And start charging for everything else out there like maps, street view, and browser. And buy cloudflare while at it. Push themselves into everything related to connectivity and internet properties.
The search business is the cash flow that is being a thorn in the side of Google. And it doesn’t even make sense in its vision anymore.
But it does solve an important problem: Who in their right mind would buy Chrome? It's not a profitable business to be in, without the surrounding ad business, and in turn the insane amount of traffic from Google Search.
Almost by definition, anyone who would be interested in buying Chrome and turning it into a commercial product shouldn't be allowed to buy it. The only buyer I can imaging is OpenText.
This. If Search + Google Ads is independent from Android + Chrome + Gmail, it will choke the user-data flow that Google Ads platform is feeding on. This opens doors to new competing search engines!
Android + Chrome + Gmail needs to be bundled with hardware purchases, like Apple does with Safari + iCloud. This will create incentive to make them actually privacy focused, and could be its selling point. No need to feed Google Ads with data anymore!
Yeah, dreaming.
What Google loses is everything client (user) side: Chrome, Android, Gmail and other personal cloud services. Lets call it Foogle :)
Foogle can charge Samsung et al. for its Android and personal cloud services it is running. And use it in its own Pixel devices too. And may elect to make it hard for Google to sniff it, like droppung doobleclick cookies in Foogle Chrome, provide "Foogle Private Relay", et cetera.