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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]

#61

Post by dismalaf »

forgotoldacc wrote: post #55
dismalaf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's VP literally said that no amount of money would make them choose Bing over Google because Google is the best search engine... Lets be real, no one needs to be "roped into" using Google search. People have Bing and Edge shoved down their throats and still use Chrome and Google...

A company that operates a monopoly having massive advantages against competitors isn't the argument you think it is. Courts in every developed country on earth see your statement and say "That's precisely why we're breaking this company up." Every single time a monopoly forms, people say "It's not a monopoly. They're just better than the others and nobody wants the competition." They never realize that's the textbook…

So what advantages does Google have over Bing apart from simply being a better product?

Microsoft is worth almost double what Google/Alphabet is, has larger desktop operating market share than Chrome has browser market share, forces Edge and Bing down their users throats leveraging their operating system yet has far less traction. Surely MS should be able to outspend and outcompete because they're bigger and a monopolist as well, right?

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

#62

Post by hambes »

I'm quite weirded out about the part about sharing google's data with other companies to allow competition. Yes, sharing my data allows other companies to advertise to me and to monetize my interests. No, I don't want that. I don't even want google to do that.

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

#63

Post by ajvs »

wmf wrote: post #51
jojobas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But why would they if they're forbidden from getting any benefit from Chrome?

A huge amount of their products require browser access, having a good UX to access them off in their best interest.

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

#64

Post by ajvs »

j16sdiz wrote: post #38
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.

Or just don't fork Chromium at all and Google can make the upstream their recommended browser.

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

#65

Post by rvz »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18
labster wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure the constitution will be changed to allow Trump to remain President, one way or the other way.

Almost certainly not. If he runs it will be by ignoring the Constitution, and at that point we’re legitimately in civil war territory.

Exactly. He is not going to and he will not.

By the next election and after his second term ends, we'll see that all the extremely wild claims of:

"Trump is ending the constitution!"

"This will be the last election if Trump wins!"

"Trump will be a dictator!"

"Civil war is going to happen under Trump!"

All of this repeated ad-nauseam, will be forgotten and dismissed as complete hysterical nonsense.

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

#66

Post by dismalaf »

rjchint wrote: post #58

A much better split would be: Chrome + Display Ads Android + Playstore + App Ads

IMO the best split would be:

- All Google consumer devices and products (Pixel, Chrome, Android, Nest)

- Search

- Ads

- YouTube

Search, Ads and YouTube could all survive and prosper on their own and then the Google devices company can pursue a similar strategy to Apple, have devices pay for software.

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

#67

Post by dismalaf »

dyauspitr wrote: post #53
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.

Why would I want to slay one of our greatest technological companies?

Because MS and Apple ran a bunch of ads painting Google as untrustworthy custodians of user data and that unsubstantiated claim stuck with certain segments of the population?

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

#68

Post by KennyBlanken »

modeless wrote: post #39
reissbaker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

1)Because Apple didn't conspire with (potential) competitors to Google Play - both cellular providers and device manufacturers - bribing them with payments and revenue sharing agreements on condition they not pre-load their own app stores, thus maintaining a monopoly that caused injury to Epic. Motorola is a competitor to Google Play. F-droid and whatever other alternative app stores are out there, are not. https://mashable.com/article/google-epic-antitrust-play-stor...

Nobody, and I mean nobody, considers "you can install non-play-store apps if you go deep into menus, click past scary warnings, and the app developer will not get access to a huge swath of APIs and toolkits" to be "competition" to Google Play.

2)The matter in Epic v. Google was about Epic's app being removed after they added in-app payments - forced to use Google for in-app payments because of the monopoly Google was actively maintaining - not "Google won't let us run an alternative app store."

3)Apple was not a defendant in Epic v Google. That was a separate case. In Epic v Apple, Epic lost on all but one of their claims - Apple was found to have violated California's Unfair Competition Law in barring app developers from "steering" users to purchase content in places other than in-app (and thus through Apple's payment processing and their 30% cut etc.)

Maybe the next time you can't figure out why something is the way it is, your reaction should be "I should try to learn about why this is, see what experts in this incredibly complicated field have to say on the matter, or at least google it and read major tech industry news coverage" instead of forming an incredibly strong opinion rooted in complete and total ignorance of the matter at hand.

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

#69

Post by jauntywundrkind »

wmf wrote: post #51
jojobas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But why would they if they're forbidden from getting any benefit from Chrome?

Maybe AI changed this, but..

Google is entirely where they are because the web is a powerful capable rich interesting place, that was able to rise & grow & flourish without the typical platform gatekeepers.

In my view, Google's whole reason for making and continuing to fund Chrome have never ever changed: they want a great (and powerful, not small/retrogressive) open web. Because if the web falters, the proprietary platforms from yesterday can come back & reassert their control. Because if the web falters, information will be someplace where a Google can't index and link you to it.

Google's existence depends entirely upon the web being a good place, a place for good sites, that people want to find & go to. The couple hundred million a year Google pays engineers to make the web good is a very affordable existential hedge, upon which the entire company of rests.

A corollary to this is that attempts to tilt the web towards themselves - to take advantage o Chrome - risk poisoning the web & killing the golden goose. Which is why - imo - Google has taken web standards so seriously, and gone to such lengths to create an air of transparency around browser standards, starting the Intent to Ship process.

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

#70

Post by infotainment »

dismalaf wrote: post #66
rjchint wrote: post #58

A much better split would be: Chrome + Display Ads Android + Playstore + App Ads

IMO the best split would be: - All Google consumer devices and products (Pixel, Chrome, Android, Nest) - Search - Ads - YouTube Search, Ads and YouTube could all survive and prosper on their own and then the Google devices company can pursue a similar strategy to Apple, have devices pay for software.

How could search survive without ads? Charge users per search?
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