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The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

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Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#301

Post by EE84M3i »

maxclark wrote: post #132

First I don't believe this is an effective remedy to break up a Google monopoly, but I have no influence on the DOJ. I'm curious though, if Google can no longer pay browsers for search engine traffic what is the business model that will sustain development and advancement in the space? How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development? What happens to all the applications that rely on Chrome…

Google already monitizes Chrome with chrome enterprise (premium) and similar offerings for education where Chrome OS is used extensively. Schools and enterprises have little choice but to buy these to use chrome securely, and they could easily move even more of the management features behind these paid plans.

They also already charge to be an extension developer and could easily charge much more.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#302

Post by ls612 »

maxclark wrote: post #132

First I don't believe this is an effective remedy to break up a Google monopoly, but I have no influence on the DOJ. I'm curious though, if Google can no longer pay browsers for search engine traffic what is the business model that will sustain development and advancement in the space? How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development? What happens to all the applications that rely on Chrome…

The same way Linux does. By being an independent nonprofit that all the big players in the web space fund because it is in all of their interests to do so. Whether such a model can work without a man like Linus Torvalds though is an open question.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#303

Post by JustExAWS »

appleorchard46 wrote: post #258
scarface_74 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who is going to fund a fully featured browser?

It's not like browsers will cease to exist though. If the proposed selling of Chrome leads to slower change in web specifications (i.e. 'fully featured' browser stuff) I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

How does that help anyone? Firefox only survives from ad revenue from Google. Apple had some motivation to keep up with Chrome to a point. But wouldn’t be motivated from competition from Firefox. Apple is much more motivated to improve its own platform.

Microsoft definitely doesn’t care about the web or even its PC operating system much.

So now, no one is pushing the web forward. But Apple, Google and Microsoft are still motivated to improve their own platforms. While I personally think the modern web is a cesspool and I am okay with that as a user, I doubt many on HN who care about the “open web” feel that way.

As a developer, I haven’t touched the clusterfuck of modern web development for over a decade.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#304

Post by rootsudo »

bobthepanda wrote: post #227
loeg wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans marginally benefit from American owned monopolies over Chinese owned monopolies.

It’s not clear that Chinese owned monopolies are any good at breaking out. They seem to suffer from the same problem as Japan where their market is so unique and insular that a lot of products do not carry over all that well. WeChat, for example, is the end all be all megaplatform in China but never took off with any Western consumers simply because they’re uninterested.

It also goes bothends, there were numerous western messaging apps that come and go, wechat has been around since the AIM and blackberry messenger PIN days. Where are those two protocols/messsaging apps now?

It isn't insular, it's just it was the only local solution - same for Line having a lock on Japan and Thailand but not much of asia, and kakaotalk for Korea.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#305

Post by Henchman21 »

p3rls wrote: post #281
asdfman123 wrote: post #163

At this point, tech's major competitors are overseas. Never thought I'd be making this argument, but does breaking up the search monopoly help America or up and comers?

As an American there is nothing I would love to see more than Google broken up into a thousand pieces and their stock reduced to negative amounts to atone for all the damage wrought upon the web in the past two decades.

Agreed. I wouldn't feel this way if they had never had "Do No Evil" as an internal mantra. Walking away from that? Well, that was the point I removed as much Google from my life as possible. I'd be happy to remove the rest.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#307

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #87
3vidence wrote: post #70

(Googler opinions are my own, don't work on chrome) Chrome has just been a better product for the last 10 to 15 years. Every other company has just failed to make a good browser because they lack the incentives to do so (have gone back and forth as a Firefox user). The only competitive browsers are those already built on chrome or safari. I'm not personally a big fan of Safari but it's bigger issue is that it is only…

Your employer is constantly adding non-standard shit to their browser so instead of making competitive browsers others have to either burn cycles on demolishing that bs, or catch up with you. You want an example? That command and commandFor bs from a couple of days ago.

I am most reminded of all of those, "Whoopsies! Youtube is broken on Firefox again. Guess we will look into that in the next sprint."

Easy to gain market share when one of the tent pole internet services is experiencing regular breakages.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#308

Post by dmoy »

rootsudo wrote: post #304
bobthepanda wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not clear that Chinese owned monopolies are any good at breaking out. They seem to suffer from the same problem as Japan where their market is so unique and insular that a lot of products do not carry over all that well. WeChat, for example, is the end all be all megaplatform in China but never took off with any Western consumers simply because they’re uninterested.

It also goes bothends, there were numerous western messaging apps that come and go, wechat has been around since the AIM and blackberry messenger PIN days. Where are those two protocols/messsaging apps now? It isn't insular, it's just it was the only local solution - same for Line having a lock on Japan and Thailand but not much of asia, and kakaotalk for Korea.

Wechat hasn't really been super popular since AIM days. ~15 years ago when I was in China I don't think it even existed, and 10 years ago there was significant numbers of people using qq still instead of WeChat (or rather not in addition to? Lot of people still use both).

I don't think it overtook qq until like 8 yrs ago? At which point AIM was already discontinued, and 10 years past any kind of popularity.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#309

Post by ok123456 »

EE84M3i wrote: post #301
maxclark wrote: post #132

First I don't believe this is an effective remedy to break up a Google monopoly, but I have no influence on the DOJ. I'm curious though, if Google can no longer pay browsers for search engine traffic what is the business model that will sustain development and advancement in the space? How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development? What happens to all the applications that rely on Chrome…

Google already monitizes Chrome with chrome enterprise (premium) and similar offerings for education where Chrome OS is used extensively. Schools and enterprises have little choice but to buy these to use chrome securely, and they could easily move even more of the management features behind these paid plans. They also already charge to be an extension developer and could easily charge much more.

Chrome for Enterprise is an add-on for Google Workspaces. How does that work if the companies are separate?

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#310

Post by BearOso »

colinplamondon wrote: post #293
maxclark wrote: post #132

First I don't believe this is an effective remedy to break up a Google monopoly, but I have no influence on the DOJ. I'm curious though, if Google can no longer pay browsers for search engine traffic what is the business model that will sustain development and advancement in the space? How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development? What happens to all the applications that rely on Chrome…

- Google pays Firefox ~$500M/year for 2.5% market share, 65% market share should get a healthy annual payout for default search status. - A pure focus on web browser monetization could lead to some interesting enterprise options. Presumably there'll be a lot of attempts to leverage Chromium, and an aggressive fork at some point. - As AI proliferates, can they pull additional revenue by getting revshare from subscript…

> Google pays Firefox ~$500M/year for 2.5% market share, 65% market share should get a healthy annual payout for default search status

I'm thinking 500M/year is enough to pay for a lot more developers than they currently have. Even half that should be enough to do more than they are. Where is all this money going?

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