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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

#171

Post by tim333 »

wordofx wrote: post #5

If Google wasn’t such a trash company and using chrome to drive more revenue by farming data and preventing adblocks then no one would have a problem with chrome.

They aren't that bad. Out of the FAANG lot Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google they are probably the one I'm happiest with. Facebook have gone crazy with ads, Apple are expensive, Amazon and Netflix are pushy for money. Google on the other hand has provided me with a lot of services I use daily for 20 or so years without really bugging me or trying to screw me over. They are not preventing adblock, just forcing going from uBlock to uBlock lite. If Google is a trash company what is this heavenly company that does such stuff better?

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

#172

Post by Mindwipe »

CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #71
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #66

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.

Your phone provider does sell your information.

The majority of Netflix users over the next few years will be advertising based users. That just doesn't bring in enough profit because people are not willing to pay enough subscription to cover what those things actually cost.

Your hypothesis has a bit of a gaping hole where "real world user behaviour" sits.

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

#173

Post by youngtaff »

orionblastar wrote: post #4

We can always use Chromium https://www.chromium.org/chromium-projects/ This is like if Microsoft was forced to sell Edge or Apple sold Safari. I am thinking of switching from Chrome to Brave https://brave.com/

I’d pick a different Chromium based browser maybe Vivaldi if I was you

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

#174

Post by Mindwipe »

int_19h wrote: post #34
streptomycin wrote: post #22

I don't get the negative comments here. It's pretty simple I think... - Google is banned from paying Firefox to be the default search engine -> Firefox has way less money -> Firefox development massively slows - Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome, rather than using it to indirectly profit from the web in general like Google does -> Chrome probably goes to shit and development massively slows S…

"Development slows" is not necessarily a bad thing. E.g. quite a lot of people would love development to slow wrt Manifest v3. It would also mean that web standards are less of a moving target for browsers playing catch-up (like Firefox). People can also pay for browsers. The only reason why this isn't feasible today is because it's hard to compete with the top-of-the-line stuff that megacorps offer for free - which…

The development that slows will not be parts that allow monetisation. They have a rationale. They will be things like security that have no immediate bottom line impact.

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

#175

Post by msmshazan »

int_19h wrote: post #25
thomassmith65 wrote: post #10

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…

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.

Kinda ironic that "Don't be evil" is Google's former motto

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

#177

Post by victorbjorklund »

Spooky23 wrote: post #7
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…

The administration doesn’t give a shit about the web, and DOJ is a fully political entity. They’ll extort Google for whatever concession they want, and Chrome will remain.

You are probably right.

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

#178

Post by tim333 »

ohso4 wrote: 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.

I'm not sure I get tracked that much more by Google while using Chrome than using Firefox? I still google stuff there and don't bother with privacy things because honestly in ~30 years of using the web I've yet to find a reason to care about ad tracking.

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

#179

Post by crabmusket »

pessimizer wrote: post #31
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…

> aggressive trust-busting beyond what the DOJ has done historically, including vertical integrations. Vertical integration was a huge part of what they went after historically, until a bunch of people "convinced" the US that the standard should be "consumer harm." The cool thing about consumer harm is that you can come up with any bullshit argument about how prices will go down and access and quality up in the futur…

> The only reason you want to keep it all is to do things that I don't want you to do with it

Surely, the reason you want to keep it is because owning and controlling thing A and thing B allows you to make more profit personally than being a controlling owner of thing A or thing B.

That said, I agree with your post and also think nations should err more on the side of breaking things up.

Concentrations of power distort markets and resist democratic control.

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

#180

Post by boxed »

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…

> Arguably, Google divesting Chrome would be great for the web.

Because then Chrome would slowly rot since there's no one to fund development, leading us to WebKit being the only engine, as Firefox is also defunded. I don't see how that's better.

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