To be honest I think it does not matter.
I wish they split search from Google. Either you are search business, or ad business.
Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
111–120 of 345 posts
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#112> 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.
Can you clarify? Does Chrome track you, or do websites track you using cookies stored in Chrome?
Why not both?
Chrome consistently pushes to make it easier for websites to track you -- by being the slowest browser to incorporate privacy protections like third-party cookie isolation, by eliminating extension APIs used by ad/tracker blockers, and by adding new features which expose more fingerprinting surface to websites. This disproportionately benefits Google because Google runs some of the largest web tracking networks (reCaptcha, Google Analytics, AdSense, etc). Even if Chrome was separate from Google, Google (along with other ad companies) could probably keep paying them to sabotage users' privacy.
Chrome also directly uploads a lot of data to Google. It's technically possible to use Chrome without syncing your browser history to your Google account, but a surprising number of people I know mysteriously managed to turn on sync without knowing it. Other Chrome data-collection initiatives, like Core Web Vitals, also provide a lot of value to Google's other businesses. Those are other products that Google could pay directly for.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#113I think that this must be done, but will have vanishingly small effect anyway. Browsers are software monsters and making one your lap dog through non-directly-financial means is a low-brainer if you’re google.
They will likely relax firefox live support afterwards to weaken its org structure, and new-chrome will seek contracts like search/etc and they will invent something like “feature requests with benefits” which aren’t exactly illegal.
The only true way is revolution against standards and grounding the cost of a browser to viable levels. It will be pain like 2->3 or ESM, and likely much worse, but we made it through before.
My only worry is that it will become even shittier to program for, because we lost sense of that 20 years ago.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#114There is no Web any longer, saying otherwise is wishful thinking.
Everyone pushing for Chrome forks, and Electron garbage has effectively turned the Web into ChromeOS for all practical purposes.
Firefox is no longer relevant, and Safari only resists thanks to Apple stance on iDevices.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#115> 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.
Can you clarify? Does Chrome track you, or do websites track you using cookies stored in Chrome?
Is that a distinction without a difference from an end user perspective?
Chrome’s defaults are the main reason anybody is tracked by cross-site cookies any more, and that tracking massively and directly benefits Google’s business.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#116Alphabet tried to kill adblock in Chrome, so...
It's conjecture at best that killing adblock was related to manifest v3. Given apple also rolled out the same sorts of restrictions years earlier, there is strong precedent for this being purely a security improvement measure. Especially when you consider how problematic and prevalent malware extensions are.
I’m not sure Apple’s monopolistic behaviour is a good excuse to claim that Google is not abusing its monopoly.
As for malware ; sure, but the alternative is not allowing people to run the software they want on the machine they own.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#117I just discovered that Google refuses to support any assistive tech on Workspaces unless the user is using Chrome: https://support.google.com/a/answer/33864 They can’t be forced to sell soon enough.
Would selling change anything? There are a lot of sites and apps that only work in Chrome that Google didn’t make.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#118[flagged]
Trackers are not necessarily evil. But if you get a service in exchange for ads then yes, in this business transaction it's you who's being sold, you are the product.
Whether to see it as good or bad is up to you (after all we sell ourselves e.g. to employers), but this observation is not "childish" or "woke", it's a matter of fact.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn’t a business model for a company whose product is just chrome, though. Unless it’s some kind of foundation or non-profit with a sufficient endowment to not need a business model. I’m no fan of Google, but—unless people really want browser subscriptions—I don’t see how you can have a browser company today. They exist better as a byproduct of some other business model.
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 .
Browsers shouldn’t be a product because any modern operating system that doesn’t come with a web browser is defective.
A browser is an operating system feature.
I mean, you can get alternative file manager programs. Pay for them, even. But most people will never bother.
Re: Google Being Forced to Sell Chrome Is Not Good for the Web
#120If Google sells are they also barred from making open source contributions to Chromium? From being the primary direction setter?