https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/doj-google-must-sell-...
Yes, Tik Tok still needs to divest ownership or be banned in the US
For one, they simply have had a better product, at least in the past. Part of their large monopoly is due to just being better outright for a large portion of users (presumably). Are we to punish making overly-good products?
For another, sell to whom? And why would they be a good steward?
And yet another, there's literally Chromium, which other browsers (built by other corps) use, e.g. Edge, Brave, etc.
Did Google have to open Chromium? No.
Disclaimer: I hold these opinions weakly and would love to learn more about why they might be ill-premised.
Google did not make Chromium from scratch, and so were obligated to use a license compatible with the previous source they used. That source can be traced back to KDE's Konqueror browser and its KHTML engine.
However they chose to do it in the open, side benefit they also got to use a ton of preexisting code.