the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc
What is the huge value gain that e.g. Safari being integrated into MacOS is bringing me? Why couldn't webviews be backed by a browser of my choice?
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>What did Microsoft and Apple gave us? Windows, Office (Excel), .NET / C#, Vs Code, Visual Studio, free GitHub and more?
I meant OSS or free products. Windows / Office / Visual Studio are for profit products? GitHub was free before Microsoft bought it, they just made the private repos free as well. But arguably GitHub was better before. But I do agree C#, VS Code and TypeScript are nice Microsoft OSS/Free gifts to the world.
Visual Studio has a free version.
Windows can be used for free (unactivated) if you're okay with the limitations.
People here seem to be underestimating the advantages that Google gets just because of Chrome: - When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.) - They have special APIs and features that they get to use, and nobody else. Only because the…
- They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more hardware and software lockin to their platform: see unexportable passkeys
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> One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?" I opened my local configurator to buy a 13" M3 MacBook Air. Memory, update from 16GB to 24GB -> +230€ SSD, update from 256GB to 2TB -> +920€ Textbook monopolistic price gouging.
You’re free to purchase a Dell, then.