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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

#181

Post by megadata »

Voultapher wrote: post #84
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…

Let's not forget their attempt to push web attestation through WEI https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...

Attempt? Isn't that project still in full swing?

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

#182

Post by keming »

zakki wrote: post #37
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…

At least Safari has better privacy concern than Chrome. Let's see if Waterfox can substitute Firefox in the long run. I believe MS Edge will happily replace Chrome.

> Safari

This is a better answer than Waterfox or Edge. Like you said, at least Apple cares about privacy enough to defend it in court.

Waterfox is dependent on Mozilla, which admitted to selling its users’ data.

Edge is an answer just for Windows, and the primary benefit to MS is getting people to use Bing, to sell ads.

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

#183

Post by amrocha »

darkwater wrote: post #147
amrocha wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

In a multi device world that makes sense though. If you save your passwords on your phone, you don’t want to lose them all if that phone breaks.

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

#184

Post by quinnirill »

boxed wrote: post #180
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.

That’s assuming the divested Chrome would then proceed to lose its gigantic market share and thus the mind-boggling proceeds from defaulting to Google as the search engine. They might even be able to afford a bigger development team, if need be.

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

#185

Post by belorn »

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…

Googles behavior with youtube, by adding DRM to all videos, is a clear demonstration of the abandonment of the open web. If we are not longer using open standards, and no longer allowing alternative browsers, then how is that different from the closed down platform?

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

#186

Post by dns_snek »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #66
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 .

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.

I'm so confused when I read takes like that. The only way advertising can be sustainable under capitalism is if every $1 spent on advertising generates >= $1 of profit for advertisers, keeping in mind that ad networks take a share of revenue, say 30%.

This means that you as a consumer have to spend at least $1 (likely more - profit not revenue) for every $0.70 of value you receive in "free" services. Being supportive of ad-supported services is therefore financially irrational.

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

#187

Post by fmajid »

The DOJ's proposed remedy is structural separation, which is really the only way to prevent malicious compliance. I'm actually surprised they went for it, given how thoroughly neutered American antitrust has become under assault from the noxious Chicago School.

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

#188

Post by Voultapher »

megadata wrote: post #181
Voultapher wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget their attempt to push web attestation through WEI https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...

Attempt? Isn't that project still in full swing?

> A Web Environment Integrity prototype existed in Chromium,[2][3] but was removed in November 2023 after extensive criticism by many tech groups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity#Rece...

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

#189

Post by blagie »

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…

Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine.

The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences are three-fold:

- Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for placement

- There can be no central directives to shove things like Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats

- Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge in its web offerings

In other words, if a business is split, the same economics work, but without all the shady, anti-trusty stuff. It's an independent company, without linked chains of corporate control.

I think it most serves Google's interests to set up a second nonprofit similar to Mozilla to manage this, perhaps with more of a consortium model. Whatever Google can sell Chrome for is less in its interests than maintaining that the new Chrome will not be used against Google the way Google used Chrome against competitors.... If DDG were to end up with ownership of Chrome and switch from Google Search to DDG, I think Google would be pretty unhappy, while DDG's market cap of 75M versus Google's of $2T -- 2000 times higher -- would even out a little bit.

One of the key points is that the EXACT SAME economics and business model can be evil and anti-trusty or good and fair depending on chains of control and collusion. If there is a colluding consortium (whether by backroom deals or by having related products in the same place), new competitors won't come in since they know they'll be crushed unfairly. Same economics without backroom deals, and you've got market competition.

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

#190

Post by wincy »

Ygg2 wrote: post #152
OccamsMirror wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They did? AJAX of jQuery fame, is extremely similar to ActiveX XmlHttpRequest. The problem isn't XmlHttpRequest, but everything else they added/removed. Same with Google. The problem isn't they made request more secure, they made ad blocking impossible.

My custom user scripts from Tampermonkey that I used to make my life as a developer easier are just gone. I can’t even access the extension to grab them, some of them are complicated workflow stuff that made my life easier in some pages that are poorly designed. Like I’m often looking at the contents of JWTs so I added a global function into my global scope to parse JWTs. There wasn’t even a “hey we’re getting rid of this extension back stuff up”, it’s just disabled.
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