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

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

#251

Post by gabruoy »

knowriju wrote: post #200
int_19h wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

This is such a 'first-world' comment. A majority of the folks logging on the web in the developing and emerging world will be unable to afford paying any kind of subscription for their web browser over and above what they pay their ISPs for internet access.

Then unfortunately the internet will remain a luxury for people who aren’t able to afford the cost. The internet is a product, not a charity or human right.

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

#252

Post by johnea »

The article didn't really make a lot of sense to me.

But I do agree: to edict the sale of chrome won't really accomplish much.

This is reminiscent of the M$ anti-trust suite in the '90s. To edict for example, the creation of an "open standard" for word documents. Which led to the creation of .docx, which has been harder for 3rd parties to functionally incorporate than the original .doc format. When the corps performs minimally compliant reforms, with continuing antagonistic behavior, there seems to be no real technically specifiable solution (sorry, I didn't go look up some obscure word to mean the same thing). That litigation also had web browsers as a central element, yet nothing was accomplished in diversifying the operating system market, or the web browser market.

To quote Cory Doctorow: capitalists hate capitalism

And so does the US government. What they both love is the unbridled concentration of wealth.

This is why similar comparisons could be made to the AT&T "break up", which was largely ineffective, with the clear oligopoly in telecommunications in existence today.

I do agree with one aspect of the article: if goggle is a monopoly (it obviously is), then don't take tangential measures, break it up, completely.

The semantic web, elimination of internet search via for-profit entities, widely applicable and enforced anti-surveillance and privacy laws. There are many approaches that could work. None of them will be applied, because they would lead to the very richest people making less money. The US will never implement any law with this consequence, period.

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

#253

Post by bastawhiz »

andsoitis wrote: post #250

Who would even have the money, technical know how, and business acumen to buy, maintain, and make money with Chrome?

You could make the same argument for the Linux kernel. Or Postgres, or Bitcoin Core, or CPython. So many companies have a vested interest in Chromium, v8, and Blink (especially by way of Electron) that it would be wild to think some sort of foundation couldn't be pulled together.

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

#254

Post by dehrmann »

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.

Biden or Trump administration? This remedy was originally proposed under Biden's DOJ.

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

#255

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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 browsers need to be free?

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

#256

Post by dehrmann »

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…

> Someone buys Chrome and needs to turn a profit from Chrome

Who would this be and how would they turn a profit from it?

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

#257

Post by Spooky23 »

dehrmann wrote: post #254
Spooky23 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Biden or Trump administration? This remedy was originally proposed under Biden's DOJ.

It’s still around and the admin continued it.

Biden’s DOJ was slooooooowly pursuing anti-trust more seriously. That’s not a Trump priority. So what’s the reason?

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

#258

Post by dragonwriter »

johnea wrote: post #252

The article didn't really make a lot of sense to me. But I do agree: to edict the sale of chrome won't really accomplish much. This is reminiscent of the M$ anti-trust suite in the '90s. To edict for example, the creation of an "open standard" for word documents. Which led to the creation of .docx, which has been harder for 3rd parties to functionally incorporate than the original .doc format. When the corps performs…

> This is reminiscent of the M$ anti-trust suite in the '90s. To edict for example, the creation of an "open standard" for word documents.

That was not an outcome of the 1990 anti-trust suit, or any other anti-trust case against Microsoft.

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

#259

Post by koito17 »

vachina wrote: post #21
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.

You can always use Chromium or dozens of others viable Chromium derivatives. Google at least gave you the option to do that.

> Google at least gave you the option ...

Not sure if Google voluntarily gave users the option. Google was forced to give users the option since Blink is a derivative of the LGPL-licensed WebKit, which is itself a derivative of the LGPL-licensed KHTML.

An argument can be made for open-sourcing the frontend of the browser. However, even the WebKit codebase has a test browser that runs on Windows (despite Safari dropping Windows support over a decade ago). This would have been present in the Blink codebase even if Google decided to keep the Chrome frontend proprietary. So people would still be able to embed "Chromium" into applications.

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

#260

Post by paulryanrogers »

andrewflnr wrote: post #48
inetknght wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody writes checks to Chrome to make a certain search engine the default And some people wonder how Chrome could ever make money if it were divested from Google...

Would that be a better world than we have now, though, if Chrome was nominally separate from Google but still only exists because Google pays for it? It seems like the same thing with extra steps.

If Chrome cannot be owned by Google (nor Alphabet) then that is an important separation. It means Chrome could auction off the rights. Much as Firefox offers non-Google search in certain markets, which happened in the US at least once.
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