I can't see Chrome surviving as a standalone product - where is the revenue? I am sure someone will buy it and try to create some "premium" version, but ultimately it will wither and die I expect.
Is this about breaking Google from a popular browser, or just about punishing Google for offering services people find useful?
It feels to me that it is more about punishing Google than about chrome. Apple and Microsoft seem to be able to get away with wat worse with their browsers - literally every time i use my win11 laptop it is nagging me to use edge or warn me that I should change my default browser to use edge or whatever. Apple won't even let you use another browser at all. But that is somehow fine and allowed?
- A pure focus on web browser monetization could lead to some interesting enterprise options. Presumably there'll be a lot of attempts to leverage Chromium, and an aggressive fork at some point.
- As AI proliferates, can they pull additional revenue by getting revshare from subscription AI products, alongside SEM? Or even revshare?
This could also change the calculus for Apple building a search engine. If they could get an independent Chrome to sign on, with some data sharing provisions to help with development, they'd have a huge leg-up.
Alternatively, maybe they try to create a fusion of search results and AI from a variety of providers, so they can monetize SERPs themselves.
Revenue seems incredibly strong. My question would be whether they could get back to aggressive product execution, given the size of the codebase.