Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

chriscoyier.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 345 posts

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

#271

Post by keepamovin »

snowwrestler wrote: post #238
keepamovin wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent analysis. Also, Google is actually a data business, building an AI, with a long time horizon view - and always has been. Larry's initial goal was to build the AI. Impressive tho they are, current AI products are mere ripples upon the surface compared to the deep currents of Google's long term plans. Given that, I actually don't see much resistance from Google leadership to abc.xyz divesting itsel…

Google does not want to get rid of Chrome because it is by far the best source of “signal” that they use for training their systems. For example Chrome browsing stream data is the largest signal used in ranking search results. Google deprecated PageRank in large part because interlinking was a proxy for user interest, and now with Chrome they can measure user interest directly in real time.

Will signal like that remain important with AI?

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

#272

Post by CaffeineLD50 »

bilbo0s wrote: post #94
CaffeineLD50 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the dreadful state of public health this is a total fail. Epidemic obesity alone is a nightmare: heart disease, cancer, stroke, you name it. Trump, to his credit, is taking fentanyl seriously but heart disease is a bigger killer.

but heart disease is a bigger killer Can't blame Mexico and China for heart disease. So it's of little political value. A government will take on public health challenges whose root causes can be used to confer political value. Other public health challenges may be more serious, but they are worthless to a politician. That's actually why politicians shouldn't be in charge of those sorts of things.

[dead]

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

#273

Post by asadotzler »

gabruoy wrote: post #251
knowriju wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The UN disagrees

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

#274

Post by asadotzler »

burnerthrow008 wrote: post #198
blagie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine. The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences are three-fold: - Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for placement - There can be no central directives to shove things like Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats - Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge in…

> Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine. How do you image that working? Google is already banned from paying Apple to be the default search engine, so why would they be allowed to pay Chrome?

They are no more already banned from that than they have already been forced to divest chrome. None of this is final.

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

#275

Post by asadotzler »

knowriju wrote: post #201
blagie wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business model is the same as Firefox: Google pays to be the default search engine. The economics are identical to Chrome being within Google. The differences are three-fold: - Bing, DDG, OpenAI, and others can compete to pay for placement - There can be no central directives to shove things like Manifest V3, weird data sharing, or DRM down our throats - Google has no incentive to favor Chrome over Firefox or Edge in…

If Meta buys Chrome (which is a real possibility) why do you think they will not try to push similar stuff like ManifestV3 ?

Well, they won't be as effective given Google's absolute dominance in web properties and the reach of its surveillance advertising network. When Gmail or Docs mysteriously breaks in Firefox for 3 days peeling off 10M more Firefox users for Chrome, the web suffers. Meta won't be able to do nearly as much of that given their major effort is all in apps and barely on the web any more.

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

#276

Post by mixmastamyk »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #267
mixmastamyk wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly, it’s already started. An obstacle would give impetus to new solutions,

I don't know specifically what you are referring to and I doubt many other folks have any idea other.

You say it's "outlandish" to consider alternatives, but new ones are starting all the time. Every advance of the post-FLOSS era has started just like this. Big players getting out of the way can only help evolution along.

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

#277

Post by asadotzler »

dither8 wrote: post #130
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…

Google would retain copyright to all of it's employees contributions to Chromium. Which I recall being 90%+ of contributions. The propsal PDF from justice.gov doesn't mention Chromium anywhere, so maybe Google will retain copyrights, but the sale would seem pointless if they do. The real question is to what level Google continue investment in Chrome after the sale. Remember both Mozilla and Apple will also loose out…

Copyrights do not mean much here except that Google could license that code differently at some point, though the previous licenses are irrevocable so the "sold" Chrome would be the new main line, and Google's 90% of a browser fork under a new license could do something else. They'd certainly have to do some work to get it to be a browser again though because the 10% they cannot arbitrarily re-license is scattered around the codebase and some of it in critical parts of the system.

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

#278

Post by asadotzler »

the_other wrote: post #106
Okx wrote: post #39

You’ve got a monopoly on lemonade because you pay all the grocery stores to be the default lemonade. So we’re going to force you sell your car. I don't think this is an accurate anaology. It's more like, you own the vast majority of grocery stores, and you make lemonade, and you force all the other grocery stores to only sell your lemonade. To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google shouldn't be pa…

> To put it another way, the problem is not so much that Google shouldn't be paying to be the default search engine, but that it shouldn't own both the browser and the search engine. If this is the real crux of the case, then is divesting Chrome going to negatively affect DuckDuckGo and Kagi? My hunch is “no”, and also that search+browser isn’t the crux of the case. I think the real crux is Google owning browser+ad/s…

It's the scale. You can do all kinds of integrations at tiny scale that are not permissible at grand scale. I can own my store and sell my own-brand products in it but if I own most of the stores and use that leverage to force other stores to sell my own-brand products, that's a concern for competition and an opportunity for anti-trust regulation to step in and attempt to fix things.

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

#279

Post by asadotzler »

KaiserPro wrote: post #163

The author raises a good point, but tangentially: "if google doesn't pay for chrome, who will make it better? and who will make it secure" This is a valid concern. However, for those of us who remember the time before chrome, the web was dominated by IE, which kneecapped security and innovation. Its the same with mobile safari, a lack of competitors is bad for health. The issue is, google has embedded a shit ton of m…

They have also precluded Apple and Microsoft and Mozilla from improving their browsers in critical ways by spiking good initiatives and forcing the other browsers through sheer power of numbers to add garbage to the browser.

DRM, wanna know who spearheaded that? and who fought against that-- and who won. and who all were then forced to go along with it. This isn't rocket science.

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

#280

Post by asadotzler »

hackerbob wrote: post #211

If Google has to sell Chrome what stops another buyer from being even more profit maximizing then Google. What if a private equity firm like Silver Lake buys it? Some will say well the free market will do its thing and people will just switch. The problem is Chrome has a 60-70% market share. And like it or not anyone that is a professional developer will be at the mercy of this new buyer because like them or not they…

Nothing, but at least they won't have the largest web properties and the most sprawling ad surveillance network to combine with that browser in ways that are evil and anti-competetive. Silver Lake won't knowingly ship a bug in Google Search or Gmail that breaks Firefox or Safari for a month, peeling off millions more of those users to Chrome which magically works despite the other-browser breaking bug, then rinse and repeat once every 3-6 months for a decade until the competition has no users any more.
Post reply on HN