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DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

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Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#501

Post by concinds »

tamade wrote: post #209

How likely will Trump DOJ drop this? Consumers have choice, albeit just a handful of credible options. Nobody is forced to use Chrome (unlike MSFT pushing IE back in the day)

Trumpers in the GOP hate Big Tech too, but their concerns are exclusively about censorship of conservatives (for Google) and domestic manufacturing (for Apple). Market competition is not their framework. Gaetz is in that group, but he's also a moron who doesn't care about policy details.

If he's smarter than I think, then expect him to go after Google Search (the alleged source of anti-conservative bias). But if he's as dumb as I think, expect him to support the Chrome breakup, even though it would not advance his goals and wouldn't be coherent antitrust policy, because it would let him claim a "win".

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#502

Post by hk__2 »

afh1 wrote: post #469
wesselbindt wrote: post #306

I'm very surprised by the number of people in this thread who don't seem to understand that monopolies are _very_ bad for consumers.

There is no monopoly. There are a lot of other browsers. A lot of people use them. Most people use one of them. They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good. But no. There is a monopoly. It is bad for you. Only we the State can save you from it. A lie repeated a thousand times becomes truth.

> There is no monopoly. There are a lot of other browsers. A lot of people use them.

There is market dominance: Chrome has 65%, Safari has 18% but that’s because of iOS, and the few others have the rest. It’s false to say there are "a lot" of other browsers when nobody can enter the space anymore.

> They chose to do it. If you ask them, they think it's good.

Most people don’t choose their browser, they just take whatever comes preinstalled. Even then, Google pushes you to use their browser every time you use their services: I know a lot of non-tech people who use Chrome on iOS not because they chose to, but because they got a pop-in on Google that told them to do so.

> It is bad for you.

The current situation is indeed bad for the consumer, even if it’s not a monopoly per se.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#503

Post by pzo »

SpEd3Y wrote: post #417

Arguably out of the big 4 (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon) Google gave the most back to humanity: Android, Chromium, Kubernetes, Google Office suite, the Go programming language, Tensor Flow, Alpha Fold (and Google DeepMind), donating to Linux, etc. All these are things everyone has access to precisely because Google is such a big player and can afford to lose money on innovation that fails. What did Microsoft and…

> What did Microsoft and Apple gave us?

Microsoft: VSCode, Typescript, ONNX/ONNXRuntime (TensorFlow is pretty much dead), Github, npm (they bought it but so did Google with Android - m$ still paying repo/packages hosting bill)

Also worth to mention Meta: Pytorch, LLama, React, React Native, Segment-Anything

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#504

Post by whywhywhywhy »

moffkalast wrote: post #496
Vespasian wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU uses better terms such as "dominant position" which deal with the fact that although a big vendor(s) can fully steer the market and has no meaningful competition while at the same time not "technically" being a monopoly / duopoly etc.

coughs in Nvidia I should ask a doctor about that, it keeps happening.

An incompetent company shouldn't be allowed to succeed through government pressure just because a competent company raced ahead.

The direction of the tide has been obvious for 15-20 years and AMD fumbled it, they earned and deserve where they now sit.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#505

Post by whywhywhywhy »

xp84 wrote: post #388
MichaelCharles wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are bad. Splitting up monopolies is good for the consumer. That doesn't mean this makes any sense. How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive co…

> If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? I agree, this is a problem, but there should be a trivial solution: Users of the browser should pay a small amount of "money" for the product they use all day every day. This money should go into paying to maintain it. Anything else is perpetuating the Trash Web as it's come to be. The only reason a "web browser" is "free" (as in beer) is bec…

Would Google still be allowed to fund Mozilla if ad funded browsers are an issue.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#506

Post by whywhywhywhy »

dijit wrote: post #338
MichaelCharles wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are bad. Splitting up monopolies is good for the consumer. That doesn't mean this makes any sense. How are they going to separate Chrome from Chromium? If they do, what incentive does Google have to keep maintaining Chromium? Can Google make another new fork of Chromium and start yet another browser? Or are they now banned from making browsers? What company has the resources to maintain Chrome's massive co…

in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet No wonder nobody can compete, loss leaders tend to kill competition as they can be maintained without direct business revenue at all. The same issue plagues domesticated cats, they don’t need to hunt for food since they have an abundance at home so instead wit…

> in general, I find a little bit distasteful that the only way to build a browser is as a loss leading project for the largest advertising company on the planet

Safari came into the world on a similar timeline so this isn't true

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#507

Post by dustypotato »

tadfisher wrote: post #438
SpEd3Y wrote: post #417

Arguably out of the big 4 (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon) Google gave the most back to humanity: Android, Chromium, Kubernetes, Google Office suite, the Go programming language, Tensor Flow, Alpha Fold (and Google DeepMind), donating to Linux, etc. All these are things everyone has access to precisely because Google is such a big player and can afford to lose money on innovation that fails. What did Microsoft and…

Yes, they provide those things. They also have an illegal monopoly on search, and use those free offerings to entrench their monopoly.

> illegal monopoly on search Just by being better than bing

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#508

Post by Woeps »

SpEd3Y wrote: post #484
soraminazuki wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, people should still be at the mercy of AT&T because Bell Labs gave so much back to humanity. Not to mention that multiple items on your list were bought by Google. The world's biggest ad and surveillance company having control over the most widely used browser on the planet is a recipe for disaster. That's the only thing that matters in this discussion.

> By that logic, people should still be at the mercy of AT&T because Bell Labs gave so much back to humanity. So your argument is that Bell Labs should have never happened since it's the result of a monopoly? My argument is that Monopolies are trade offs. In a world without monopolies you have very little innovation in peace time. Monopolies are bad for consumers but the trade off is that they can afford to innovate…

> So your argument is that Bell Labs should have never happened? It was a bad thing for humanity?

Yes! next question please. ;) No in all seriousness. that's not what they said.

> My argument is that Monopolies are trade offs. In a world without monopolies you have very little innovation in peace time. Monopolies are bad for consumers but the trade off is that they can afford to innovate and push the world forward. It's not as black and white as people like to think.

I find this argument funny, as it states: "not as black and white as people think" to then paint a black and white argument... Yes monopolies are not always bad. But one can't be serious and not acknowledge that for the most part they stifle innovation.

Also, I would say some of humanities best inventions and innovations where before monopolies. But hey, that's just my "black and white" view on history ;)

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#509

Post by guerrilla »

addicted wrote: post #446
SpEd3Y wrote: post #417

Arguably out of the big 4 (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon) Google gave the most back to humanity: Android, Chromium, Kubernetes, Google Office suite, the Go programming language, Tensor Flow, Alpha Fold (and Google DeepMind), donating to Linux, etc. All these are things everyone has access to precisely because Google is such a big player and can afford to lose money on innovation that fails. What did Microsoft and…

Google isn’t “getting targeted”. But to answer your question. 1. Microsoft gets left alone - Really? You may want to ask the closest adult near you about this. 2. Amazon - The government has looked into Amazon multiple times. It’s hard to see where Amazon does anything to illegally use its monopoly (they don’t use their shopping advantage to cross sell AWS in any way, or Vice versa). Amazon is genuinely not a bad mon…

> You may want to ask the closest adult near you about this.

This doesn't belong on this site. Find another way to say it.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#510

Post by rkharsan64 »

People here seem to be underestimating the advantages that Google gets just because of Chrome:

- When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.)

- They have special APIs and features that they get to use, and nobody else. Only because they own Chrome. [1]

- They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more advertising: see Manifest v3, FLoC.

- Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience.

This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android.

- AOSP (the open source counterpart of Android) is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP.

- Most third party launchers/stores struggle to implement features because they are only available for Google themselves.

- The signing in with Google thing from above continues here too: you sign in to Google system-wide.

[1]: https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018

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