They can sell Chrome, keep Chromium, rebrand ChromeOS to nAndroidOS, and launch a new browser called Google DrEdge (based on Chromium).
Full circle ⭕. Back to where we started.
DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
731–740 of 1001 posts
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#732At this point, I feel like Chrome is more valuable than Search.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#733At this point, I feel like Chrome is more valuable than Search.
Ultimately, how does Chrome itself make any money? As far as I know it doesn't, so the value to Google is ultimately control. The positives include not having to tolerate the whims of Microsoft or Apple or Mozilla or Amazon or beg any of these to implement features or endure microsabotage. The negatives are the temptation to subject everyone else to Google's whims and sabotage competitors.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#734People 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…
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Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#735Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain [a browser]? Sounds almost like Firefox.
Google to Mozilla: "I'm gonna pay you 400M a year for antitrust to fuck off" Seems like it didn't work though.
Firefox lost too much market share. And while some of that is due to bad leadership at Mozilla, Chrome running big advertising campaigns and Google advertising Chrome on their own properties (hints to download Chrome on Google Search, Drive, etc. when you visit with other browsers) were also a big driver. Google flew too close to the sun.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#736The conflict of interest between owning search, being a provider of user identity/login, and effectively owning the entire internet ads marketplace, and being a provider of the "user agent" (remember when people thought of that way!?) is immense.
This should have happened years ago.
TBF, I worked in Chrome almost 7 years and I didn't see anything outright nefarious. I don't know how user-hostile decisions (like breaking ad blockers and serving advertisers better) get made, but they do get made, or defaulted into. Trust me, the leadership of Chrome knows exactly how to justify its $300 million+ budget to the rest of Google, revenue numbers and all.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#737Arguably 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…
> Chromium
> What did Microsoft and Apple gave us
Chromium was in the wild for five years running on WebKit, and the Blink engine they use today is an evolution of that codebase, not a rewrite. Of course, Apple did not create WebKit from scratch, it was based on KHTML/KJS, but it was WebKit that Google Chrome was built on top of, not the previous project.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#738Arguably 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…
As if Google didn't take anything from us. Google makes money selling your attention and brainpower to the highest bidder. Hands down. They are the biggest entity in the attention economy and their real customers are advertisers.
Google has two billion lines of code that determine the course of your daily life. It processes incredibly sensitive information, like every interaction you have with another person in a digital medium, and has a rootkit on basically every phone that collects "anonymous usage data" that is processed in a completely opaque manner and is subject to information "requests" from illiberal and sometimes even totalitarian governments, and a few open source contributions aren't going to change that.
Open source at Google is driven by engineers and contributors, not by executives or strategy. It's a fig leaf over one of the world's largest, most valuable, and well-guarded code bases that absolutely will not be made open.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#739I'm totally fine with this, but I wish they would do the same thing with Apple. Google's platform, at the very least is open and I can run my own apps. One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?". In my view it is, since you can't have a business or build connected hardware without an iOS app. And as for abusing that position for gaining market share, there are just too many examples st…
Apple doesn't have a similar position in any space though, or do they? In terms of market share they're not even the biggest player in the smartphone market, they sit below 20 % (the most profitable 20 % though). Google, in comparison, absolutely dominates the search and ad markets and sucks all oxygen out of them to keep any competition from springing up by controlling distribution and limiting choice. They e.g. pai…
> It's ridiculous to have this super powerful hardware and I can only run sanctioned apps on them instead of being able to install any kind of software I like.
Buy different hardware then. You know these things when you buy the device. It isn't a secret. If the device doesn't meet your needs, there are alternatives that do. The fact that there are adequately substitutable products available other than iPhone destroys any concept of "monopoly." Saying Apple has a monopoly on iOS is ridiculous -- they _are_ iOS.
Re: DOJ will push Google to sell off Chrome
#740Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You raise some very important points. Specifically, this one: > browsers aren't really a self funding product I feel the same. I also feel the same about a modern C library and C compiler (and C++, if you like). They are essential to build any modern system and applications. Yet, those are also (mostly) no longer self-funding products. What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?
Netscape used to cost the equivalent of $100 inflation-adjusted dollars and was only forced to go free to compete with Internet Explorer. Now the genie can't be put back in the bottle, and anyone trying to sell you a browser would become irrelevant the same way Delphi's paid compiler lost out to free C compilers.
Maybe you could carve out a niche that's willing to pay, the same way C# did before dotnet core. But for a mass product the best-case scenario would be something similar to today's Opera.
However what it would do is open up the market to competition. Right now Google is spending a lot on Chrome development and Chrome advertisement. Opera and Edge both have given up on their own engines because they couldn't keep pace with Chrome development, and Firefox kept its engine but can't compete with Chrome's ad spend. If Chrome had to compete on a more even playing field there would be more room for diversity and competition. That could be a net positive, even if it makes Chrome worse.