DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly
theverge.com
theverge.com
Hell yes. Next YouTube!
That being said, it’s basically TV before the internet.
Why?
> This must not be from a private entity
The way it stands this sentence does not make sense. Rephrase it slightly and it makes a lot of sense: this must not be from a single private entity. There should be several, preferably many private entities offering such services.
In a truly ideal world everyone would be able to host a video service because there would be essentially unlimited bandwidth, with several competing indexing services providing discoverability. In a slightly less ideal but more achievable world people would still get to run their own services, discoverability would still be provided through competing indexers and the lack of bandwidth would be solved through some sort peer to peer mechanism. The only way in which the government should be involved is in upholding the law of the land by prosecuting those who break said law. That's it, really.
Somehow, Apple / Microsoft / Amazon / … skate by without getting the same beat-down.
Besides, plenty of governments had similar hard-ons against MS & IE in the early 2000s, people just have very short memories in the digital age.
> Apple / Microsoft / Amazon / … skate by without getting the same beat-down.
Their time will come. Defending something bad by pointing at others and saying they are also doing it is typically low-effort reactionism.
In any case, this is more whataboutism than anything. The fact that you perceive others as not being targeted doesn't mean that nothing should be done about Google's monopoly on Search.
Do anticompetitive things, win anticompetitive prizes.
Hopefully through that Google will end up with less influence to force anti-consumer decisions, like the recent adblock downgrades, on Chrome.
Fair enough, right? Of course all this is assuming decent oversight by DOJ, not allowing the sale to someone with monopolistic incentives of their own, e.g. Microsoft.
It’s like raising an exceptional child who is a criminal and having people come out of the woodwork saying “he was so good, he didn’t do anything wrong”
Many Apple products only connect with other Apple products. Microsoft keeps poking/pushing to use Edge on Microsoft. Brave browser did eat into share and made a mark.
What is stopping from other kids in the field (FF, Edge, Opera etc) to be better, beat Chrome and also blocks ads?
Analogies work fine for shallow understanding, but like comparing electricity with flow of water inside the pipes, they very quickly break down once you get a bit deeper into the subject.
To make my point clearer, building a browser is not like raising a child, because building a browser is just coding: need more features - hire more developers. They built Chrome not for the good of humanity but for the benefit of their commercial interests.
I know there are other arguments against Manifest v2, but they seem like parallel construction to justify the “real” reason.
The best argument I could make is that owning chrome allows you to see the searches people make on Google in the address bar (and if you were unscrupulous, on Google's Search page as well)? Maybe that's strong enough?
I'm genuinely concerned as a lover of the web that this will slow the innovation we've seen in the space to a crawl. The web has grown so much since the bad old days in no small part due to Chrome. I wonder if Google's vested interest in growing the web (since as when the web grows, so does search and ads usage) would result in them investing in Firefox instead, but I strongly doubt it (at least, not to the same level).
This is outrageous from the DOJ, hopefully Google can appeal. Given how the Google ecosystem works together, I don't see how this doesn't hurt consumers in the end.
It's a huge blow to open source in practice. It means the government doesn't accept the business strategy of making excellent open source software as a complement to main business aims.
> While the government isn’t going as far as to demand Google spin out its Android business, it’s leaving the option open.
Its a silly notion, but I'm just thinking out loud.
None of these options seem likely to create anything better than what we have now.
On the upshot, Firefox is going to see a resurgence. Hey, maybe Mozilla buys it?
If this happens, Mozilla is going to be fighting for survival, it’s not going to be in a position to make acquisitions.