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DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

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Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#31

Post by tsimionescu »

timschmidt wrote: post #26
tsimionescu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely answer is that it will take the Linux model, with a foundation put together to fund Chrome's development. Then all of the parties interested in people having access to the Web, including Google, will have an incentive to fund this without requiring it to push their specific products.

One minor nit, it will be all parties interested in influence over future web standards and their eventual implementation.

Right, those would have the biggest incentive. But I'm sure good fundraisers will be bale to even get some large companies that aren't engaging in the standards at any level to throw some money to support a standard web browser, if they can convince everyone that without this there won't be a good way for people to access their web sites.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#33

Post by algobro »

Weird that a Biden DOJ would do this.

Here's a bet: they are offloading a legal liability. Within 12 months someone reverse engineers the binaries and show that they were siphoning out all keystroke data, or it has an official remote backdoor or something equally horrendous.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#34

Post by josephg »

tsimionescu wrote: post #24
43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

The most likely answer is that it will take the Linux model, with a foundation put together to fund Chrome's development. Then all of the parties interested in people having access to the Web, including Google, will have an incentive to fund this without requiring it to push their specific products.

Chrome currently has far more paid full time engineers than the linux kernel does. I struggle to see how they get paid - except again, by charging search engines to be the default browser or something.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#35

Post by forgotoldacc »

m4r1k wrote: post #25

Chrome is not the problem. Chrome is not even a symptom. The problem is that the world's largest search engine is also the world's largest ad distributor. Chopping off tentacles like Android or Chrome does nothing to slay the two-headed beast.

It's all part of an ecosystem. Chrome is a vehicle in which users are roped into their search engine and ads. And their search engine and ads also push users into Chrome. It's all cyclical.

Breaking off any chunk weakens the link between them and locks users into their ecosystem less. Rome wasn't built in a day, and monopolies aren't destroyed in one either.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#36

Post by forgotoldacc »

wmf wrote: post #11
CalRobert wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is he a lame duck?

Technically he can't run again so he doesn't need any money for his own campaign. However, he might reward donations to his friends in the MAGA Cinematic Universe.

The past 8 years have been a nonstop stream of "he can't" and "that'll cause a civil war."

I'm not sure why people are still expecting normalcy.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#37

Post by friendzis »

43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

> Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain.

The reason? Infinite[1] complexity. To Google that is a feature: as long as they can outspend competitors, they can control the complexity in their favor.

The question should not be "how do we fund development of operating system in a trench coat?", but rather "how much do we actually need to fetch and render HTML?" and the answer is in the ballpark of single digit FTEs.

In theory, we should expect browser complexity to converge on available funding, with the upside that webpages created two hours ago would continue working. In reality, some foundation, funded by majority chromium supporters, will be set up and distribute compensation for Google employees working on open-source Chromium "totally on their free time, mr. prosecutor".

[1]: https://xkcd.com/285/

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#38

Post by j16sdiz »

43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

> This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded?

How about... just don't fund them and let it "die"?

Everybody is using Chromium -- Microsoft, Google, Opera, Electron, etc.. Some of them will step up and fork chromium.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#39

Post by modeless »

reissbaker wrote: post #21
43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

Unfortunately the real answer is: * Only operating system vendors can ship web browsers. (But not Google.) The USG in general seems to love giving Apple more monopoly power. This will effectively constrain browser development to just Apple and Microsoft, since as you note, the DOJ is also trying to regulate Firefox out of existence; and Apple has huge incentives to simply pause browser feature development (and has be…

Seriously, first Apple's App Store is declared not a monopoly while the Play Store is, despite Android allowing alternative stores while iOS doesn't. Now Google is forbidden from developing web browsers while Apple is free to continue monopolizing browser engines on iOS and holding back the web from competing with native apps?

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#40

Post by jojobas »

josephg wrote: post #34
tsimionescu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most likely answer is that it will take the Linux model, with a foundation put together to fund Chrome's development. Then all of the parties interested in people having access to the Web, including Google, will have an incentive to fund this without requiring it to push their specific products.

Chrome currently has far more paid full time engineers than the linux kernel does. I struggle to see how they get paid - except again, by charging search engines to be the default browser or something.

Google can keep engineers working on Chrome employed without having control over Chrome.
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