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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

I'm all for competition and increasing consumer choices, but the government is really not making a case that this is supposed to help consumers.

The only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together. There are many other better options out there otherwise, and they are all free. Breaking out Chrome from Google will not in any way benefit me as a consumer.

> The agency and the states have settled on recommending that Google be required to license the results and data from its popular search engine

> They are also prepared to seek a requirement that Google share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear.

It sounds like the end goal of this is to enrich other companies, not customers. And if the DOJ has their way, they want to crack open Google's vault of customer data and propagate it across the internet.

Not only does this sound extremely bad for consumers, the DOJ is trying to completely change Google's business model and dictate how they are supposed to make money. Regardless of how you feel about Google, this seems like a far overreach from the DOJ on finding and fixing market manipulation.

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> only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together

This is the point. Google's products integrate with Chrome better than non-Google products. Including its ad platform.

I'm failing to see why "this product we built from the ground up integrates better with our other tools" is an anti trust problem

Isn't that what we want companies to do?

I have two frustrations with this kind of decision:

1. It's not clear to me that the judge has any interest in creating value. 2. It does feel a bit like being punished for success.

It's one thing when it's ill-gotten success, eg via coercive contracts (like Android has with play services), and we should aggressively deal with that sort of contract! However, what often seems to happen in these types of cases is the judge identifies a behavior they dislike and bans it without really considering more targeting / surgical treatments

The problem is not that it integrates well with google products, the problem is that they are preventing other products from integrating as well.

Do you think there's a solution that could reasonably be enforced in order to fix that problem?

Forcing Google to sell Chrome!

How does that help?

What business model do we expect chrome to have? The same DOJ doesn't like Google giving Apple money for traffic acquisition. Why would that be allowed for spun-out chrome?

Why do we expect the rest of the ecosystem to remain static? What do you think Google's next move is if they sell chrome?

Who do you expect to buy Chrome? Not Facebook. Who else could and would want to?

This is a solution that has been proposed without really considering any second order effects. Or if they were considered, it was done badly (it would be easy to prove me wrong: they could just write up what they expect to happen, and it would have to be even mildly believable)

I would assume they would not want Facebook to buy it, obviously. Microsoft neither.

I do not have a solution for the business case I have to admit, but it has 60%+ market share I believe, I’m sure someone will figure out something to monetize this.

It might end up with chrome becoming a worse browser though, that’s not an unlikely outcome at all. But Internet as a whole would be better for it in my view, if google‘s grip got loosened a bit…

This is funny to me. I don't really trust Google's incentives in general, but unlike all of the social networks, Google benefits from a more open internet.

Sure, this has gotten worse over time (if Reddit is closed, goog can pay for access), but they've been a reasonable steward of the web. Chrome is good. I use it intentionally. (Generally, my devices do not come with it installed and I choose to install it)

There are lots of reasonable pieces of anti competitive behavior that we should be punishing. This one will make the internet worse for consumers

I think websites only working with chromium browsers is not making the internet better and is definitely not a more open internet.

I’m not saying they are the worse monopolists out there though, just that I find the logic of splitting chrome sound, in the interest of a more open internet.

I don't really understand this

Safari works fine?? It's web kit based and is better for both memory usage and battery life iiuc

I almost exclusively use it on my phone. I also use it on my laptop (I have chrome FF and safari but primary use safari and chrome because I prefer them)

This seems to be working as intended. Apple makes a great browser that runs great on their devices and is beautifully designed. Chrome works everywhere (that is important to Google!)

We have choices!

Try to use safari with SAP software, for example.

Safari is amazingly fast and energy efficient, but I really really like the total cookie protection feature of Firefox. It’s unique to Firefox and I wish it would become the standard.

I tend to agree. I struggle to understand how a company runs a browser product without being eventually seen as a monopoly. They’re making a unique product ecosystem of browser and apps, just like everyone else, no need to keep coming down on whoever is successful at it. People can vote with their feet and use a dozen other options.

> I struggle to understand how a company runs a browser product without being eventually seen as a monopoly.

Just like for example how a car company can make cars without being a monopoly. Not the best example, but we’re so used to a monopoly it’s tough to imagine what a competitive browser market would look like.

Browsers have never generated enough revenue directly to be competitive. Indirectly they help companies build platforms. When done well enough, we call it a monopoly. I’m actually in favor of restricting their use of tracking but I also think forcing them to divest from the browser business seems heavy handed.

Monopolies are bad for us. It's as simple as that really.

> It does feel a bit like being punished for success.

Nobody is being punished. Punishment would be like "you're going to prison because the thing you started turned into a monopoly". That's not what is happening. It's more like "whoops, you created a monopoly, time to reset, but you get to keep everything you reaped so far".

Why are monopolies bad? In general, monopolies are bad because they can leverage their power in ways that are worse for consumers - ie they make the usual market functions break down. (If the market continued to work correctly, consumers would be able to switch to a competitor)

There are many cases where we like monopolies because it's more efficient to only have one entity do a thing (eg build infrastructure)

It's useful to correctly punish illegal things monopolies do, but in this case, google has created a browser that is good! Better than alternatives!

If you spin that browser off, it will need to figure out how to monetize. It will get worse due to that monetization effort.

Google has other services that would be competitive without Google: drive, YouTube are easy examples.

If we made them spin off Gmail just because Google is too big, that doesn't make sense! Gmail is useful to Google in its current form, but there's no way it's pulling in significant profit (possibly as part of drive - I'm not certain).

You can't just pick a company you don't like and attack it with a hatchet. That's worse for consumers than the thing you're attacking, and the number one rule here should be for regulators to make things better, not worse!

They didn't build it from the ground up

There is essentially no WebKit (not to mention KHTML) code remaining in Chrome.

Fair correction, but they didn't acquire the most popular browser company or something

Chrome allows Google to control the web platform to benefit their Ads business.

1) does it though? It seems like the Google-specific parts of it are pretty ancillary to the whole experience

2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

> 1) does it though? It seems like the Google-specific parts of it are pretty ancillary to the whole experience

You're unwittingly describing the textbook definition of anticompetitive practices only made possible by abusing a dominant position.

> 2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

Safari does not represent >65% of all web traffic. Also, there's the major liability of having a single ad company controlling the browser that the average internet user uses to browse the web.

You literally can’t use your mouse to copy/paste in google docs if you’re using Firefox. If that isn’t anticompetitive, I don’t know what is.

As a firefox user, that copy/paste drives me insane, but I think you're making a logic leap here along with assuming the worst. It's very possible (and likely) that there are API deficiencies that break their ability to offer this when overriding the right-click menu. For example, Firefox not allowing javascript in random tabs from writing to the system clipboard.

You can still use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (and in fact the UI will (or at least used to) tell you that).

JupyterLab also doesn't have copy paste in right click menu. I figured it's probably a security feature (preventing malicious JavaScript from harvesting clipboard content).

Firefox only implemented the APIs for that a few months ago; Chrome has had them for five years: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard_A...

It's funny how many "unsupported" browser features suddenly start working if you happen to change your User Agent header...

> how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

It’s not, other than Google has a way larger market share (especially if you count Edge/Opera/Brave/etc.) and has been (ab)using that position to push web standards in a direction that favors their business and that other browser vendors have to follow to keep up.

If Safari had Chrome’s market share and was throwing their weight around like Google does and Microsoft did with IE, it’d be the same argument and I’d also personally support forcing them to divest it.

Safari is the #2 browser behind Chrome. It's about 55% to 30%, so while Chrome has a larger market share, it's not an order of magnitude larger.

Really the main difference is that Apple has a captive audience on iOS and no incentives to improve so they don't do anything with it.

18.5 for Safari 65% for chrome + 5% for edge = 70%

It is a magnitude higher.

I think you mean order of magnitude, which means 10x. Magnitude just means size. Chrome's market share is not an order of magnitude higher than Safari.

In the business world it is, because going from 18% to 65% market share is much more than a 4X improvement. Market share progress is highly non-linear in cost/investment/strategy. There are network effects at play favoring a winner-takes-all.

A (truly) clever argument! Def seems like a stretch though, especially if you're hoping to save GP's comment by suggesting that this is what they had in mind :-)

No, that might be the word origin but not how it is actually used. Just like "decimate" nowadays does not require a factor 10.

So instead of "10x" substitute "by a large enough factor or margin to make a significant difference". That is totally true globally speaking. Locally, in the US, you could however argue that apple abuses it's iPhone market share to sabotage competition (e.g. streaming, webstandards,etc). That just means you should sue both not neither.

Decimate used to mean 10% less (1 out of ten gone), nowadays folks mean 90% or about so less (9 out of ten gone).

Nothing more evil than pushing standards and even sharing the source code. How dare they...

So why are those standards impossible to keep up with and we already see plenty of sites break under Firefox? Which by the way is the only independent browser remaining in game, even goddamn Microsoft leaving the domain behind?

Because development costs money. Your "impossible to keep up" here is easily explained by Google simply investing more money in development and thus being able to "innovate" faster. The only way to compete is to invest more, but where do you get that money from?

The easy fix is to make them slow down development, but I fail to see how that's a good thing.

Sure. Continuing my analogy to the British empire's rule over the seas has also surely resulted in technological improvements, but that is not the only way to achieve that.

For a more practical example, Linux is also developed mostly by paid employees, but they are from many different companies and thus improvements can't be weaponized as easily.

Maybe if Mozilla spent more money on development and less money trying to be an NGO they could keep up... Mozilla gets more than enough revenue (from Google ironically), they just spend it poorly.

Or they could do what Brave, Vivaldi and others do and simply use Chromium as a base.

> Or they could do what Brave, Vivaldi and others do and simply use Chromium as a base.

Don't you even see the problem?!

Even Microsoft dropped out from developing a web browser, it literally has a larger scope than a whole OS.

But sure, enjoy your Chrome OS proprietary "open" web.

Again, how can it be a proprietary web if everything is open source and available to every other vendor?

Not sure if you remember all the "native" applets that actually were proprietary before Chrome came on the scene and made JS fast enough to kill them... ActiveX, Flash, Java... Those were the dark ages, because of Google the web is more open and better than ever...

More like there were actually multiple vendors that would have to agree on a common thing, but they died out so the single leftover can do whatever it wants...

Here's a list of members of the W3C:

https://www.w3.org/membership/list/

It's a lot more than just Google...

As a long time FF user what is one website that breaks on FF?

my ad-blockers ruin plenty of websites. never met a site that was broken due to FF itself.

Miro board is simply unusably slow, but plenty of other commonly used websites have annoying breakages, like login screen not actually logging in and the others.

Facebook Messenger video chat. It straight up doesn't work. I have to open a Chromium instance to chat with my family.

Good example, but sounds like Facebook or Firefox are to blame for this, not Google.

The parent asked for examples of sites that don't work on Firefox. I gave him one. No one was talking about who to blame.

I see them all the time on internal websites. Corporate frontend devs favor Chrome and those sites aren’t automatically tested.

> how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

Apple hasn't been found to have a monopoly like Google has [1].

[1] https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-search-engine-ve...

Found to be is doing far too much work given the DOJ lawsuit that it has a monopoly (2546 points, 8 months ago, 2623 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39778999

Right. DoJ sued Google and a judge agreed. That's a big difference.

Google is a convicted monopolist.

The DOJ is weird. They're so concerned with whether or not a company is a monopoly, not whether or not they're abusing their power.

Look at the EU, levying multiple billion dollar fines against Apple. But in the US, Apple is free to abuse customers since their market share is a few % short of a monopoly...

I mentioned elsewhere, but the EU wrote an entirely new law to designate some companies as 'gate keepers'. A company no longer has to be a monopoly in the EU to fall under the new law. The DoJ is operating under US law where Apple has largely come out unscathed in any cases brought so far (like Epic).

So far the US has had little desire to regulate big tech in any significant manner.

The EU laws make sense. If you buy something in the EU, you own it. You should be able to do what you want with it. They also have great laws to protect consumers WRT warranties and service and even their AI law is pretty good.

2) consumers cannot use products like Safari as their exclusive web browser. The web has decided that Chrome is the only browser worth supporting and the world needs to keep Chrome at-the-ready for when the alternative browser eventually breaks.

For example, Chrome has replaced IE as the corporate browser, due to the integrations with Workspace accounts and Authentication mechanisms. In order to use the fingerID on my/employer's macbook pro, I have to give my employer root/sync access to Google Chrome.

"The web has decided that Chrome is the only browser worth supporting…"

That only tells me that governments can no longer leave technical aspects of the internet (standards/APIs, etc.) to market forces. There are many historical precedents for such action such as flight/aircraft, RF spectrum management, road and maritime regulations, health/food standards, etc. There's a myriad of them.

Regulations would enforce interoperability and uniformity. To say this would stifle innovation is nonsense, it would be like saying that road rules and maritime law have stifled the development of motor vehicles and shipbuilding.

I use Safari as my exclusive web browser without issue.

I use Firefox, same result.

Try using a miro board. Unfortunately many sites have started breaking under Firefox, and it's a shame that web devs don't test under the 3 remaining browser, at least on a surface-level, before release.

It's not like supporting a completely different OS..

> For example, Chrome has replaced IE as the corporate browser

Strange, thought it was Edge, as it integrates with MS products much better. Must be an US thing then.

Edge is a custom Chrome, much as Opera is custom Chrome, much as ..

Although Edge is Chrome plus OS search & telemetry integration so there's extra over and above just browsing.

> 2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?

It's only different in the share of the overall market they hold - and it's notable that the EU has already acted to break Apple's monopoly over specifically the iOS browser market.

The EU wrote an entirely new law that designated companies like Apple as 'gate keepers'.

Yeah, and the effectiveness of the enforcement still remains to be seen - Apple is sure making every effort possible to adhere to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, and to isolate any changes they make exclusively to the EU. But I think it's a positive signal that we might see the decline of the big platform monopolies in our lifetime.

If Apple can do that then it's a problem with the law. You can't really make a law and then argue "we're angry that people are complying with what we said, not what we meant to say".

But then again, I wonder if part of the reason is that they can't make the law too prescriptive because that would create other problems politically (especially if it ever got pointed towards European companies)...

Well, it's also not generally very clear whether a geographical political entity like the EU actually has the ability to legislate what occurs outside its borders

re: 1) logging into a Google domain in a chrome browser, logs the browser into the Google account [auto-profile-login] [gSignin], and by default, syncs browser history to the cloud, cloud-readable [gSync]. Google's own docs describe that you can add a passphrase "so Google can't read it". While Google can read it, they have an arguable duty to shareholders to read it.

- [auto-profile-login]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26200298

- [gSignin]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277

- [gSync]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?hl=en

> Keep your info private with a passphrase With a passphrase, you can use Google's cloud to store and sync your Chrome data without letting Google read it.

Thank you appealing to reasonable expectations, but Google, as their own docs make clear, ties uses together quite aggressively^W conveniently.

2) Whatabout Apple and Safari? Apple doesn't offer an email service supported in part by scanning email content for ads.

Apple has gone to some lengths to engineer a system where they can credibly(-ish) claim to "protect your privacy when you browse the web in Safari," [Apple private relay].

- [Apple private relay]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602

Google re-engineers their browser to prevent ad-blockers from working.

But where is the consumer benefit?

Much better privacy protection and ad blocking.

There's really no rational reason for third-party cookies to still exist. The only reason they're still around is because an advertising company's browser has like 97% market share.

>Much better privacy protection and ad blocking.

The order doesn't mandate that. It mandates google SELL the data it has collected on people to third parties.

There are also privacy focussed, ad blocking focussed alternatives trivially available on the market....and people are not choosing them.

Any company which buys Chrome (Microsoft?) will have just as strong an incentive as Google to track people and run ads.

FWIW, Chrome has a 66% market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

======

Disliking a company doesn't justify any arbitrary policy against that company

> Microsoft?

It already owns Edge. I would rather bet on Meta or Amazon.

I think Meta would make the most sense. Funnel people to facebook, instagram, etc. Get all that juicy tracking data and boost additional ad revenue.

Doesn't really seem like much of a win for consumers though... it's just trading one personal data hungry megacorp for another.

I might make some sense. However, not everyone uses Facebook or Instagram; it's not quite like Google where just about everyone uses some of their services, if not many.

I suppose it would help Meta greatly expand their ad business, to places far beyond FB/IG.

I'm gonna place a wild bet on Musk.

There's no way Meta or Amazon will (/should) be allowed to buy chrome.

The same cookies that Google tried to eliminate but couldn't get traction from anyone else?

Google tried to replace 3rd party cookies with new tracking. Other browsers blocked or isolated 3rd party cookies without new tracking.

Which in itself shows 3rd party Cookies will only marginally make the internet more privacy friendly.

That would have been nice in 2014 but in 2024 the big ad industry is ready.

The only ones who will hurt the most are the ones without tie ins to authentication systems like Google auth or FB auth or apple ID etc.

Although I'm sure theres plenty of mega databases which don't need overt auths to ID a user. And contextual ads work just fine.

Perhaps if chrome finally fails people will move to better things, like servo https://github.com/servo/servo.

It would be nice to have a completely open source browser that can be built with a simple one liner from cargo. Having several thousands of eyes on the code daily to check for telemetry violations, privacy issues, security, and performance daily in mostly a single language, small, and well structured browser repo would be phenomenal compared to the disjoint jumbled messes we have today.

Better for who? I use Chrome because the experience has been the best for me.

As indicated by the explanation, better for people who believe in FOSS rather than closed corporate software.

Most developers work with a Unix mindset (do one thing well, with focus on simple and easily managed code), which tyically means telemetry is _wildly_ out of line (offers no real benefit for the basics while adding huge complexity), so privacy and security are naturally far better. Lynx like TUI browsers are a nice idea, but unfortunately sometimes an image is desired to be manually viewed, or javascript is required. It would be wonderful if javascript were simply dropped from most websites, but we don't live in that world, so we're stuck with the next best thing (disabling all js until explicitly allowed by the user).

These are the types of things people in software devs typically care about, which there are many in HN.

Best of what’s available. There’s no way to know what innovations were squashed by Google’s dominance of the browser market.

Wouldn't consumer like it if they could use Google services on any browser with the same experience without having to give up other browsers? I use firefox mainly but I have to use Chrome when I use Google Meet because Google provide more features and better performance when you are on Chrome (intentionally, not because of other browsers limitations)

consumer benefit is not the end all of antitrust.

This is from the DOJ's page on the Clayton Act, where they give two statements of purpose for the antitrust law.

>This law aims to promote fair competition and prevent unfair business practices that could harm consumers. It prohibits certain actions that might restrict competition, like tying agreements, predatory pricing, and mergers that could lessen competition.

>The Antitrust Division enforces federal antitrust and competition laws. These laws prohibit anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the benefits of competition.

Both are aimed squarely at consumer benefit. Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers *where those things impact consumer benefit.*.

Mergers and actions against competitors are obviously allowed in the normal course of business.

Lots of people have other ideas about what kind of antitrust law they'd like to see, but such a law has not passed the US Congress.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you#:~:text=T....

> prevent unfair business practices that could harm consumers. It prohibits certain actions that might restrict competition, like tying agreements

So, it's plainly written - ations don't have to actually harm consumers, the fact they could do so is enough - and the key criteria is that they might restrict competition.

The second one points to taxpayers and workers as well. This is especially important when it comes to antitrust action regarding workers rights. Actions which could lead to worse consumer experiences (at least if you consider price to be the end all)

“Taxpayers” is an extremely broad category as well, though you need an appetite for it to argue through that clause.

Though I think you can easily make a consumer argument for Chrome being unbundled (competition for Chromes default search engine pick)

...and competition is going so well in the browser market. The dedicated browser businesses (mozilla, opera, etc) are all tiny and/or struggling mightily. All of the biggest browsers are side-projects of larger tech firms.

Monetizing browsers requires either subscriptions or (further) enshittification of the web experience. Forcing /market/ competition into the space will not be great for consumers, IMO.

Perhaps the fact that large companies can subsidize their browser operations through their huge war chest and large presence on the web or in the operating system space is indicative of them using market power to crowd out competition and make paid offerings less sustainable!

Perhaps some antitrust action would help with this.

> Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers where those things impact consumer benefit..

You paraphrased incorrectly. The correct paraphrasing would be, “Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers where those things deprive consumers of the benefits of competition.”

Competition is the heart, NOT consumer benefit.

It has been since the Reagan era, but before that antitrust law had teeth

It literally is

What would you say is the end all of antitrust if not consumer benefit?

About seven different things. The whole oversimplification that it has to be one single thing has been a drift in policy (over a few decades) in combination with trying to rewrite history books. The fact that you are even asking the question that way shows how successful that rewriting was.

I am just trying to record what you think "antitrust" means. What do you think should be recorded? What history do you think is being rewritten?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Start with the Sherman act and then see that "what antitrust means" has had a long, changing history. By the way, the European understanding of antitrust still includes harm to competition as well, which often pops up on HN (e.g. how does Facebook's action harm consumers? That was not the question!).

Yet, you have lots of people in this thread claim that we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Innovation. Google has no competition and so has no incentive to innovate for consumer benefit.

More future competition and innovation.

In what? How to extract more personal information from the consumer and sell more ads?

Out of all the parts of Google that take advantage of integration to pump up ad revenues, I'd say Chrome is the least of them?

If we're serious about this, separate search and ads. Force ads-Google to pay search-Google for data on the open market, and let other people pay for the same data, make it transparent, and let consumers see exactly what's happening.

While we're at it, separate Google's display ad network from its RTB facilities, basically carving DoubleClick back out again.

Then watch the stock tumble.

> The only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together.

And that is exactly why Chrome should be broken up/out. It is unfair competition. And you say there are many other well working options out there but that is simply not true. Googles web applications work best on Chrome and often break on non Chrome browsers. Mostly because of changes to those web applications and not because of random browser bugs. This is how you win people over and complete your browser world domination.

"And that is exactly why Chrome should be broken up/out."

Exactly, we saw this with MS's IE 2—3 decades ago. That governments didn't learn from this and let it repeat with Chrome is so damn annoying.

Do we really still think operating systems shouldn't ship with browsers??

I thought that one had been retroactively deemed a pretty silly decision

Well I certainly don't, but clearly MS, Google and others think the exact opposite.

No points for guessing why as it's damn obvious.

I think the circumstances were quite different. MS was an entrenched player when they created IE/started monopolizing. Google was not an entrenched player. They rose to monopoly power.

Ah three decades ago, a year before Internet Explorer was released[0], and 7 months after Netscape was released[1], easy to correct in hindsight.

Two decades ago IE6 was already 3yo, Safari 1 was 1yo, and it would take 4 years for Chrome to drop[2].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

What a useless comment.

When you use decades, it is implied that the precision is rough, interpreting it as exactly 30 years ago is just bad faith.

OP is correct - in the timespan between 2 and 3 decades ago, MS / IE implemented its full range of anti-competitive practices and at least partially through them became even more dominant than Chrome is today.

There are lots of MSFTers who now work for Google. They just relocated from the Microsoft office in Palo Alto to the Google one down the road.

Same people = same mistakes.

Browsing the internet hasn't really changed during the last 15 years or so. I hope that this will enable development of totally new browsers or even completely different ways to use the internet.

> DOJ is trying to completely change Google's business model and dictate how they are supposed to make money

This is good reasoning. It is overreach for a regulatory body to do something that could impact the business model of a monopoly. Monopolies are bad, unless being a monopoly is part of that monopoly’s business model and an important part of how the monopoly makes money, in which case nothing should be done.

I do mostly agree with grandparent, but not with your take.

What is the problem with government regulating, say, the ingredients that can be used in foods, forbidding addictive drugs from being added to them? Or selling drugs that are completely fake or outright dangerous?

This obsession with small governments (and basically, libertarianism) doesn't really stand on proper grounds.

Why can't the government work for you? Maybe it's an inherent bias given that I'm from Europe, but I think the stereotypical utopia about "big government" is much more true for huge corporations (which have absolutely no safety mechanisms built in to prevent a paper clip factory going overboard in the name of profit) compared to the slow-moving, democratic, slightly corrupt governments. Only one of these have accountability in a humane form, while the only metric for corporate is a single number.

This is a good point. “Why should anyone think about monopolies when we could imagine what it would be like if they put nicotine in beefaroni?” is exactly the sort of salient and nuanced discourse that is sorely lacking these day’s

> unless being a monopoly is part of that monopoly’s business model and an important part of how the monopoly makes money, in which case nothing should be done.

Can you expand on this?

My read of this is based on an assumption that monopolies will always structure their business around being monopolies. This post is implying that there cases where there are not, and those are the only cases where antitrust law should be enforced. Based on this contradiction, as well as the odd phrasing, emphasizing how important making money is over resolving the badness of monopolies, I'm pretty sure this is a joke.

It's a distillation of the top level comment done in a sarcastic manner meant to indicate the dubious natute of the original claim.

I would assume they're being facetious.

For years people have complained "ugh Google is selling your data, how awful" and here is the government seeking to mandate that Google sell your data! There's no way that this is the right remedy.

How so?

Considering Chrome is just Chromium + a lil telemetry, forcing them to sell Chrome is akin to forcing them to sell consumer data. The Chromium bits are OSS, so the only proprietary and sellable bit is the user data really.

Agreed

It would be great for consumers. Google would be forced to make their products work just as well with other browsers as it does with their own.

I only use Chrome to interact with Google properties. I'd love to use Firefox for everything.

I see a lot of people saying Google services don't work well on other browsers. Can someone give an example? I've been using Firefox desktop and mobile for a year and haven't had any issues with Google stuff. At least YouTube, drive, docs, sheets, etc. seem to work just fine

In google docs if you highlight some text and right click there are options for copy and paste. If you click them in chrome it works fine, if you click them in Firefox it says:

"These actions are unavailable using the Edit menus, but you can still use: Ctrl+C - for copy, Ctrl+X - for cut, Ctrl+V - for paste"

So for some reason some functions are just not present in other browsers. I can guarantee they could implement these functions if they wanted to.

Oh I didn't even clock that that was a Firefox thing.

Could it be due to Firefox not supporting the clipboard APIs until quite recently?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard_A...

Have you tried using Google Meet on Safari? You can’t use filters, blur the background, and basically all other features besides basic video and audio.

I have random loading issues when I try to play something on the YouTube shorts page. The audio would play but not the video. Refreshing the page sometimes fixed this

> There are many other better options out there otherwise, and they are all free.

For how long, though?

The trajectory for Firefox doesn’t look good at all (and it’s completely dependent on Google too).

Apple are doing their share of anticompetitive shenanigans with Safari on iOS, although the other way around.

Everything else is based on Chromium and therefore not contributing to any heterogeneity of implementations.

> The trajectory for Firefox doesn’t look good at all (and it’s completely dependent on Google too).

Can you elaborate on this? I am using Firefox since it was released, and it is getting better, not worse.

They keep firing large chunks of their employees due to not much cash, and the majority of their funding comes from google which it is phasing out over time.

Once Chrome is spun out of Google and Firefox loses its Google sponsorship, Firefox and Chrome will be able to complete for $$$ on an equal basis -- maybe by charging for the browser software, or selling a subscription, or selling user data to companies, etc.

It's market share has been slowly trending downward since forever

Not everything else is based on Chromium - see: Epiphany, Servo, Ladybird.

Can anyone think of a hero to save us?

Ladybird Web Browser becomes a non-profit with $1M from GitHub Founder

20240701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40856791

Precisely. Thank you for affirming that setup aha

https://github.com/servo/servo

Servo is upcoming, but so far it is fantastic in comparison to any other browser out there.

I tend to focus on any software that does not require 12 teams of people 6 weeks to determine how to build a single binary because of the use of 20 different programming languages and mixing and matching of paradigms and solutions to subconponents. I very much appreciate simplicity and look for highly secure and private programs that highly discourage JavaScript from ever being run.

Servo is finally a breath of fresh air in that regard.

Interesting, until today I had assumed that Servo was basically dead and that most of the interesting bits had been integrated into Firefox. I'll give Servo a try and see if I like it.

Maybe Zen Browser as an alternative to Firefox.

> It sounds like the end goal of this is to enrich other companies, not customers.

In this case, the "customers" are other companies.

Antitrust markets can be defined broadly or narrowly. In this case, the market was "general web search advertising" (among others).

Who are the consumers in this market? People and companies that want their ads placed where (and to who) it matters.

So fuck all of the billions of users of Chrome I guess, and let the other advertising companies make some money.

I'm sure everyone will be thanking the DOJ for their poorer Web experience, knowing that their sacrifice is allowing other ad companies to earn their fair share.

Exactly. Everybody thinks they're the consumer, but often times consumers are other companies.

The thing I keep coming back to is that everyone needs a job. So unless we all go to work for Google, things that help other companies help the employees of other companies.

They may think they are consumers, but most often they are the consumables.

> The only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together.

Isn't that kind of the complaint though? Google, by controlling the platform and therefore sort of indirectly controlling the entire web, can make it artificially easier to push you to their products, and push you away from others.

If I wanted, for example, to make a competitor to Google Docs, I'm not just competing with Google Docs, I'm also competing with the integration of Google Docs with Chrome, meaning that Google Docs can be artificially better than my product. While I don't know if Google has actually done this, it would be pretty easy for them to actively gimp any Google Doc competitor in Chrome so that you're more likely to use their service instead.

This would be like if Tesla made the roads and the roads could recharge batteries but only to Tesla vehicles and you as a Tesla owner saying this is not anti-competitive.

Even as a non Tesla owner I would say that’s not anti competitive if every other OEM is also able to make their own roads, which is exactly the case with Chrome.

There’s multiple browsers, and people might choose Chrome because it has a better ecosystem around it. That means it’s a better product for those people.

Explain to me how there can be two roads occupying the same space? A road network is a natural monopoly.

But Chrome doesn't work that way at all? Google gives Chromium away for free - which has enabled innovation across the software industry beyond the browser space if I must say so.

In this scenario do I get a free car and get to drive on the fancy roads for free? Sign me up.

By that same logic, Safari is the #1 browser on mobile in the US and should also be spun off.

> It sounds like the end goal of this is to enrich other companies, not customers.

Then end goal is fostering competitions in a market where there is basically none. So yes, it obviously benefits would be competitors. That's the point.

> The only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together. There are many other better options out there otherwise, and they are all free. Breaking out Chrome from Google will not in any way benefit me as a consumer.

It will benefit you in many ways, including: Better compatibility of Google with multiple browsers, and a browser which doesn't actively encourage you to use Google products and services.

Indirectly, a reduction in Google's centralized power will make life easier for many people and organizations which offer you services and products (yes, I realize that's a bit vague and needs some elaboration).

> It will benefit you in many ways, including: Better compatibility of Google with multiple browsers

No, the way you do that is to pass a law that says Google can't intentionally make their websites work worse in other browsers. That's not what the dumb DOJ is doing.

Perhaps you're right, but this level of specificity is not usually something we find in primary legislation (AFAIK). Also, the DOJ may be motivated to act to a different extent than the two chambers of Congress. Still, it's always possible that this measure may end up not being effective.

This is the government answer to doing something about privacy. It's what the people said they wanted when they voted. Right?

Realistically nothing is going to happen. The incoming admin has made clear their distaste for Lina Khan. In other words, this is just an attempt at a swan song by the Biden White House.

This Trump admin lawsuit began this lawsuit, and Trump previously expressed distaste for Google. Things may change but they may not

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