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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

#221

Post by Jensson »

stephenr wrote: post #156
izacus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 400B in revenue is there to be paid out to shareholders not to pay for browser development when not needed. Apple only has a browser team because they need to keep up with parity for their OS.

That logic could be applied to every app team at Apple, or indeed every other publicly traded software company

No, because people tend to invest in what generates revenue. If Apple no longer gets billions from Safari most people would stop investing that much in it, so that is likely what is going to happen.

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

#222

Post by lkjdsklf »

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’s kind of the new Internet Explorer.

It doesn’t matter what the standard is. It has to work in chrome because of its market saturation.

That makes chrome the standard regardless of what any standards body says

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

#223

Post by Jensson »

pessimizer wrote: post #44
paddw wrote: post #18

What's unclear is who the buyer is supposed to be? Chrome's entire monetization is centered around its synergy with Google's ad business. Cutting off Chrome is so much messier, than the obvious, (although I fear it would itself have bad repercussions) decision to force them to sell Youtube.

If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a social negative, let it die? A billion or two dollars would fund development indefinitely. Don't sell it to anybody, make it a nonprofit with a fat trust. I'll say the same thing about Firefox: they got plenty of money from Google. They should have been able to save enough in ten or how ever many years to fund development for all eternity. Instead they paid it…

> If nobody wants Chrome, and it's only profitable use is a social negative, let it die?

Its just going to get more user hostile, that is the point. Google has a reason not to sell that data, Chrome company does not.

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

#225

Post by Jensson »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #194
the_other wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn’t a business model for a company whose product is just chrome, though. This isn’t relevant, from the perspective of the ruling. It might be relevant from the perspective of Chrome-the-business and from Chrome-users’ perspectives.

It isn’t relevant that the thing you want to split off won’t be able to stand on its own two feet? Wouldn’t it be simpler to simply require Google to burn the source code? And what is the point of the breakup if everyone (including consumers/users) is worse off? Is the point of government to make people better off, or just to maximize the number of paperclips produced?

> And what is the point of the breakup if everyone (including consumers/users) is worse off? Is the point of government to make people better off, or just to maximize the number of paperclips produced?

In this case this is pushed by other tech companies that want to buy data from Chrome, or they want to move users from the web to their apps where they can be more user hostile.

This is what happens when the government is controlled by corporations.

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

#226

Post by Jensson »

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.

> 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.

You do know most of those companies do both charge you and sell your data? Almost the only companies that don't sell your data are big tech advertising companies.

"When you don't pay you are the product" doesn't mean "If you pay you aren't the product", you still are the product the company is just double dipping.

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

#228

Post by tensility »

dave4420 wrote: post #146
jen20 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

That's more or less also what Google does with Chrome in order to force folks to use it and only it. I know that well because I have Chromium installed for this reason alone.

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

#229

Post by rishav_sharan »

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.

Why do you think so? Google can continue to contribute to chromium as they are doing now, alongwith other contributors like Microsoft

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

#230

Post by kweingar »

apignotti wrote: post #145
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.

The CLA just gives Google a license to use the code your contribute (and a license to any associated patents). You still own the copyright, and Google cannot sell the rights to your code.

https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-individual

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