Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 718 posts

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#221

Post by nextaccountic »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #106
jcfrei wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If chrome is no longer owned by Google I'll use it. That's the reason I switched to firefox in the first place.

In my opinion Firefox is better in all the ways except speed - Chrome still feels faster on old computers. And I prefer the browser market to still have some technical diversity no matter who actually runs it.

Firefox had Servo, a project that among other things focused on delivering faster technologies for a web browser. They had impressive results (integrated into Firefox as Firefox Quantum) but were suddenly fired

At that point I think Firefox lost a vision of a better future

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#223

Post by forgotTheLast »

DoctorOW wrote: post #208
phkahler wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has a customized version of Chrome. Don't they already pay for it?

Yeah, I could imagine Microsoft making a bid. To people who don't follow tech product ownership, "Windows comes with Chrome instead of Edge" would be good PR and it could basically be Edge minus the rebranding.

Would love if that also meant no more shovelware features to try and distinguish Edge from Chrome.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#224

Post by loeg »

phkahler wrote: post #205
loeg wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's sort of the problem. An independent Chrome probably wouldn't be profitable. This is essentially just forcing Google to fire the Chrome developers.

Microsoft has a customized version of Chrome. Don't they already pay for it?

Doesn't Microsoft ownership of Chrome suffer from identical antitrust concerns?

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#225

Post by loeg »

Clubber wrote: post #202
loeg wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's sort of the problem. An independent Chrome probably wouldn't be profitable. This is essentially just forcing Google to fire the Chrome developers.

>This is essentially just forcing Google to fire the Chrome developers. To be fair, Google could reassign them to something else. Firing everybody will be Google's decision that wasn't forced on them.

I don't really know if they would be allowed to divest the IP but retain the developers. Maybe!

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#226

Post by LightHugger »

scarface_74 wrote: post #17

This is the absolutely dumbest thing that I have read. Who would buy Chrome and why? If you just want the codebase, you have Chromium. Chrome only monetizes because of ads. Then what happens to Chromebooks? Can Google no longer ship a browser with Android? Besides, unless you have an Android - which is only 30% of the US market or a Chromebook, everyone who uses Chrome went through the process of downloading it and m…

Monopolies are at their worst when they use their position to make a power play over a market (such as browsers) that isn't very profitable on it's own but can be used as a loss leader in a wider monopolistic scheme.

This is when antitrust is needed most, by design. There's a bit of understanding you need to do, but not only is it not dumb, what you said about nobody wanting to buy chrome is actually part of the proof of why google needs to be broken up and why chrome is an ideal target for doing so. The browser market needs to be made competitive again.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#227

Post by bobthepanda »

loeg wrote: post #197
thrance wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does upholding monopolies help Americans at all? Do not conflate the ballooning wealth of billionaires with any kind of improvement in your material conditions.

Americans marginally benefit from American owned monopolies over Chinese owned monopolies.

It’s not clear that Chinese owned monopolies are any good at breaking out. They seem to suffer from the same problem as Japan where their market is so unique and insular that a lot of products do not carry over all that well.

WeChat, for example, is the end all be all megaplatform in China but never took off with any Western consumers simply because they’re uninterested.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#228

Post by no_wizard »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #184
irrational wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox seems to do fine without Google employees.

Are they? “When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.”

How long is Firefox going to be held to a standard that none of the other vendors are realistically held to?

They change their ToS in an unfavorable way and yes I think it’s criticism they need to hear.

However, has Chrome, Brave (I don’t look favorably on their cryptocurrency initiatives) Edge , Safari etc. been held to the same, in practice? Why isn’t Chrome barraged with negative sentiment the same way? It has far worse ToS policies (which doesn’t make Firefox “right” or “just”)

Because if that is upsetting then using Chrome should be outright enraging, yet people hardly mention it’s consistent anti user behavior as often as people jump on Mozilla and a Firefox for anything they do that is seen as unfavorable

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#229

Post by drivebyhooting »

jacksnipe wrote: post #178
ronnier wrote: post #103

It’s a big world. Does breaking up google give the Asian giants an advantage? Wonder if China breaks up their large tech companies?

Making the argument that anti-trust is a bad idea because of geopolitics seems pretty wild to me.

Wild? Everything is just a tool. If enforcing antitrust harms national security then …

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#230

Post by scarface_74 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #102
modulus1 wrote: post #96

A company owning a web browser isn't the problem. A company owning a web browser, OS and search engine shouldn't be a problem either. I don't know why the remedy can't actually address the problem, and the DOJ can't move more quickly to address antitrust across the industry. This feels like randomly cutting a baby in half, while the rest of the thieves, even those in the same family, are not deterred.

The problem is an ads company owning a web browser, OS, and search engine, and using that control over how users interact with the internet to outcompete everyone else. You left out Google's raison d'etre from your statement.

And we are already seeing that people are moving to both ChatGPT and perplexity for search. No one is forced to download Chrome or use Google for search.

Why is an ads company owning a browser any different than a phone company (Apple) or an operating system vendor?

Post reply on HN