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Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

chriscoyier.net

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Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers aren't a product because massive companies give it away and destroy the market. If any product was given away by massively rich companies there would be "no market" for it, because it was destroyed .

Well, I for one don't want to pay $15/mo for my browser: I'm happy for it to be the complement of some company's product.

Yet you pay for Netflix and your internet and phone bill. But these could be given away by surveillance advertising firms to snoop your watching, surfing, and calling habits.

As the saying goes, if the product is free, YOU are the product.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#72
"I’m not saying Google shouldn’t be forced to sell Chrome just because it’s only valuable to Google. But I do think Google should be allowed to have a browser."

There's a middle position here, and although Google won't like it, it may be better than Google having to sell Chrome off—that is upon first use would be to ask users if they want to disable all forms of telemetry.

Right, many would choose to disable telemetry, but then many would not do so because they either couldn't give a damn about privacy or they may want to take advantage of say targeted advertising.

Whatever happens, there's a fundamental problem that has to be addressed here and that's how to make the web a more equitable place for all players both big and small.

One of the major problems with new technologies is that shortly after their introduction those who introduced them are often overrun by more business-savvy entrepreneurs who find it dead easy to monopolize the tech (we've seen this repeatedly from say the car industry through to operating systems—like MS and Windows, etc.).

By the time government determines that a monopoly exists it's often too late as unwinding the status quo proves very difficult and disruptive (imagine Social Media if rules had been worked out before it had been introduced, if they had then the scene nowadays would be very different).

When examining what constitutes a monopoly one has to look at what's involved. For example, economies of scale enter the picture—having say only one huge producer of steel would be a monopoly as there'd be no competition and steel—a critical commodity—prices would high so a better solution would be to have two or three large producers to encourage competition. This is what's happened in say the oil and motor vehicle industries. Moreover, it'd make no sense to strangle these large industries by making them comply with regulations that would enable the smallest of small manufacturers sans adequate resources to compete on an equal footing—everyone would end up worse off.

The trouble with the web—perhaps more so than with any other tech throughout history—is that because of its intrinsic nature it's been easier for the powerful (Big Tech) to monopolize the tech. It's also meant that the monopolies that now run the web not only became so almost overnight but also they're now entrenched—set in concrete so to speak—which now make them very difficult to regulate. This all developed so very quickly that unfortunately it happened in a regulations-free environment.

What makes the web very different to other tech—to say those that use physical materials—is that it's very scalable; that is, it's possible for huge monopolies such as Google, Microsoft, etc. to coexist with smaller entities without the smaller ones being stifled. The trouble is that that's not what's happened, monopolistic practices such as Chrome and like deliberately channeling web traffic to Big Tech's sites has effectively distorted the way the web works.

One could argue that the simple solution is to use an independent browser but there are many reasons why this is solution is far from ideal. For starters, web protocols—many of which have been forced on web users by Big Tech—are now so complex and convoluted that designing a fully compatible web browser from scratch is a very difficult and challenging undertaking.

In essence, the demands of Big Tech have been such that they've raised minimal entry level for participation on the web to a point where small players have had to sacrifice both their independence and visibility if they want their presence to be viable. That is, the present state of the web is somewhat analogous to those industries that require economies of scale to function—unless one owns either a 'steel mill'-sized infrastructure or at least has access to one then one's pretty much left out in the cold. For the vast majority who want to participate the obvious solution is to gain access to Big Tech's web—and that means they can only do so on its terms—terms which are often unfair and punitive if violated.

No matter how one looks at it, the web nowadays is effectively a monopoly run by a few large players. The purpose of antitrust law is to flatten the playing field for all, so whatever regulators decide to do with Chrome they need to take these factors into account.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I for one don't want to pay $15/mo for my browser: I'm happy for it to be the complement of some company's product.

Yet you pay for Netflix and your internet and phone bill. But these could be given away by surveillance advertising firms to snoop your watching, surfing, and calling habits. As the saying goes, if the product is free, YOU are the product.

I think the saying is oversimplified (or else, chrome isn’t a product but a byproduct). It makes a company to make the complement of their product cheap or free so that people can use their product more effectively. Google Search and Ads rely on people having a browser. Similarly, Apple’s Phones and laptops are benefited by including a good first party browser. Imo, a lot of technologies are better as free byproducts of monetized technology than as being some company’s products: there are endless lists of great technologies that never found a market or disappeared post-acquisition.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

2nd link contains no such information. Nowhere in the article does it say tech companies were paid to censor anything.

You are right my apologies. It only says we paid a quarter of a billion dollars to “study” which in this case meant paying for “non profits” to comb through a bunch of nobodies posts online in addition to paying for government employees to be on site at twitter specifically.

So you’re right it doesn’t say the directly cut a check. Only paid for people to find it. Paid for the people to communicate the offending posts to the social media companies.

In addition to all this the Biden admin “coerced and pressured”.

I won’t accept this if trump does it and I won’t accept Biden having done it. I cannot fathom how anyone would, given how quickly the winds have changed in America. It should be painfully obvious that the tools “your side” uses will be used by your political enemies.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#75
post #9

> Users don’t pay for Chrome. There aren’t ads in Chrome. There is no direct business model for Chrome. Unlike Safari and Firefox, nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default. They track you. There IS a business model for Chrome: monetizing user data.

Can you clarify? Does Chrome track you, or do websites track you using cookies stored in Chrome?

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I for one don't want to pay $15/mo for my browser: I'm happy for it to be the complement of some company's product.

Yet you pay for Netflix and your internet and phone bill. But these could be given away by surveillance advertising firms to snoop your watching, surfing, and calling habits. As the saying goes, if the product is free, YOU are the product.

[deleted]

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#77
It's interesting to see where the economics align with software. Web advertising paired with search and a browser. And it worked. I can't recall a better outcome supporting modern communication than Chrome and all it contains. The harmony between the business, software and market need was very well aligned. That's falling apart now due to LLM's taking over much of what previously was search, and Google's innovator's dilemma between AI/LLM and traditional search. While the revenues are stronger than ever this seems unlikely to continue long term. So the dynamic is changing naturally. Reminds me of how a strange contemporary religion where believers families take over a planet, resulted in this group building an amazing genealogy web service (familysearch.org). Or how US hegemony naturally leads to it's military, or how the theocratic monarchy of ancient Egypt was good for the masonry industry--even affecting modern tourism, or how Roman roads form the paths leading to today's major European cities.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#78

Google is a web business, that’s their whole thing. They made a browser to invest in the web itself because what is good for the web is good for Google, and happens to be good for all of us. This is a panglossian take that belongs in the year 2005. Google is less a 'web business' than it is an 'advertising business', a 'surveillance business', and a 'finance business'. Consequently, it is false that 'what is good for…

The 'what is good for the web is good for Google' line certainly was true in 2005 when the greatest threat to the web was companies like microsoft using internet explorer to adjust the de-facto web standards and privatize it in the "EEE" fashion.

Obviously the most visited websites would maintain the web better than OS vendors, their buisness depended on it being open.

We have a similar situation now, but with google locking down the most common browser (Manifest v3) and using extensions of web standards to maintain a dominant position.

Disclaimer: I am a zoomer and not a web developer so my history may be off here.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#79
> You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade.

> So we’re going to force you sell your car.

This is b*llocks. Google financed being monopolist in cars with profits from its monopoly on lemonade, which they then used to perpetuate the monopoly on lemonade. We can't solve lemonade problem for now, but we can easily fix the car monopoly problem and break the feedback loop between the two.

Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web

#80

> They made a browser to invest in the web itself But that investment isn’t neutral. It’s oriented towards making the Web a better place for Google to make money—not a better place for users to avoid being tracked by Google. Chrome’s dominant position means Google can kill any new web feature that would help users, but hurt Google’s bottom line.

There's such a strong strain of dark side energy aimed at Google. It just feels so unhinged to me though. Blink-dev is an amazing mailing list of really good improvements being built intelligently, in well declared fashion, with lots of checks via standards bodies, fully open to discussion. There's very few places on the planet where such good work is so easy to see, and no where that it's so abundant. https://groups…

> What features has Google killed, do you think?

JPEG-XL pops to mind.

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