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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

#881

Post by mulmen »

SpEd3Y wrote: post #451
sebstefan wrote: post #430

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.

> In a perfect competition environment all profits go to 0.

Competition drives prices down to the lowest sustainable point but not to zero. If one company drives prices below a sustainable (profitable) point that’s market failure because it starves the competition. It’s the thing Google did and the reason we have anti-trust law.

Google created a situation where they had no competition. Necessity being the mother of invention suggests that they innovate less in the absence of competition. Monopolies are poison to innovation.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#882

Post by chaosharmonic »

ycombinatrix wrote: post #841
niutech wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can root your Android device and replace Google Play Services with microG ( https://microg.org ).

microG doesn't pass all the integrity / attestation checks

Also how much coverage of the Play APIs does it have in general? I'm aware of it but not really up to date on the state of the project

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#883

Post by bonzini »

scarface_74 wrote: post #859
niutech wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does splitting off Chrome as a separate company solve anything? They would still rely on Google for funding (like Mozilla) and being close friends they would do whatever Alphabet tells them to do. A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.

Unless you own a Chromebook, if you have Chrome on your computer, you made a choice to download it. How would a browser choice screen help?

Probably it would forbid "Download Chrome" on Google and "Download Edge" on Bing.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#884

Post by djent »

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…

you might need to go outside if you think Kubernetes is "giving back to humanity"

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#886

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

chaosharmonic wrote: post #789
rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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…

> This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android. Here are more: - (jumping off of your second point...) Play Services does more than just handle stuff you sign into as a user -- it's also a dependency for everything from push notifications to screen casting. This actively poses issues building competing platforms, in that in order to give developers a path to shipping in your ecosyst…

If we could just have a competing push notifications service, I would be over the moon.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#887

Post by hinkley »

consumer451 wrote: post #110
hinkley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Google refusing to make changes that boost online privacy because it’ll tank their ad revenue?

Isn't it even worse than that? Didn't they make changes via Manifest v3, which will not allow me to follow the FBI's advisory about using ad blockers, to make sure their ad revenue does not decline? I do realize you can still use uBlock, but my understanding is that updates will be slow rolled, correct? Doesn't this open the window to malicious people to serve me mal-ads?

M3 seems to be failing, but I agree that it matters that the tried.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#888

Post by hinkley »

jsnell wrote: post #276
hinkley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t Google refusing to make changes that boost online privacy because it’ll tank their ad revenue?

No. They're not doing those changes because regulators like the DOJ[0] threatened them with anti-trust action if they did. That's the same DOJ that's now asking for Chrome to be divested. [0] https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-doj-cookies-privac...

Uh. That was not my understanding of that situation.

Blocking third party cookies this way still leaves Google’s tools which people voluntarily install with access to data that now nobody else has access to.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#889

Post by iteratethis »

rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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…

To add: Google uses Chrome's established user base to bundle other products in the same way Microsoft uses Office subscriptions to push Teams.

The most recent example being Gemini now deeply integrated into Chrome. Had Gemini been a stand-alone product, it would have to fight for every user. Now billions of users have it at their fingertips.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#890

Post by stoperaticless »

sharpshadow wrote: post #808
Loic wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. No, Google was better, then they used Chrome as an extremely powerful moat to protect their situation. Google at first was like magic compared to the Altavista of the time.

That’s how I feel about Yandex lately. When it’s a struggle to find something on the common search engines, Yandex works like magic. It’s not that Yandex is particularly better in any way, it just chooses to not filter the content one is looking for.

According to wikipedia.

Headquarters: Moscow, Russia

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