OpenAI Wants to Buy Google's Chrome Browser

[TheOldChevy]

I am not sure I understand the whole story right:
1) Search engine dominator must sell Browser that owns the Internet market because both together represent an illegal horizontal advantage
2) AI service providers supplant Search engines in the way people interact with Internet
3) AI service providers dominator buys Browser that owns the Internet market

How far is this better than the initial position ?

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Oh hell YEAH ! I crave for a Gemini integration , which hasn't come after all this time .

I absolutely love chrome and I hope it falls in good hands

 

[JapanApple]

A SELLING COST? " A penguin, A DUCK, AND A goose TO BE NAMED LATER. 😝

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

This is wild. I don’t really mess with Google too much anymore, beyond a burner GMAIL account, but I really don’t see the ‘issue’ of them having their own (bloated) web browser.

70% of web browsing world wide is done on Chrome. This is a huge deal.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

Don’t know why they don’t just make it like the fair use aspect of patents that are required for some technology to work, though I forget the term.

Just make it so Google has to offer their data at a fair and reasonable rate, as while as not out right just refusing their competition.

I do not get how this is fair at all. Will all companies have to offer their data for a price? Why would you get into the data business then?
Government over reach is what I see. I feel the same way about Apple. Why should Apple be forced to allow iPhone apps from different stores? If you do not like Apple’s rules and their products don’t buy them. It is not like a gun is being put to your head.

 

[TheMacDaddy1]

Appeals will take 10 years and lots WILL change in that time.

 

[surferfb]

I am not sure I understand the whole story right:
1) Search engine dominator must sell Browser that owns the Internet market because both together represent an illegal horizontal advantage
2) AI service providers supplant Search engines in the way people interact with Internet
3) AI service providers dominator buys Browser that owns the Internet market

How far is this better than the initial position ?

Because the government is always fighting the last war and not the upcoming war. It hasn’t occurred to them that search is already slowly on the way out thanks to AI. So they’ll see no problem with that.

 

[drrich2]

Use the build-in browser of your OS. Rumor has it both macOS and Windows ship with one. Problem solved. 😇

The user didn't have a problem to begin with, but the government still will. It wasn't so terribly long ago Microsoft got a lot of heat for Internet Explorer being bundled into Windows as the default. Granted, browsers used to cost money but I think Microsoft didn't like the idea of Netscape Navigator being the dominant player in an important emerging platform so they put out Internet Explorer free, which cut the market out from under Netscape. Now that sounded 'anti-competitive.'

How long until people have the torches and pitchforks out because Microsoft owning Edge and integrating it with Windows is an unfair advantage, the dreaded power of default app.s?

 

[lkrupp]

Don't get your panties in an uproar over Google being forced to divest anything. Like Microsoft Google will negotiate a settlement with the government that lets them stay intact.

 

[MacGizmo]

"You're a bad driver, so as punishment, we're taking away your golf clubs."

If they're trying to punish Google, they should force them to sell off either the search business or the ad business.

 

[neotint]

Given that ClosedAI isn't Open, does this mean they'd stop supporting Chromium? Wonder how much FLOSS and proprietary web (Brave, Opera, Arc, DuckDuckGo, Vivaldi etc) is threatened by a mostly Closed company like "OpenAI" taking over Chrome development?

 

[neotint]

"You're a bad driver, so as punishment, we're taking away your golf clubs."

If they're trying to punish Google, they should force them to sell off either the search business or the ad business.

Better yet: ban all targeted advertising as many ethical tech leaders previously and wisely suggested.

 

[The_Gream]

I do not get how this is fair at all. Will all companies have to offer their data for a price? Why would you get into the data business then?
Government over reach is what I see. I feel the same way about Apple. Why should Apple be forced to allow iPhone apps from different stores? If you do not like Apple’s rules and their products don’t buy them. It is not like a gun is being put to your head.

I agree with you. But if the option is ether sale your product (in this case Google would sell Chrome) or license your data you collected at a fair and reasonable rate, I think companies would lean toward option two.

 

[drrich2]

Better yet: ban all targeted advertising as many ethical tech leaders previously and wisely suggested.

Then we're subjected to advertising not relevant to us...like guys sitting through commercials for feminine hygiene products. I've come to appreciate targeted advertising.

 

[cocoua]

regulators against the public they try to protect. (if you live in UE, you KNOW what cookies are, COOKIES are something none care before they forced every web to ask you about cookies, so web surfing in EU now takes double the time dismissing or accepting every f****G cookie alert)

-Ey Superman! I need your help! my leg is stuck under this truck.
-Dont worry weak human, I'll cut your leg so you will be free... There!... Your welcome!

 

[vantelimus]

I trust open-ai even less than i trust google

This is like the DOJ forcing the red cross to divest it's blood bank division and count dracula offering to buy it.

I'm curious as to your reasons for trusting Open-AI less than Google. Are there things sleazy things OpenAI has done which justify your wariness? I didn't follow the intrigue that went on a while back where Altman was removed and then returned. It sounded like normal corporate politics that got out of hand and went public. I know they had some sort of split with Musk. Other than my complete and total faith that Musk was probably the evil one in that situation, I have no idea of what happened.

So, please fill me in on what is nefarious about OpenAi.

 

[surferfb]

I'm curious as to your reasons for trusting Open-AI less that Google. Are there things sleazy things OpenAI has done which justify your wariness? I didn't follow the intrigue that went on a while back where Altman was removed and then returned. It sounded like normal corporate politics that got out of hand and went public. I know they had some sort of split with Musk. Other than my complete and total faith that Musk was probably the evil one in that situation, I have no idea of what happened.

So, please fill me in on what is nefarious about OpenAi.

As far as I can tell, lots of people don’t trust “AI” and therefore any company doing it is suspect - particularly if they scraped the open internet to train their models.

 

[vantelimus]

Then we're subjected to advertising not relevant to us...like guys sitting through commercials for feminine hygiene products. I've come to appreciate targeted advertising.

Targeted advertising can be done without violating privacy. It can even follow you across sites. The advertising infrastructure start up I founded in 1996 had a plan for exactly that. That part of the plan never got far. Neither advertisers nor internet investors wanted privacy. Sure there were people concerned about PII and the IAB made the appropriate noises about limiting its collection. But, investors wanted monetizable assets and advertisers wanted better targeting.

 

[turbineseaplane]

As far as I can tell, lots of people don’t trust “AI” and therefore any company doing it is suspect - particularly if they scraped the open internet to train their models.

How are you one hand concerned about Apple getting remunerated for their IP (dev tooling and the like, and all the EU angles on that) but not care at all about the AI companies disregarding any copyright concerns and hoovering everything up to repackage for their own business usages?

 

[surferfb]

How are you one hand concerned about Apple getting remunerated for their IP (dev tooling and the like, and all the EU angles on that) but not care at all about the AI companies disregarding any copyright concerns and hoovering everything up to repackage for their own business usages?

View attachment 2504763

I definitely have significant concerns about it!

 

[surferfb]

I definitely have significant concerns about it!

To expand on this - I think AI companies should absolutely have licensing agreements in place for any copyrighted material. Unfortunately, the horse is out of the barn on that one. Now that many of them are citing sources, maybe that’s a way to remunerate websites. But open to ideas.

 

[It’s always something]

To expand on this - I think AI companies should absolutely have licensing agreements in place for any copyrighted material. Unfortunately, the horse is out of the barn on that one. Now that many of them are citing sources, maybe that’s a way to remunerate websites. But open to ideas.

“Copyrighted material” applies to anything that has been published on the Internet, according to US copyright law. One does not need to file for a copyright in order to enjoy copyright protection. Technically you don’t even need the statement of copyright (unless something has changed in recent years); the statement’s function is effectively to wipe out plausible deniability on the part of infringers.

 

[drrich2]

Targeted advertising can be done without violating privacy. It can even follow you across sites. The advertising infrastructure start up I founded in 1996 had a plan for exactly that. That part of the plan never got far.

Please elaborate a bit on what 'privacy' is to you here. I've never been in the industry so I don't have the experiential frame of reference you do. To my layman's perspective, targeted advertising that follows me across sites evidently knows on some level who I am (at least as an IP address, etc...), what I tend to browse, and can follow me across sites.

That doesn't sound entirely 'private.' On other other hand, I don't see FaceBook or Google listing my name, mailing address, etc..., for public consumption.

And I'm not nothing special, just Joe Shmoe American Consumer, so no point in any dedicated spying other than to guess what adds might trigger modest purchases.

So what privacy otherwise is being invaded?

P.S.: The main privacy issues I'm concerned about are the big data breaches where credit card numbers and social security numbers get out on the 'dark web.'

 

[MacHeritage]

This makes no sense. For web developers, Google is a big deal and any Chrome based browser has Google's web tools built in and that goes together with Google Console and the PageSpeed web site and... there is a lot tied together with Google that web developers use. Separating some of that would be crazy. How does Lighthouse get updates through Google and how does that apply to PageSpeed etc. and then how does that all apply to Google search etc.? What a mess this could be.

I just don't get how this helps anything. I would never want to see OpenAI near Google anything, and I don't like Google as a company at all! OpenAI is far worse than Google, IMO.

 

[MacHeritage]

Targeted advertising can be done without violating privacy. It can even follow you across sites. The advertising infrastructure start up I founded in 1996 had a plan for exactly that. That part of the plan never got far. Neither advertisers nor internet investors wanted privacy. Sure there were people concerned about PII and the IAB made the appropriate noises about limiting its collection. But, investors wanted monetizable assets and advertisers wanted better targeting.

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing that.