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DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

arstechnica.com

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Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#41

Post by tannhaeuser »

staplung wrote: post #8

Honest question: who are the potential realistic buyers of Chrome? OS vendors already have their own browsers and Chrome doesn't directly make much (any?) money.

Nobody is going to buy it given the perverse incentives set in the last two decades. However, Chrome does have value to SaaS providers making use of browsers as frontends, and it should be possible to setup a foundation for Chrome maintenance. Funding could also come from the "ad industry" or what's left of it. If however it turns out Google plus very few other actors (Fb) will totally dominate this consortium once again, then obviously there must be additional measures, such as selling YT and/or DoubleClick.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#42

Post by shadowtree »

Man, I hope they break out Google Business apps.

The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition.

Try pricing something against this insane dumping price Google sets - there is no TAM, the M does not payback enough to justify the effort.

The cross-financing with Ads would finally stop and fair pricing would come.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#43

Post by pcl »

SirMaster wrote: post #38

But would these services even be financially viable as separate entities? How does Chrome make income? Isn't it basically developed at a loss, but it makes money for Google's other business units?

That’s sort of the point, right? The monopoly laws are designed to go after companies that are using their monopoly position in one market to subsidize other product lines to keep out competition.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#44

Post by forrestthewoods »

jonny_eh wrote: post #27
SteveNuts wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and Azure, Bing, Office 365 Amazon (the retailer portion) and AWS, and probably their logistics wing

This would kill xbox

Huh, why? Xbox is a great example of a business unit that should be self-sustainable.

Not that it matters.,Microsoft has done a spectacular job of killing Xbox even with its ability to sustain setting money on fire for the past decade. Xbox has been an unmitigated disaster since Xbox One.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#45

Post by selykg »

jonny_eh wrote: post #27
SteveNuts wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and Azure, Bing, Office 365 Amazon (the retailer portion) and AWS, and probably their logistics wing

This would kill xbox

Xbox has killed Xbox... have you not seen the sad state of affairs there for, I don't know, the past generation or two of consoles?

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#47

Post by jjmarr »

bsimpson wrote: post #20
bobajeff wrote: post #10

I think Google should just be split up into baby Google's that each have to cooperate with each other. Like we did with Bell. Also we should do the same thing to Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. In fact I think we should do it again to AT&T and also Comcast. This should probably be done every so often as maintenance.

I don't understand how this worldview coexists with countries like Russia and China. If the feds kneecap US companies, it's not going to make the next generation of US companies stronger, just cede influence to worse jurisdictions.

Both of those countries dislike powerful, large corporations because they are a base of power that could compete with the state or party. The Wagner Group comes to mind. But China also did a huge crackdown affecting companies like Alibaba and Tencent.

There's no reason why there can't be international co-operation on this subject.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#48

Post by ajross »

shadowtree wrote: post #42

Man, I hope they break out Google Business apps. The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition. Try pricing something against this insane dumping price Google sets - there is no TAM, the M does not payback enough to justify the effort. The cross-financing with Ads would finally stop and fair pricing would come.

> The artificial price point for GMail, GDocs, GMeet has killed so much competition.

It literally led to the creation of Office 365 and broke open a market that had been closed to competition in the face of an unbreakable Microsoft Monopoly for decades! That sounds ridiculous on its face. Of all the product areas to complain about Google having a monopoly, you picked the office suite!?

HN tends strongly to one side of this argument, but really this is trending towards a "Google Derangement Syndrome" kind of analysis.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#49

Post by stevenwoo »

iAMkenough wrote: post #28
bobajeff wrote: post #10

I think Google should just be split up into baby Google's that each have to cooperate with each other. Like we did with Bell. Also we should do the same thing to Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. In fact I think we should do it again to AT&T and also Comcast. This should probably be done every so often as maintenance.

Don't forget the other industries suffering from the same problem: Walmart, UnitedHealth Group, Berkshiere Hathaway, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, etc.

The egg cartel, the potato cartel, the corn cartel, almost every food resource silo has its own monopsony or monopoly of some kind in the USA or globally. In the USA at least it seems many of these things are constructed to avoid the letter of the old laws around monopoly.

Re: DOJ: Google must sell Chrome, Android could be next

#50

Post by dharmab »

jonny_eh wrote: post #27
SteveNuts wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft and Azure, Bing, Office 365 Amazon (the retailer portion) and AWS, and probably their logistics wing

This would kill xbox

Xbox has been nothing more than a budget, low-spec, walled in gaming PC for about 1.5 console generations. It no longer has exclusive games, and the hardware (console and peripherals) are mediocre.

(PlayStation is almost in the same boat, except they have significant sales in regions where PC gaming is much smaller than in the US.)

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