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U.S. DoJ Wants Google to Sell Chrome Browser

contacos said:
Why is a company being punished for doing a good job? Clearly they are doing something right and just what people want, otherwise they never would have gotten so big in the first place.
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Apple feels the same way about the App Store.

I agree with you — people choose to use Chrome even with all the data collection.

Besides, whoever decides to buy Chrome will implement their own data mining system which then probably ties back to Google in some form since they are the king of search and ads. So, ok, the DoJ threw in a hurdle.
 
rp2011 said:
Search, the browser, and Android, and it's were all subsidized by ads. How does anyone compete with that monopoly? Android never had a chance on its own. The search ad money snowballed.

I honestly think that the only way to get away from the hot garbage that search has become is to create a conglomerate by all the big players to fund a state-of-the-art ad-free search/browser. That's the only way. Otherwise, it's just a manipulated game to be gamed. Somewhere that you can actually find things. Just as we despise Junk mail and telemarketers, we need a clean slate. Something new. Reward the content creators whose sites they crawl for information instead of just enriching themselves. All this SEO nonsense has to go. It has to be a nonprofit funded by Apple, Microsoft, and others to create a safe place from the nonsense.
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That’s what the grand vision of AI is supposed to be. Just speak or type your request and a response will be magically delivered…or something.
 
Without Google's $20B in revenue, Apple has no motivation to withhold launching its own search engine. A reminder: Project Pegasus, a search engine, has so far been limited to search within Apple's apps, user on-device data and the App Store but is structured to search the web with a web crawler.
Apple owns the domain Siri.com and could turn it into a web version of Siri with Apple Intelligence, powered by its Apple silicon servers.
 
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flexwithmarius said:
That’s what the grand vision of AI is supposed to be. Just speak or type your request and a response will be magically delivered…or something.
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As I said, instead of just banking the money from web crawling, every click should pay the content creator for their work without having to play the AdWords and SEO nonsense that completely perverts usefulness in favor of ads.
 
Apple Fan 2008 said:
There's still other browser engines than Chromium. (Heck, I'm using Firefox rn and that uses Gecko)
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Right but chrome is able to use to use the backing of google to enforce web standards for everyone. If it didn’t affect open web standards sure. But google has a hand in every aspect of the internet. Their power alongside apple needs to be reduced. We can’t keep allowing oligopolies to take over every institution of our lives. Techno feudalism is end stage capitalism. Keep an open mind. Respect your opinion.
 
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alexjholland said:
This is the perfect advert for why we should fire 75% of government employees.

No one, anywhere on planet earth wants this.
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I'd disagree. I'm a web developer and many like me would prefer key technologies for the web like browsers to be open source and focused on standards.

Google has turned Chrome in many ways to what IE was in the old days. Pushing against open web standards. Promoting proprietary standards to the determent of an open web.

Chrome is only as popular as it is as Google either pays for it or forces it as a default in as many places as they can. Again, just like IE of old...
 
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Shirasaki said:
ok bud. Time for a much smaller government so they are even more powerless.
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It’s ironic how the only true monopoly (the US govt) is going after all these so called monopolies when they can’t even balance the budget.

History has shown that even the most powerful companies that seemed indomitable at the time will eventually succumb to competitors and new innovations (IBM, Intel, Eastman Kodak, Sears, GM, etc.).

The best thing for consumers is to get rid of the govt bureaucracy, corruption, constant meddling, and stifling regulations (which hurts smaller players and helps the big companies). It’s time to drain the swamp. Bring in the wrecking ball known as DOGE, I say. It will literally reduce the cost of everything and dramatically increase competition.
 
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macfacts said:
Bigger question is who wants to buy it when it is already open source as chromium.
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Giving it to Mozilla would be like a Monkey's Paw wish. It would seem so ideal...and then it would all go horribly wrong when Mozilla couldn't handle the power.
 
Heat_Fan89 said:
I don't see how they have a monopoly as you can use different browsers and search engines. People use Chrome because they like it. I personally use FireFox or Safari. Hell, Microsoft went all in on Chrome because they found that Microsoft Edge was inferior to Chrome.
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Chrome went from 5% marketshare in 2009 to 66% marketshare in 2023. At what point do you draw the line for a monopoly? When web developers start developing exclusively for chrome, like they did with IE back in the day? Well, they are already doing that. The browser market is such that no one can unseat chrome or even break into the market anymore (I wish Arc all the luck). At one point it was about the browser being better, but we're long since past that point now.

I think they should be spinning Google's ad business out instead of Chrome, but there's justification to spin out any of Google's dominant services as they collectively reinforce each other's dominance. On this side of the pond, I hope to see Apple forced to separate its hardware and services businesses for similar reasons.

PS: Edge doesn't use Chrome, it uses Chromium. The open source version not tied to googles services and ad tracking.
 
Any business must monetize to remain in business. Data mining, ads, I like Google free to the end user at the point of use. Same with FaceBook. If they operated like some people wish, they'd have to charge a fee. If that system were as popular as the noise would suggest it should be, there ought to be paid subscription alternatives. And yet...silence.

Ironically, Google is a big part of the anti-monopoly environment here. I recall when Apple was a footnote and Microsoft seemed bent on dominance in any segment of the software industry that looked lucrative, plus they were out to dominate on smartphones, too, I believe. They made Internet Explorer free to undermine Netscape, which crumpled.

Now we have 2 major smartphone platforms to choose from and a host of web browsers and search engines.

In capitalism, companies strive to 'win' and when they succeed in advancing their position they leverage their assets to improve their position further.

makeitrainnaren said:
Right but chrome is able to use to use the backing of google to enforce web standards for everyone.
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I'm curious about this. Which web standards (I'm not being nitpicky) and if Chrome didn't do this, what do you think the real world results would be?

Common web standard standardization sounds like it would help make web pages consistently render correctly in a range of browsers and discourage fragmentation of the market.
 
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