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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

#141

Post by gtsop »

xigency wrote: post #2

Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web. This piece seems to be looking at Google at large (and I think all of Alphabet would be better scope there). Certainly this would be unpopular here but I would be all for aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done historically, including vertical integrations. Right now tech is a strange feudal state with hundreds of thousands of small teams anc…

> Somehow, with the most advanced computer and technological systems to ever be known by man, we're looking to increase working hours and cut benefits, for "profits" that are not quite realized by the labor class

Somehow?? This is capitalism 101. Not a "strange feudal state" nor anything else.

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

#142

Post by jen20 »

dave4420 wrote: post #119
CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #64

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 .

Browsers shouldn’t be a product because any modern operating system that doesn’t come with a web browser is defective. A browser is an operating system feature. I mean, you can get alternative file manager programs. Pay for them, even. But most people will never bother.

> A browser is an operating system feature.

Microsoft fought and (largely speaking) lost an entire case about that assertion [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

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

#143

Post by cookiengineer »

wordpad wrote: post #98
int_19h wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that whole "war on cookies" where they keep pitching replacements that basically let Google (and only Google) do all the same things, so that they can then gatekeep it and pay others for the privilege of accessing some limited subset of that data. Regardless of why Google made Chrome originally, today, the main reason why it exists is to enable Google to track users more efficiently. And that is a bad thing.

Why is tracking a bad thing? It allows better monetization of the web which is good for everyone.

Because tracking is inherently an anti democratic thing.

See pretty much every lesson in history ever, from the Schutzstaffel of the Nazis, to worker unions being doxxed, to lobbyism.

Our democracy relies on private information being secret, and any one sided party having that information is able to rule over the other.

There's a reason why Putin is so successful when utilizing his FSB and SVR apparatus.

The "i don't have anything to hide" reasoning is bullshit, because you didn't post your email addresses password publicly for everyone to see. Therefore, your reasoning is based on the assumption that you misinterpret what everyone vs some party you inherently trust means.

Look at US politics, where 50% of the population now regrets having shared their medical data with doctors, because the current administration decided to prosecute past visits to the gynecologist if a woman decided to not be pregnant. Something that was not illegal in the past is now illegal, therefore data in itself is incriminating by default.

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

#144

Post by Ferret7446 »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #69
000ooo000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What features has Google killed, do you think? How often has this been a problem, do you think? Unless you've been living under a rock, it's hard to miss manifest v2 vs v3.

Agreed, that stings. Its extremely visible & painful. I want to believe there was some intent, to make extensions that weren't such an extreme hazard, so that the Google Web Store could be better. But it's obviously just a massive regression in user agency, and miserable, and directly undoes so much of the good that was the web. I still think this is, like, the one example. Its a bloody awful one though.

Chrome was never about user agency though. The ideal Chrome is to be an un-configurable window to the Web, hence the name (it is the window chrome).

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

#145

Post by apignotti »

kweingar wrote: post #92

I've brought this up before, but I never got a response and I'm really interested what people think the business case is here. I keep wondering what a buyer would actually value beyond Chrome's userbase. Chrome is just Chromium with Google integrations, similar to how Edge is Chromium with Microsoft integrations. If a company acquires Chrome, they don't have many choices: re-establish Google integration deals (so the…

> Chromium is open source, with contributions from many organizations (who retain the copyright to their contributed code).

To contribute anything to Chromium or V8 you need to sign a CLA, afterwards there are very little rights you retain.

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

#146

Post by dave4420 »

jen20 wrote: post #142
dave4420 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers shouldn’t be a product because any modern operating system that doesn’t come with a web browser is defective. A browser is an operating system feature. I mean, you can get alternative file manager programs. Pay for them, even. But most people will never bother.

> A browser is an operating system feature. Microsoft fought and (largely speaking) lost an entire case about that assertion [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor... .

Yeah. I think that was the wrong decision. The problem was introducing features between IE and IIS and using that to extend their end user OS monopoly into a server OS monopoly. MS should have been blocked from the server OS market instead (or maybe some some of consent decree, I’m sceptical it would have been appropriately enforced though).

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

#147

Post by darkwater »

amrocha wrote: post #139
chneu wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to point out that your perception of what a browser can/should be is based on what Google has turned browsers into. What a browser is in 2025 is vastly different from what anyone thought they would ever be. There are major, major issues with the way web engines/web browsers function today and much of those issues stem from Google's near monopoly on browsers. There was a lot of very interesting and good d…

What do browsers do that they weren’t meant to? The only thing that comes to mind is password management. But I would also argue that’s a boon for normal users and trust in the web.

> What do browsers do that they weren’t meant to?

For example, asking you straight on first launch to log into your Google account, for your "benefit".

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

#148

Post by 000ooo000 »

BrenBarn wrote: post #58

It's wild that the author points to all the Google people writing W3C specs as if that's a positive sign. I'm not quite pessimistic enough to say all those people are 100% corporate shills, but there's no reason to expect that the stuff that gets into the W3C via Google is somehow magically detached from Google's profit motives. Google's effect on web standards is largely just another form of icky "embrace and extend…

Yeah, couldn't believe what I was reading. The author was already being charitable to Google, but that part was a big shot to their credibility.

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

#149

Post by OccamsMirror »

hkt wrote: post #95
beeflet wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Re: your first paragraph, this is exactly what Google does now. They maintain such an incredible pace of development and such a unilateral attitude that nobody can stop them from developing web standards even if they want to. When was the last time anyone said no to a Chrome feature and expected it everywhere else? Developers treat it as the go to to the extent that some don't even bother testing in other browsers. G…

It makes you wonder if Microsoft had given developers what they wanted, i.e. modern CSS and Javascript support, more browser features, etc., would they have actually moved off of Internet Explorer?
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