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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

#411

Post by ocdtrekkie »

xiconfjs wrote: post #393
wyre wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I actually don't want my Kagi plugin to overwrite Google for a different reason: Sometimes the plugin fails to hijack my search, and I really don't want my searches going to Google. So I overwrite DuckDuckGo, so even the fallback is okay.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#412

Post by bo1024 »

theptip wrote: post #160
user3939382 wrote: post #134

If you look carefully at the Chromium project, it’s made up of teams that specialize in different components. The majority of the members of those teams are in turn Google employees. Presumably they have the best qualifications to be on those teams. I don’t see how a DOJ decision against Google would change any of that. Ban Google employees from participating in the project? And then who would replace them?

But we are not discussing Chromium. Google’s browser is Chrome, and that product has search exclusivity deals that have been deemed monopolistic. Google could divest the Chrome product and keep contributing to Chromium, but the value proposition is really unclear when that OSS investment doesn’t buy you billions of dollars of browser lock-in value.

Forcing Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers to move to Manifest v3, i.e. deleting the ability from the browser to have good adblockers, is incredibly valuable to Google.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#413

Post by userbinator »

pjmlp wrote: post #72
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…

I am sure folks at Microsoft were saying the same of IE 5 and 6, as I was around when it took over.

For all its warts, I think old IE is still a better option than Chrome because at the time of its dominance, Microsoft wasn't an ad company interested in collecting every little bit of data about you, nor did it own the dominant search engine. IE was just a browser.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#414

Post by JoshTriplett »

inetknght wrote: post #352
john_the_writer wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but their standards, and what they support aren't even something you can look up. As a JS dev these are the stuff of nightmares.

Learn to write native applications instead.

Step 1: Convince your users that they should trust a native application that runs outside of a sandbox.

Step 2: Wonder why you don't have more users.

The more applications stay confined inside a browser tab, the better.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#415

Post by ocdtrekkie »

cebert wrote: post #406

If Google was forced to sell off Chrome, I wonder what the ramifications would be for Chromebooks. Chromebooks have become quite popular in K12 schools. I don’t see how they could continue to run or why Google would have any continued interest in this device ruling.

Chromebooks in schools are probably already illegal in a lot of places that use them, and the sole purpose is to lock in kids to the Google ecosystem early. (Apple used to heavily focus on education for the same reason back in the day.)

There's an arguable point if Google doesn't give up Chromebooks anyways, the DOJ should force them to.

My children basically are required by government to use Google products in school unless I want to pay for private school, which is kinda insane on its face.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#416

Post by dcow »

kweingar wrote: post #320

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 actual issue is that Google pushes Chrome on its properties “this site renders better with Chrome download here” so it’s almost impossible for users to avoid it. Same issue with Edge. Once you switch off of Safari on macOS that’s the last you hear of it. If anything should be illegal it’s using your dominant position in one market to force users into a specific position in an adjacent one. MS got busted for it previously. Google under threat now. Apple has its own issues but it isn’t currently entirely owning a market. If Ape owned the phone market and the only App Store was Apple’s, I think the court would start ruling against Apple.

There’s also a clear conflict of interest having the advertising company own the user-agent.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#417

Post by jader201 »

dfabulich wrote: post #360
kweingar wrote: post #320

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,…

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…

> Microsoft just doesn't make enough money from Bing/Edge to pay PC makers to leave Edge as the default.

Have you used a Windows PC lately? It seems like once a week I have to ignore/decline prompts to change my default browser to Edge.

I’m not sure PC makers have any say/control over this behavior.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#418

Post by magicalist »

oaththrowaway wrote: post #383
Ferret7446 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going towards a lot of controversial things unrelated to Firefox development or any open source software development by any reasonable standard. Here's one attempt at breaking down their finances: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4387539/firefox-money-invest...

That was fascinating. Thanks for posting that

> That was fascinating

No it wasn't? They itemized some budget items worth less than a million dollars in total, and then, for each entity getting part of that money they admitted they had no idea who they were or what they did for Mozilla (but one of them had abortion rights mentioned on their blog!)

Incredibly lazy "expose" trying to be a twitter files.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#419

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

acdha wrote: post #361
spoaceman7777 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just simple advertising though. Nearly every company is selling their product as being superior to some set of competing products, at whatever their price point is.

Did Chrome pay for the ad placement on Google’s sites? Could Mozilla or Microsoft buy the same spots? Could they pay YouTube to keep the site faster for them than standards-compliant browsers? If the answer to any of those is no, it’s more than simple advertising.

Yes. My biggest gripe with Google is that they prop up unprofitable products with their wildly popular product. It makes competition impossible. YouTube is the perfect example.

I feel like it should be illegal to use your profits in one industry to run a loss leader in a totally separate industry.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#420

Post by hnfong »

asadotzler wrote: post #282
ttoinou wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t any motivated group of developers fork chromium and push their own agenda ?

No motivated group has the experts to maintain a modern rendering engine (tens of millions of lines of regularly evolving code) and Google can reject any upstream changes that group wants to make because Google engineers are the gatekeepers for 97.498% of Chromium code. So, if your agenda has anything to do with web content, you take what Google hands you. Of course, if you just want to diddle in the browser UI, sure…

The big players have made the web so complicated that it's impossible to maintain one's own standards compliant browser without millions of investment, and you don't get a business model because everyone else is giving their out for "free".

This problem really needs to be fixed, though I have no idea how...

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