Chrome and Android are open source, and there are several forks of both thriving in the ecosystem. Yeah it would be cool if there was a decent open source alternative to GMail and Drive, but no one else seems to have figured out how to get the incentives right for something like that.
No, it didn't, it restructured itself into Alphabet, with many subsidiaries. But, all the core businesses are still under that umbrella organization, with most web-related businesses remaining inside the current Google entity.
A forced divestment of the browser business might help. Same for the productivity products.
No one has paid for a browser in almost 3 decades and even then few did.
edit: Safari as well.
Meet the new boss…
Today, Google can provide Chrome as a loss-leader, making up for the "free" browser with ad revenue.
The new Chrome Company can't operate that way. It needs to make money on its own. Perhaps MS Bing offers more money. Or they build their own ad system. Or pivot into some other business area.
Anyway, I don't think anybody is arguing Google/Alphabet must be broken up, only that it's a tool that's available in the US, should we (society) decide other regulation is insufficient.
> Or they build their own ad system.
And we still are being tracked by BigTech with the same business model that people object when Google does it.
> Or pivot into some other business area.
And what other method do you suggest for funding besides ads or people paying for the browser? The second option has never been a long term successful business for browsers?
Just because they don't sell floppies in a box like it's 1994 doesn't mean these aren't businesses.
Considering NCSA Mosaic’s initial release was just 30 years ago this year and it’s considered the first browser, think you might be using a bit of hyperbole there? Twenty years would’ve been more accurate.
Because to me it just feels like it might be legally separated, but still owned and directed by the same handful of people. And it being separated makes it safer, in that they can't forward e.g. large fines to the parent company.
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about large corporations. or economy. or governments.
The US did this with Standard Oil in 1911, Bell/AT&T in 1983. And the same laws were used against Microsoft in 2001, though the company was able to avoid a break-up.
Breaking up Google might not be the best option. Perhaps more rigorous regulation by the government would be better, similar to Microsoft. But a break up should be an option.
Google's open source projects are open in name only.
The link at the top of the page is pointing to the GitHub repo, where you can see literally over a million contributions from thousands of people working at hundreds of companies: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commits/main
I've worked on both Chrome and Android (Chromium and AOSP) professionally, and never worked at Google.
What I should've written is that: yes, they are open source, but there's no way to influence the direction they are going. These projects are 100% Google-run, and very few (if any) decisions are public.
For most projects there's also a significant proprietary part in the actual final product