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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

#551

Post by jimjambw »

Timber-6539 wrote: post #549
rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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 the…

Everything here you accuse Google of doing, Apple is running circles on. Ultimately, if this case goes through Google are right about one thing. The UX on Chrome is going to take a steep nose dive.

In what way?

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#552

Post by DanielVZ »

rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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 the…

I know this is anecdotal and that I should look further into this but I recently had to switch to chromium because google suite products were slightly unusable in firefox: youtube used way more CPU than it should’ve (maybe this is due to codecs but I was not able to solve it), google sheets crashed constantly, google meet slowed my laptop to a halt and I couldn’t even share my screen, and for some reason google calendar would suddenly start to hog CPU and RAM randomly. Since I switched to chromium everything is smoother and I just can’t believe chromium per se is just this better than Firefox.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#553

Post by wruza »

moody__ wrote: post #525

A lot of discussion in this thread is pointing out that chromium is a thing and that it would be hard for a company to properly fund a web browser without the backing of a tech giant whose more direct revenue stream is elsewhere. I think this showcases a larger issue with the web as it stands today. Why has building a browser for the "open web" become such a complex piece of software that it requires the graces of a…

That was the goal, not an accident. The length of the standard itself is comparable to medium-sized serious project kloc count.

They driven these numbers up to ensure that no one except them and their leashed pets could repeat it.

And here we are, you can have ten internet-enabled apps with texts, images and videos, basically the same functionality, but you can only copy nine of them.

You can’t even keep up with a simple fork.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#554

Post by lakomen »

State owned web browser might be a thing. If it's in the interest of many the state should pay for it. I know what you're thinking, "but that's communism". Well, you can't clench and fart, how they say. This of course adds new problems, like backdooring by 3 letter agencies, corruption, abuse by politicians who exclude certain countries by agenda etc

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#555

Post by niutech »

pjc50 wrote: post #548
rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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 the…

The problem is this: - the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world; - the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc - browsers aren't really a self funding product - having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructi…

How does splitting off Chrome as a separate company solve anything? They would still rely on Google for funding (like Mozilla) and being close friends they would do whatever Alphabet tells them to do.

A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#556

Post by lofaszvanitt »

pjc50 wrote: post #548
rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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 the…

The problem is this: - the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world; - the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc - browsers aren't really a self funding product - having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructi…

Browsers should be developed by an intercountry nonprofit. Funded by all the countries' governments.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#557

Post by nzach »

simiones wrote: post #522
jansan wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt that forcing Google to spin off Chrome is the only or best solution for this.

What other solution do you have in mind? Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable? In principle there is nothing wrong for example with a shared account for multiple products from the same company, many even prefer it. The problem only appears when this gets concentrated into too much power and can be leveraged in ways that distort the market and hurt consumers.

> Legislation about architecture decisions taken in software products seems preferable?

To me this option seems more practical. And we already have some precedence for this kind of solution.

For aviation we have entities like EASA issuing standards like ED-109 and for healthcare we have the HL7 organization issuing the HL7 standard. Another example in the healthcare industry is the DICOM standard created by the NEMA organization. This is not a new idea.

I'm not arguing this approach is without problems. But we are already doing this for some pretty important topics, and I don't see why we couldn't use the same strategy for an "open web standard" that all browsers have to implement.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#558

Post by bayindirh »

DanielVZ wrote: post #552
rkharsan64 wrote: post #510

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 the…

I know this is anecdotal and that I should look further into this but I recently had to switch to chromium because google suite products were slightly unusable in firefox: youtube used way more CPU than it should’ve (maybe this is due to codecs but I was not able to solve it), google sheets crashed constantly, google meet slowed my laptop to a halt and I couldn’t even share my screen, and for some reason google calen…

I'll ask what extensions you use on your Firefox, because I regularly use Google Meet on an 2014 MacBook Pro with latest Firefox, and it doesn't even make the fans spin, plus all the goodies like environmental noise cancellation is there. Meet team also recently ported some of the Chrome only features back to Firefox, due to some fear, I guess...

The YouTube videos in higher bitrates (like 4K) is generally due to Firefox's ability to hardware accelerate things, and there's a bit of difference there, yes. But on Linux and macOS (moreso in sequoia), I see no extreme CPU use. Just testing it on Firefox 132.02 on Debian Testing with Radeon 550 with open drivers, While I see a spike in CPU load, there's definitely some GPU load is also being produced, pointing to at least some GPU acceleration.

On the other hand, Intel N100 with on board graphics can visibly struggle at 4K as far as I can tell. That one runs Firefox ESR though, I need to retest.

I don't use WASM based Google Workspace tools (docs, sheets, etc.) heavily, but they don't crash when we use it on other pepople's documents that we collaborate on.

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#559

Post by niutech »

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.

It's Intel, not Nvidia: https://www.statista.com/statistics/754557/worldwide-gpu-shi...

Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome

#560

Post by lofaszvanitt »

felixarba wrote: post #432
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…

I know it's not comparable to Google, but Microsoft did significantly invest in open source, they also open sourced .NET, made TypeScript, VS Code

The average joe can't do shit with open source. The average coder cannot sell the fruits of the progession, because of open source. And most individuals can't do anything with open source, since they lack funding. Who profit from open source? Big companies.

Don't you get it? The whole initiative is a trojan horse.

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