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Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

I have a different take, Google releases a lot but is also a massive company and tools like Chromium serve to increase their stock price so they can hit their quarterly estimates.

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It was not at all done for the good of the web, it was a mere logical calculation; it was cheaper to develop Chromium, than to pay 4B USD in search royalties to Microsoft Internet Explorer, and would give more control and long-term safety to Google.

In what way does chromium increase stock price? In what way does stock price influence quarterly estimates? Are we playing business words mad libs?

> “Our best shot at making the quarter is if we get an injection of at least [redacted]% , queries ASAP from Chrome.” (Google Exec)

Isn’t there a whole anti-trust case going on around this?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/24/business/goog...

Chromium is open source because its roots are as a fork of WebKit (Safari). Which itself was open source because it was a fork of KHTML from KDE.

Google stood on the shoulders of others to get out a browser that drives 80% of their desktop ad revenue.

How does that not affect GOOG?

I don't know why people like yourself respond with such derisive commentary instead of simply asking the constructive question.

Initially? It fueled dethroning MSFT and help gain marketshare for Chrome. On a go-forward basis it allows Google to project massive weight in standards. In extension to its use with Chrome, Chrome is a significant knob for ad revenue that they utilize to help meet expectations. That knob only exists because of its market share.

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