Here's something I don't understand. If you want to switch your search engine for Safari on iOS, you open Settings, tap Safari, tap Search Engine, and tap your preferred search engine. Not many users do this, and the conclusion is that the default has an unfair advantage. If you want to make Chrome your desktop browser, you open the default browser, search for Chrome, click the correct result, download the installer,…
Antitrust goal is protect competition and prevent monopolies, Safari search and Bing market shares aren't in a position of a monopoly, unlike Google's (~79% of desktop search market share)
The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
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Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
Advantage where ? Chinese tech companies are not competing outside China with one notable exception of TikTok (1) . Global tech companies do not compete in China, the market is brutal for non Chinese companies with level of espionage, theft, sabotage that is allowed. It is really small world for big tech, the same 5-10 companies dominate most of the world in most frequently used consumer products, and using that domi…
Your words made me picture a typical American tech worker: 1.Bashes China with zero facts or sources, parroting English journalists who can’t read Chinese or grasp its nuances. 2.Lacks historical knowledge and critical thinking, clinging to a Hollywood mindset—quick to label, slow to question. 3.Worships the CIA and FBI, swallowing their propaganda while ignoring the obvious: they’re the dark forces wrecking the worl…
Chinese tech giants like Alibaba or Tencent or Baidu are just as good as western ones .
Their inability to go global has little do with just their technical ability to build products.
It is about whether other countries will be comfortable having what they perceive as CCP control in their markets particularly when their(ie foreign )companies do not have a level playing field in China
It is relatively easy for a country to ban a Chinese tech company or EV maker (1)because China doesn’t buy much or allow foreign companies to thrive to retaliate .
America being the biggest market and importer is the contributor to their soft power. This is what Trump is (ab)using today.
The tariffs that Trump announced recently on China is not getting a lot of attention as North American ones. The last trump administration also slapped some tariffs (not reversed by Biden) while few industries felt the pain of the reciprocal tariffs most of American industry did and will do just fine because America does not export as much to China, the people pay more of course and suffer inflation, but industry will come out broadly fine on Chinese tariffs. It is different for North America particularly Mexico due to deep integrated supply chain.
Western markets is most important not because of social cultural norms it is because it is the wealthiest today. Perhaps the global south will restore the balance this century but for next few decades that is the reality whether we like it not .
PS. My background as an Indian (or India’s complicated relationship with China) has little do with merits of this discussion, the world is not just bipolar, I am well aware that our media is just as propagandized as American or Chinese ones for that matter, but that is whole different topic .
(1) unless the country are not dependent on Chinese loans or on raw material export to China which is most of western / wealthier market
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#373First 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…
> How does a non Google owned Chrome support itself and continue development? Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-Chromium) based browsers? As much as I loved Chrome when it first came out, I’ve also been well aware that Google’s backing of Chrome (and Chromium) has given it undue advantages in the browser market by effectively making e…
There is no such business model. Chromium development is almost entirely funded by Google. Other Chromium based browser rely on this humonguous investment of development resources; they would not have a "business model" without this "free handout", except perhaps Microsoft and Edge, who might be able to fund it by doing basically what Google is doing.
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#374Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love how people in this thread just unilaterally declare and accept as fact that you can't possibly turn the monopolistic browser and browser engine powering millions of devices and with billions of users into a profitable business. Aim low I guess?
So please enlighten us, how will someone make money from the free product that is free and no one pays for because it is free? Selling user browser data obviously won't fly (and note that Google has never explicitly nor directly sold user's browsing data as far as I know, but they do have a huge ad network that utilises cookies...), so what's the plan? Put ads in the browser? "Premium" features? The only thing I can…
The details could be worked out. The idea is to make big corporations pay while keeping it free for users.
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
- 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?
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#377Who would even buy Chrome? No one's building new browsers, and MS even walked away from the browser game. Mozilla and Firefox haven't been relevant for a decade. The only buyer I can see is private equity, and that's sort of the big boy version of buying an abandoned browser plugin so it can track you and show more ads.
You mean.. who would want to buy an app that has 65% marketshare?
I just imagine some shady company (shadier than google at least) buying it to slap ads all over inside the browser itself.
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#378From 90% to 80%. Maybe even 70%. I don’t see it falling below that. Does DOJ think that hypothetical market shares could be 40% Google, 30% Bing, 20-30% rest. I don’t think this is possible short of banning Google or making it extremely cumbersome to access Google (for example, making it impossible to set Google as default). Which makes this whole exercise seem pointless.
Then we also come to the realm of justice. Google built Chrome (no easy task), fair and square. Chrome is a better browser engine than that of most competitors, so much so that its competitors use the same browser engine (Firefox and Safari Exempted). (Chromium is also open source). Why should Google be forced to sell Chrome? Is the assumption here that by the default the government owns everything you make, and the fact that you get to keep something you made is because of the benevolence of the government? This doesn’t seem like a good precedent. The government can’t even justify this as some big harm to society like it’s an addictive drug. What’s the consumer harm here? Is it that Google has monopoly pricing on serving ads to users, so if any company wants to do digital marketing, they have to pay whatever price Google sets?
In the end, this just seems like a big unnecessary mess. The govt surely must have better things to do.
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Windows 11, Edge is preinstalled and can't simply be removed either. Furthermore, it constantly bugs you about if you're sure you don't want to enable their recommended settings, which ends up re-enabling all the analytics/rewards/etc.
What it would take to get them punished again... The edge situation is a mess for sure, and Microsoft seems to have such a perfect understanding of the current judiciary climate that they can't dance around the lines without any consequences.
Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome
#380Here's something I don't understand. If you want to switch your search engine for Safari on iOS, you open Settings, tap Safari, tap Search Engine, and tap your preferred search engine. Not many users do this, and the conclusion is that the default has an unfair advantage. If you want to make Chrome your desktop browser, you open the default browser, search for Chrome, click the correct result, download the installer,…
The mere existence of a competitor is not the spirit of antitrust. Look at what Google does with Chrome and how it harms the internet, they literally just disabled an ad blocker and then offered a new tier of ad free Youtube for $8 a month. Then think about the power it gives them for tracking, remember they tried to replace tracking cookies with their own standard?