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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

#291

Post by nerdix »

asadotzler wrote: post #281
est31 wrote: post #20

I agree. If Chrome is sold off, the new owners might think its uneconomic to maintain a (desktop) Linux port, keep it open source, or they might make it even less standards based than it is now.

And those users can then move to a browser that isn't screwing them over, that does support Linux and open source and web standards. Google Chrome is not the only browser possible except to Google shills and sycophants.

They can do that now.

I don't think Chrome is a very popular browser for desktop Linux users. Or, at the very least, it is definitely not as dominate as it is on Windows and macOS.

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

#292

Post by nerdix »

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 wouldn't mind Google being forced to divest in Chrome if Microsoft and Apple were forced to divest as well.

OS vendors being the only "big tech" companies allowed in the browser market doesn't strike me as a good move for the free and open internet.

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

#293

Post by adaptbrian »

charcircuit wrote: post #126
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…

Advertising is a monetization modal. That's like saying that resteraunts are just credit card swiping businesses. Chrome is similar to other apps like X, Instagram, or YouTube. You click on the app. You are given a way to discover content and ads are shown along side that content. When you click on a site / post there can also be ads. Maximizing engagement on the web, means people will discover more content, which me…

It 100% wasn't an 'option' if you wanted traffic as a publisher for a solid period of time

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

#294

Post by charcircuit »

pcwalton wrote: post #283
charcircuit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is a monetization modal. That's like saying that resteraunts are just credit card swiping businesses. Chrome is similar to other apps like X, Instagram, or YouTube. You click on the app. You are given a way to discover content and ads are shown along side that content. When you click on a site / post there can also be ads. Maximizing engagement on the web, means people will discover more content, which me…

Chrome does prohibit ad blockers on mobile.

The mobile build of chromium does not support extentions and Chrome doesn't have an adblocker built in. Not doing the work of adding support for extentions is not the same as prohibiting ad blockers extentions on mobile. The Chromium team at Google does accept CRs for making it easier for extention support to be added and there are a few chromium forks that have extentions on mobile builds.

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

#295

Post by charcircuit »

adaptbrian wrote: post #293
charcircuit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertising is a monetization modal. That's like saying that resteraunts are just credit card swiping businesses. Chrome is similar to other apps like X, Instagram, or YouTube. You click on the app. You are given a way to discover content and ads are shown along side that content. When you click on a site / post there can also be ads. Maximizing engagement on the web, means people will discover more content, which me…

It 100% wasn't an 'option' if you wanted traffic as a publisher for a solid period of time

The search algorithm didn't rank AMP sites higher for being AMP. It was optional.

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

#296

Post by fooker »

dns_snek wrote: post #186
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.

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…

Reminder than when you use seemingly impeccable logic and arrive at the wrong conclusion, it's the logic that is wrong somewhere because of a missed assumption.

No, people are not going to pay much for browsers and websites, that's why ad supported products and services exist. Otherwise someone would make better software and charge for it. The only way this works is government intervention, which is what's happening here.

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

#297

Post by fooker »

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).

> I think that was the wrong decision.

Could be. But this decision is why we even have other browsers.

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

#300

Post by int_19h »

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.

As someone from "the rest of the world" originally, don't worry about that. Piracy will take care of it, just as it does with all other non-free software.
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