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Comment by digitcatphd | Hacker News Reader

This is clearly a PR stunt. Perplexity knows Google would not sell Chrome, it is the holy grail of their ads strategy and would cripple their moat.

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You may be unaware that Google has lost an antitrust suit and that the DOJ has asked the courts to require Google sell Chrome. Whether or not Google can bribe their way out of it is yet to be seen, but they may not have a choice, so it's a pretty big one time opportunity.

Yes and the courts are idiots. Why buy Chrome when you they can get Chromium for free? What good is Chrome outside of Google?

Not to mention what does that mean for ChromeOS?

The courts have, for the first time in decades, done their job. It seems ridiculous now but it should've been done ten years ago.

The impact is in removing Google's control of the customer base, not in a copy of the code.

And the customer base is still is going to voluntarily choose to go to Google search and YouTube like they always have. That’s where the money is. Windows still has the majority of the desk to market share and Google search is not the default. Yet people still choose to use Google.

As far as Chrome itself, every single desktop OS user except for those forced to use ChromeOS went out of their way to willingly download Chrome.

And how, pray tell, where all of these people made aware of Chrome?

Google made the first ad for its front page for Chrome. This is not in itself a problem, but Google has a monopoly in search and ads. They cannot be allowed to also have a monopoly in browsers. That’s the whole point of American monopoly laws. Once you have a monopoly, you can’t do everything you want. There are limits. Owning a browser is too much power in one monopolistic giant.

So let’s say that Google doesn’t own Chrome. Does that affect where Google actually makes its money? In 2025 when most people first by a Windows computer, do they use Bing or go to Google?

Google does not have a monopoly on ads. Billions are spent on ads on Facebook properties, Amazon, Apple (app store), TikTok. People choose to use Google for search and can go to any other search engine if they choose.

In 2025, Google search is so bad more and more people are using LLM based search tools.

While the vibes around Google Search are indeed bad, the numbers haven't shown a dip in usage. And it's not like Google has rested on its laurels. They're shoving AI in search as much as they can.

This is an extremely naive take. Sundar Pichai's claim to fame was getting the Google Toolbar and Chrome pushed into the Adobe Reader installer back in the day. So many OEMs were shoving Chrome and Google into their default loads that Microsoft had to make a "Bing Edition" of Windows for a bit with a lower price to include Bing and Edge as default, and have now outright blocked the practice I believe.

When you visit Google Search or Gmail on your default browser, you get at least one but sometimes as many as three separate popups telling you to install Chrome for "faster" ability to search/email.

Today many product vendors incorrectly claim that their website or service will only work on Chrome, and refuse to provide support unless you switch to it.

Oh, and my personal favorite: If you aren't the admin of a PC, Chrome malware-installs in the user profile folder so you can circumvent your IT department!

Google's power to force Chrome on people is insane, and as the government has now determined, illegally anticompetitive.

This is 2025. People who buy Windows get a Chromium based browser where Google Search is not the default yet they go to Google.

I have a Mac, don’t use Chrome or a Chromium based browser and haven’t had an issue.

And you are forced to install Chrome on Windows? Besides wouldn’t you want your applications to install without requiring admin access?

Wait, are you suggesting you don't see an issue with people being able to install a web browser on a PC they don't own?

Hopefully you are being sarcastic.

I have never in 30 years across 10 companies including one BigTech company not been trusted with admin access to my computer.

However, admins have been able to lock down computers to not allow them to install software at least since Windows NT.

No I am honestly terrified that the industry is that bad. Good Lord. You're telling me you've never worked somewhere which has ever complied with a bare minimum IT security policy ever? Has nobody where you work heard of defense in depth? We have built a temple to madness.

I worked at Amazon - AWS Professional Services to be exact. They trusted their employees with admin access. You had to toggle an option and click on a box saying you would be responsible with admin access.

I think AWS knows a little bit about defense in depth…

Every blue badge employee at Amazon as far as I know has the ability to get Admin access by clicking on a button on the home built app.

You also might be surprised that in the last 8 years since working with AWS technology, I’ve never worked at a company where I didn’t have Admin access to an AWS account. At AWS we could create as many sandbox accounts as we wanted to with Admin access and every client I have worked with for thd pass five+ years I’ve asked for a none production account with the “PowerUser” policy + iam::* permissions - which is admin in all but name.

> I think AWS knows a little bit about defense in depth…

What you're telling me is that they do not. And that every mom and pop shop IT outfit is more qualified to secure a server than Amazon is.

I am suppose to believe a random HN poster knows more about governing a large internal IT department - actually the second largest employer in the US and the largest cloud provider?

If so, I still know some people inside AWS. I’m sure they will be willing to back up a shit ton of money to your doorstep to teach them the error of their ways.

All I'm saying, is what you've told me is so foundationally bad that instead of being a sort of off-topic comment in this post, it should be the #1 headline on HN. I'm frankly stunned. I don't really care if I don't have enough authority to be believable to you or not, I never asked you to. But most community college professors for the IT trade degrees could explain it if you asked.

And oh, I'm sure Amazon folks would have some high buzzwordy reasons to suggest this is okay in their environment. Everyone bad at security does it.

Yes, because community college professors know the latest best practices from spending years in the industry working with large enterprises and managing employees at scale…

I would be shocked if most BigTech developers don’t have admin access to their computers and some type of MDM software that automatically disable disallowed apps.

When was the last time you heard about an exploit to AWS’s or GCPs internal systems based on employee installed software? It might shock you, that it started at Google with the zero trust initiative. But AWS was rapidly moving away from requiring VPNs to gain access to any of their internal systems.

That’s ultimately for the courts to decide but what’s at issue is not the control of Chrome itself but wether Google is allowed to offer a browser. Any browser.

People on this site seem to forget that courts can compel companies. Open-source is not a magic bullet that invalidates consent decrees. If Google is forced to sell off Chrome and forbidden from offering a browser due to their monopoly in the ad market, they can’t shout open-source and it no longer applies. Google could probably keep spending engineer hours working on Chromium, but wouldn’t be allowed to offer it bundled with its products, and have it on their own website.

Are they going to compel Google to not allow people to go to their sites? Even when it’s not the default search engine (Windows), they still voluntarily go there.

Who is going to fund the browser development? Is it going to be funded like Firefox dependent on Google ad revenue?

The only product bundled with Chrome are ChromeOS notebooks and Android phones and neither has a majority market share in the US.

You're discussing the wrong thing; Google might have to sell Chrome because they have a monopoly on search and ads. Not on the browser.

And getting rid of Chrome is not going to stop people from choosing to go to Google. The desktop with the largest market share neither comes with Chrome nor has Google as the default search engine and people still go there.

As far as ads, there are three trillion+ market cap companies with a thriving ad business - Google, Amazon and Meta.

Also likely a political PR stunt.

This is a completely bipartisan aligned issue. Trump's administration has basically said that Biden's antitrust enforcement is the one thing they did right (in their opinion). These investigations started under Trump 1, continued under Biden, and will likely be successfully enforced under Trump 2.

There's a lot of reason big corps were trying to get Harris to agree to fire Lina Khan in exchange for support: The only way they get out of this is a bribe. And we've already seen Trump is both happy to take the bribe... and still punish you anyways.

No core AI model, Its a wrapper, And valuation at $18 billion is just fabricated fake PR, After deep seek and other free Core AI models based AI tools it has no future and its CEO knows that is why he is just focusing on public stunts & then raising as much as he can and withdraw by packing massive paychecks to himself.

> would cripple their moat.

Would end their unfair monopolistic control over the web, search, and digital advertising.

The DOJ or the FTC need to force this dismantlement.

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