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U.S. DoJ Again Calls for Google to Sell Chrome

This will be the end of FireFox. And basically the free and open internet as we know it. No more money to Mozilla and Apple means basically that both are going to need to get their money elsewhere. For Apple this isn't an issue. For Mozilla it will be. They are either going to have to make a deal with either Microsoft or Amazon (same issue) or they will have to make the user pay for the browser or (most likely) the development of it will slow to a crawl.

Also Chrome is going to be bloated with ads when they don't easily get money from Google like they do now.

Basically we go from now 2 browsers on PC to 0. Until ofcourse someone is going to make a deep fork of Chromium. And my money is on MS. So basically we'll have Internet Explorer (Edge) with no competition.

My question to everyone who wants this: do you really want to go to a world where Internet Explorer defines how the web is run?
 
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When is DOGE going to cut wasteful spendings at DOJ?

Tell Google to sell Chrome? Seriously?
Google search is a monopoly because it is better than anything else out there. It’s easy to make a browser. It’s easy to market and advertise it. It’s easy for users to switch browsers. What is the problem here exactly?
 
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SanderEvers said:
Basically we go from now 2 browsers on PC to 0. Until ofcourse someone is going to make a deep fork of Chromium. And my money is on MS. So basically we'll have Internet Explorer (Edge) with no competition.

My question to everyone who wants this: do you really want to go to a world where Internet Explorer defines how the web is run?
Click to expand...
You realize Edge is based on Chromium, right? Chrome and Edge use the same browser engine. Internet Explorer has been dead for a long time.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Nothing that can't be solved by some well placed, fully corrupt, quid pro quo bribe payments to the wannabe Godfather

donald-trump-the-don-godfather-2020-presidential-louis-john.jpg
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A billion dollar donation to his personal account will make it all go away.
 
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It’s always something said:
As of October 2024 Chrome had 79.4% market share on desktop and 68% on mobile, according to Wikipedia via Chat-GPT. And that doesn’t include Chromium-based browsers.
Click to expand...

that is only one of the three metrics

en.wikipedia.org

Usage share of web browsers - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

The range is 56 - 79%

i think the government may be picking the one where Edge is the weakest on purpose.

Apple Safari is the net biggest player , but it isn't multiple platform .... so how is that going to help customers/users that are not on Apple platforms. most of the rest of the remaining are Chrominou based. Google already shares the code for chrome. Anyone who wants to can create another clone that doesn't have the Google search as the default.
 
MacRumors said:
The latest DoJ filing refers to Google's "unlawful and unchecked, monopolistic conduct" that has led to people being reliant on the Google search engine, calling Google an "economic goliath."
The DoJ says that "Google must divest the Chrome browser" to provide the opportunity for another company to "operate a significant gateway to search the internet" without Google's control.
Click to expand...


'provide an opportunity'. Errrr. Chrome is already open source! 4 other other competitors on the market by measure already use it ( Edge , Opera , Samsung, android ).

The goverment propose is to sell an open source product with not viable means of substantive funding to do what in the advance of user's interests. The more likely outcome is that this will distablizez the other open source contributors. if they pull the funding that mozilla gets ... yet another distablizezd code base.
if the goverment ' plan' was to grow the market share of Safair on Apple only platforms .... not sure what would be a 'better' plan would be.

[. kind of goofy as the break up of AT&T which only returned as AT&T several years later. mostly pointless and likely to be like the AT&T saga an the end result is a worse company. ( The southcentral bell was one of worst ways to reformulate )
 
JohnC1959 said:
Hmmm does Chrome really give Google such a big advantage? There are several web browsers that get a decent share of the market. I like Google for a number of things but I don't use Chrome (anymore). Switching browsers was easy.
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It’s not so much about the browser aspect, but the Chrome environment as a whole. This includes ChromeOS, the Chrome web/cloud platform that integrates all of Google’s apps and services. Chrome as a platform rapidly went from being on the chopping block to a juggernaut in the education industry while finding inroads into the home and budget PC markets via Chromebooks.

I really don’t see how Google is supposed to just sell or spin off Chrome. The latest Chromebooks run the ChromeOS layer atop an Android base. Everything Chrome is integral to all of Googles apps, data, etc..

The only real players at this point in the browser market are Chrome, Safari and Mozilla. Edge is built on Chrome now and so is DuckDuckGo. Apple does their own thing with Safari. Chrome and any other browsers running on iOS/ iPadOS/ VisionOS are all built on Apple’s WebKit, so Chrome on your iPad is Safari wearing a skin. Mozilla brings us Firefox and it also serves as the base for Tor and some other non-Chrome, non-WebKit(Apple) browsers.

Chrome as a browser platform also consists of Chromium, which is open source and freely licensed. Google’s own Chrome system and APIs are built upon Chromium, but augmented. As others can do as well.

I really don’t think the DOJ even knows that they’re talking about here. And if they somehow force Google to sell off Chrome, which ultimately would mean they would have to sell the Chromium project somehow. If Chrome became separated from Google, it would whither and die. Google would just double-down on Android as the platform and Chromebooks would cease to exist — they would just be AndroidBooks or whatever they want to call them. They would develop a new browser platform and the market would follow.
 
To be true, I don't understand why DOJ should force Google to sell Chrome. Google invested a lot of money to make Chrome what it is now, they have made Chromium as open source. If they didn't want competition, they could make an Internet Explorer or Safari. People are using Chrome as their favorit browser is their choice. Why should google sell away for it? In future, DOJ will force Apple to sell off iPhone as Apple has monopoly on that device!
By the way, I don't use Chrome.
 
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JohnC1959 said:
Agree. If Apple gave the users a list of search engines to set as default I suspect 90%+ would select Google.
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That’s because of the advantage that google has had & that’s the point because they have consistently paid Apple billions to be the default setting then when most people setup their iPhone or iPad it will automatically use it & never bother changing it
 
JohnC1959 said:
Hmmm does Chrome really give Google such a big advantage? There are several web browsers that get a decent share of the market. I like Google for a number of things but I don't use Chrome (anymore). Switching browsers was easy.
Click to expand...

They just killed a lot of Adblockers.... and Ads are Googles biggest business.

So there is definitely a conflict.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Nothing that can't be solved by some well placed, fully corrupt, quid pro quo bribe payments to the wannabe Godfather

donald-trump-the-don-godfather-2020-presidential-louis-john.jpg
Click to expand...
Interesting that idea.

Domestically I am really surprised that he would seek to interfere with Chrome's ownership, it's anti capitalist. Actually, scratch that, this chancer makes it up as he goes along. "Will this put me to the top of the headlines? I'll back it!"

Internationally, at least, America has always resembled the Godfather. Giving favours and protection to other countries in return for a Massive amount of soft power globally, this is USA is so powerful.
if anything the Orange lump is now reversing that position, removing all favours and funding and creating a power vacuum that will be filled by China.
 
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I can't imagine Chrome without built-in Google integration. Bing is such s***. Why not have them sell off YouTube instead? They already destroyed the branding with ads and YouTube music.
 
I don’t see who would even want to buy a web browser from Google if it doesn’t come with access to their ad network.

The problem isn’t Google being made to divest chrome, but that said purchase would be useless to basically everyone else.
 
I will never understand why people use Chrome. That browser was just designed to collect your data, even if you opt out of every data collection option that is made available. At the same time it is very RAM hungry and will struggle if you open too many tabs. It will also never come with a really great built-in ad blocker like the one in Brave that blocks YouTube ads. Have you ever watched a YouTube video with an ad? That is horrible! YouTube even show ads during live videos. So you miss a minute or so.

Google should be shut down for good. They became rich by disrespecting privacy and copyrights. They should have to pay every Google user a huge amount of money.
 
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Really, the browser is the one that they want to have sold? Their Search / Advertising / Business listing / Email / Video platforms are the entities that need breaking up.
 
BigBlur said:
You realize Edge is based on Chromium, right? Chrome and Edge use the same browser engine. Internet Explorer has been dead for a long time.
Click to expand...

Yes, but that's not my point. If Google is forced to sell Chrome. There is no reason Chrome would stay the most popular Chromium browser. Most likely Edge will become the most dominant Chromium browser following that sale. Which is why I compared it to IE, because that would give MS again full control over webstandards. Like how they did with IE.

This issue is set to continue in circles. Because this is exactly what happened when they tried to force MS to decouple IE6 from Windows (and they did in the EU). This is what allowed Google to become dominant using Chrome with their intergrated search engine. Basically Google.com became the internet start page, instead of msn.com which it was in IE6.

The point I try to make is that forcing stuff like this is in the end only going to hurt small players like FireFox and (in the past) Opera (when they had their own browser engine). Forcing more people into the gatekeepers browsers. Honestly they should focus on investing in new browser engines instead of trying to destroy the dominant ones. For example; invest in LadyBird as a new browser engine.
 
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