391–400 of 718 posts
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?
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Seeing that Safari doesn’t drain my battery on my laptop and it doesn’t send my search engine to an adtech company…
It does; Google is the default search in Safari.
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> If you want to switch your search engine for Safari on iOS... I can set Kagi as the default search engine on iOS? Because last I checked, Apple hardcoded their list of options.
You’re right, but there is a Safari extension to set Kagi as default search.
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It's a common misconception that tons of users manually install Chrome, but Google just pays PC makers to make Chrome the default browser. Chrome is the only browser with a business model that makes sense to do this. Microsoft just doesn't make enough money from Bing/Edge to pay PC makers to leave Edge as the default. Firefox makes no money at all, and makes 95% of its revenue from Google's payments to be the default…
I agree with you. Of all the remedies to address Google's "monopoly" this seems to the most bizarre. My question is if Google has to divest from Chrome, would they be able to build a new web browser? In the article it said that they'd need approval for any new joint venture, collaboration, or partnership with any company that competes with Google in search or in search text ads. It makes no mention of web browsers.
I'm not a lawyer, and didn't read the verdict, but your query is very Hacker News. Justice is not code. If Google is forced to divest from Chrome, it of course means it can't turn around and make the Google Dhrome browser. If Google did, they'd be sued for ignoring the verdict.
Who 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.
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You’re right, but there is a Safari extension to set Kagi as default search.
Which is still a workound and sometimes buggy - it overwrites an existing search engine. In my case its google. But when I want to use google, I can’t - I have to switch to another browser or deactivate the kagi addon/plugin.
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,…
The problem is that Google owns both sides of the internet - the browser on your computer and the search engine to find everything.
As a result, they control your perception of the internet.
If a site doesn’t work, you as the user thinks the site doesn’t work. You don’t think oh, my browser is broken. Also, if you don’t find a site on Google the. To you, it doesn’t exist.
As a result, you have to bend your website to satisfy both Google search and Google chrome.
That’s why this is an issue. Because of those two things, Google effectively controls the internet, and you as a user or you as a website owner have essentially zero recourse when Google does something that harms you.
Can Google just "donate" Chrome to a foundation like a lot of big companies do to deal with this? Maybe we'll soon have Apache Chrome!
There is no foundation with the budget to even maintain a web browser, let alone keep developing. If Google is not footing the bill then Safari will become the torch bearer, and Apple has no incentive to make Safari become more capable to threaten that sweet IAP revenue.
There doesn't need to be. Google can keep building it just with regulators out of sight.
IBM and lots of other companies "donate" software for similar reasons.
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I agree with you. Of all the remedies to address Google's "monopoly" this seems to the most bizarre. My question is if Google has to divest from Chrome, would they be able to build a new web browser? In the article it said that they'd need approval for any new joint venture, collaboration, or partnership with any company that competes with Google in search or in search text ads. It makes no mention of web browsers.
> My question is if Google has to divest from Chrome, would they be able to build a new web browser? I'm not a lawyer, and didn't read the verdict, but your query is very Hacker News. Justice is not code. If Google is forced to divest from Chrome, it of course means it can't turn around and make the Google Dhrome browser. If Google did, they'd be sued for ignoring the verdict.
The proposal, filed Friday afternoon, says that Google must “promptly and fully divest Chrome, along with any assets or services necessary to successfully complete the divestiture, to a buyer approved by the Plaintiffs in their sole discretion, subject to terms that the Court and Plaintiffs approve.” It also would require Google to stop paying partners for preferential treatment of its search engine.
Think of it like MySQL and then MariaDB. So if Google sells Chromium to say Saleforce (they seem to buy everything) then Chrome is no longer Google's. Google would have complied with the verdict.
Sigh.