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DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

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Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#121

Post by troupo »

bad_user wrote: post #120
troupo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nothing Google ships at neck-breaking speed makes the web better, or faster, or a better open web.

All the features that Google ships are necessary for web apps. E.g., open this webpage in different browsers: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/ — Note that Firefox was once on top of this development, during the days when they also had an interest in developing FirefoxOS. Those days are long gone. As for what Google has done historically with Chrome, it's trivially easy to point to developments that have improved the w…

> E.g., open this webpage in different browsers: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/

... and see a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards

> On “speed”, not sure what you mean, but Chrome has been demonstrably the fastest browser.

Re-read what I wrote. I was talking about the speed of releasing new features and APIs. They ship ~1000 new APIs a year

> Speaking of PWAs, Chrome was also the first to deliver a good PWA experience on mobile devices and on the desktop.

There's no such thing as PWA. It's a marketing term used extremely loosely to prove anything, and nothing. It's a random collection of 20 or so standards, and everyone choses their own favorite subset to say ah yes, this is crucial for PWA support".

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On the other hand we have documented cases of Google sabotaging competitors (https://archive.is/tgIH9), forcing their tech decisions on competitors under the threat of retaliation (https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...), selling user data to advertisers (from FLOC to current plans to sell first-party cookie data: https://bsky.app/profile/thezedwards.bsky.social/post/3las7o...) and so on

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#122

Post by ithkuil »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #112
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Machiavellian move by Biden would have been a pardon conditioned on retiring from public service.

I'm sure that would have worked about as well as Napoleon agreeing to live in exile on Elba.

OTOH Elba is a much more vibrant place nowadays. Trump would even have some opportunities to run a B&B

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#123

Post by BrendanEich »

43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

> the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers

The remedy document does not ask this.

What you cite after "> As detailed in..." does not ban any and all payments from a search engine (or only from Google) to a browser. The remedy doc is based on the antitrust case's finding that Google violated U.S. Law by abusing its monopoly through "tying", and in particular by forcing partners to lock out competitors through exclusive (default search only) deals.

This does not mean Google cannot pay for search traffic, and indeed Google has a relatively open, albeit lower-monetizing, system called Adsense for Search, which allows a toolbar to monetize -- but not a browser via queries entered into its address bar (aka Omnibus). Bing does many API deals, or did (it hiked prices last year). Brave has an API business (not yet an ads feed, just search).

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#124

Post by BrendanEich »

BrendanEich wrote: post #123
43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

> the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers The remedy document does not ask this. What you cite after "> As detailed in..." does not ban any and all payments from a search engine (or only from Google) to a browser. The remedy doc is based on the antitrust case's finding that Google violated U.S. Law by abusing its monopoly through "tying", and in particular by forcing par…

Spellcorrekt got me: "Omnibox".

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#125

Post by bad_user »

troupo wrote: post #121
bad_user wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the features that Google ships are necessary for web apps. E.g., open this webpage in different browsers: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/ — Note that Firefox was once on top of this development, during the days when they also had an interest in developing FirefoxOS. Those days are long gone. As for what Google has done historically with Chrome, it's trivially easy to point to developments that have improved the w…

> E.g., open this webpage in different browsers: https://howfuguismybrowser.dev/ ... and see a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards > On “speed”, not sure what you mean, but Chrome has been demonstrably the fastest browser. Re-read what I wrote. I was talking about the speed of releasing new features and APIs. They ship ~1000 new APIs a year > Speaking of PWAs, Chrome was also the first to deliver a good PWA experience…

> ... and see a bunch of Chrome-only non-standards

That's one way of putting it. The other perspective is that those are necessary features and that Safari and Firefox are now holding the web back. When IExplorer 6 was the most popular browser, with Firefox being the underdog, I don't remember people complaining that Firefox was implementing non-standard features.

Let's also remember that by standards, we mean W3C standards, that organization that was once deemed so slow and irrelevant that Mozilla, Apple, and Opera decided to just initiate WHATWG (back when Opera still existed and Apple still wanted a better web).

The irony of the backlash against Chrome's Privacy Sandbox is that Firefox has started shipping similar features, too: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2024/08/22/ppa-update/

And it's understandable why because the alternative is a web centralized in closed gardens (Facebook), locked behind paywalls, or a dead web.

---

I mean no disrespect, but the people advocating for a slower web progress sound just like the people advocating for degrowth, all being a bunch of nonsense that only a tiny elite minority actually wants.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#126

Post by bad_user »

troupo wrote: post #119
threatofrain wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JS has been moving at excellent speeds and Google has moved the web to evergreen. If anything I’d argue that without the specter of regulation then we might’ve had Dart or something new in the browser by now. The biggest existential risk to the web is that it’s not good enough. It’s being threatened by sharp innovation in other spaces - may the Vision Pro never come down in price or improve in UX.

What do regulations have to do with Dart? You got WASM in the browser which is a much better outcome than a language even Google doesn't know what to do with. The biggest existential risk to the web is Google themselves: it's the world's biggest advertising and user tracking company having outsized influence on where the web is headed, and moulding the web for its own profit.

I don't disagree that Google is a risk; however, note that all browser engines are right now funded by Google's Ads, yes, Firefox and Safari included. If that search deal is undone, at least Firefox is as good as dead.

And while they are "moulding the web for their own profit", at least they are interested in keeping the web alive, and I don't think anyone interested in the health of the web will like the alternatives, which are actually winning right now (closed app stores delivering native apps with spyware and unblockable ads).

By doing this, the DOJ may invalidate one business model that keeps certain FOSS projects alive — commoditized complements to proprietary products and services. You can hate Google, and still see why this will be a huge problem, especially for projects as complex as browsers are.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#127

Post by 43920 »

BrendanEich wrote: post #123
43920 wrote: post #17

This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded? Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they're ess…

> the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers The remedy document does not ask this. What you cite after "> As detailed in..." does not ban any and all payments from a search engine (or only from Google) to a browser. The remedy doc is based on the antitrust case's finding that Google violated U.S. Law by abusing its monopoly through "tying", and in particular by forcing par…

I'm having a bit of a hard time imagining what kind of payment Google could make under this structure. Do you have something in mind?

I agree that if Google was paying a browser for something other than default search placement, that would likely fall outside the scope of the proposal. But historically, default placement = traffic, and is also the only leverage the browsers have - ie if Google wasn't the default, Google would only get users who explicitly selected it, and if Google knows all of their users are actively selecting them already, they have no reason to pay extra for that traffic.

API access seems like a good alternative way for Google to monetize, but it doesn't solve the problem of providing funding for browsers (except in your case, since you're combining a search engine and browser in one company). Or am I missing something?

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#128

Post by BrendanEich »

43920 wrote: post #127
BrendanEich wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers The remedy document does not ask this. What you cite after "> As detailed in..." does not ban any and all payments from a search engine (or only from Google) to a browser. The remedy doc is based on the antitrust case's finding that Google violated U.S. Law by abusing its monopoly through "tying", and in particular by forcing par…

I'm having a bit of a hard time imagining what kind of payment Google could make under this structure. Do you have something in mind? I agree that if Google was paying a browser for something other than default search placement, that would likely fall outside the scope of the proposal. But historically, default placement = traffic, and is also the only leverage the browsers have - ie if Google wasn't the default, Goo…

Yes, you are missing how browsers without search engines could do fair and non-discriminatory pay for traffic deals with Google in a remedy that follows the spirit and letter of Sherman-Clayton and Robinson-Patman.

Again, the document does not say "no payment of any kind under any terms".

Fair and non-discriminatory (standard rate card, open ad confirmation/reporting tech using least-tracking and first party scripts, no native Chromium tracking crap) search and search ads feed API deals would let 1000 browsers bloom.

Re: DOJ filed paperwork to US District Court to force Google to spin off Chrome [pdf]

#129

Post by BrendanEich »

BrendanEich wrote: post #128
43920 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a bit of a hard time imagining what kind of payment Google could make under this structure. Do you have something in mind? I agree that if Google was paying a browser for something other than default search placement, that would likely fall outside the scope of the proposal. But historically, default placement = traffic, and is also the only leverage the browsers have - ie if Google wasn't the default, Goo…

Yes, you are missing how browsers without search engines could do fair and non-discriminatory pay for traffic deals with Google in a remedy that follows the spirit and letter of Sherman-Clayton and Robinson-Patman. Again, the document does not say "no payment of any kind under any terms". Fair and non-discriminatory (standard rate card, open ad confirmation/reporting tech using least-tracking and first party scripts,…

I mentioned Adsense for Search (AFS) and toolbars, but it seems Google now limits AFS to websites with search boxes. In pre-Chrome era, it let many toolbars for IE (7 or even 8, they both sucked) monetize this way. This toolbar support went away around 2012 as the Chrome Hegemon took over. AFS never allowed a browser (vs. a toolbar) to monetize from omnibox-style UX, no surprise. Monopoly behavior was on display even before Chrome took 2/3rds of the browser market.
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