Hacker News Reader

Comment by arielm | Hacker News Reader

To have an ad network control so much of web traffic and then decide which ads to block is just absurd.

If the chrome team and google’s ad teams were not controlled by the same unit that primarily makes money from ads it would have been ok, but given that they do, what incentive will they have to block their own ads and how much more powerful is it making their own network?

Sadly, chrome is still the easiest browser to use, especially as a developer

View on HN

In your opinion, would spinning off Chrome into its own company under Alphabet be a possible solution?

No, because Alphabet is still Google. A layer of shell companies doesn't change anything. Chrome (and Android, probably) should be forcibly split off from anything to do with Google/Alphabet, as fully independent companies. Any collusion between them and Google should be illegal.

^- This is breaking up an illegal monopoly. Shuffling around which division owned by Larry Page and Sergey Brin it is is not.

Not OP, but that seems strange to me. Chrome is a product, not really a business. I can't see any way for them to make money, besides maybe enterprise deployments.

If Firefox makes $500M per year from search referrals, Chrome could make over $1B. Chrome would be very profitable as an independent company.

>To have an ad network control so much of web traffic and then decide which ads to block is just absurd.

Google doesn't determine what ads are blocked. That's done by the coalition that's composed of the following members and affiliate:

https://www.betterads.org/members/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com