Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 718 posts

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#441

Post by hysan »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #373
hysan wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Possibly by trying to find a business model that can support Chrome development just like all other Chromium (and non-Chromium) based browsers? 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…

Not sure how Chromium development relates to the order of divesting *Chrome* from Google. AFAICT, Google can continue pouring resources into Chromium. Was this an unintentional mixup in your comment?

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#442

Post by throwaway127482 »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #424
magicalist wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a common misconception that tons of users manually install Chrome, but Google just pays PC makers to make Chrome the default browser Maybe 10 years ago, but which ones do it now? thinkpads and HP machines, at least, ship with Edge as the default. Dell or something? Windows is also _hyper_ aggressive about pushing Edge now too. Like it's nuts how hard it pushes it, to the point that it embarrasses people who do…

I don’t remember chrome being default anywhere. You always needed to open edge to download chrome and I have installed windows numerous times in past.

Chromebooks are a thing, and are extremely popular

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#444

Post by oaththrowaway »

magicalist wrote: post #418
oaththrowaway wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is a company that relies on donations and Google to prop them up pay hundreds of thousands of dollars on that? That's not interesting to you at all?

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#445

Post by jjmarr »

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.

Have you tried signing up for WeChat? It's nearly impossible to get an account.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#446

Post by magicalist »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #35
ksec wrote: post #34

I disliked Google ever since they started their "Do No Evil" PR campaign. For as long as I remember I was the extreme rare few on internet against them. And I also disliked Chrome. Especially the direction of the web they are using Chrome to push forward. And I also disliked Electron. But I am against DOJ forcing Google to sell off Chrome. Especially when most of Chrome is open sourced. I think this is just plain wro…

None of those exhibit the same sort of outsized influence that chrome does on global web standards. The app store duopoly might come close but still not to the same extent. Being open source has nothing to do with it. Of course selling it off won't necessarily accomplish the desired result since at the end of the day it isn't the legal ownership per se that results in the influence.

> None of those exhibit the same sort of outsized influence that chrome does on global web standards

Besides the renaissance in web interop we've been having recently under baseline and Interop, which quite a few commenters in this thread seem to have no idea about but still feel the need to share their opinion on web standards...

That has nothing to do with a search monopoly, which is what this remedy is trying to address.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#447

Post by hysan »

nfw2 wrote: post #362
hysan wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Most of these business models you refer to rely on some combination of: 1. funding from Google (Firefox) 2. engineering from Google (Chromium) 3. tech giant bundling (Safari, Edge)

I’m a bit confused by this comment. I didn’t mention any of those and didn’t callout any specific business models for browsers. Just that Chrome would need to figure out how to monetize itself like how other browsers are trying to do. Diving into the different business models that other browsers are trying is a very different conversation that needs nuance. For example, how would Brave and Orion fit into your remark?

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#448

Post by soerxpso »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #424
magicalist wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a common misconception that tons of users manually install Chrome, but Google just pays PC makers to make Chrome the default browser Maybe 10 years ago, but which ones do it now? thinkpads and HP machines, at least, ship with Edge as the default. Dell or something? Windows is also _hyper_ aggressive about pushing Edge now too. Like it's nuts how hard it pushes it, to the point that it embarrasses people who do…

I don’t remember chrome being default anywhere. You always needed to open edge to download chrome and I have installed windows numerous times in past.

I believe the claim was that it's coming default on prebuilt PCs. If you're installing Windows, that's not the situation where Chrome would be the default.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#449

Post by Terretta »

ethbr1 wrote: post #333
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,…

> 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.

> I can set Kagi as the default search engine on iOS? Because last I checked, Apple hardcoded their list of options.

Check again: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kagi-for-safari/id1622835804

Works perfectly.

Re: The DOJ still wants Google to sell off Chrome

#450

Post by nuker »

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…

> what is the business model that will sustain [Chrome] development

Separate Search + Google Ads platform as company A, Android + Chrome + Gmail as company B.

It will choke the user-data flow that Google Ads platform is feeding on. This opens doors to new competing search engines!

Android + Chrome + Gmail needs to be bundled with hardware purchases, licensed by HW vendors. Like Apple does with Safari + iCloud. This will create incentive to make them actually privacy focused, and could be its selling point.

Post reply on HN