That's so hilariously backwards.

Google should be split into several business units [1], should be forced to give up Chrome [2], and should be forced to invest several billion of its war chest into competitors.

That's what the DOJ would do if it still had balls.

The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox is insane. It's absolutely bonkers. There is so much value in it, yet everybody's favorite mega monopoly is pouring value into commoditizing everything to keep eyeballs and attention and dollars and a taxation regime the size of a medium-sized country in its gravitational singularity.

Google is an invasive species in every market. We need the EU/DOJ/BRICS equivalent of Chicxulub-level regulation to end its throat-grip predation on everyone.

[1] Six "Baby Bells", or "Tiny Googs": Search, Android, Deepmind, Cloud, YouTube, Ads. Shuffle everything else into another bin or spin it off independently. Waymo, etc.

[2] You could put Google with the Ads business as there is (1) no synergy between Chrome<->Android<->Search anymore, and (2) if Ads fucks it up, it doesn't kill the broader browser market or web ecosystem.

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grues-dinner 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

What's bonkers to me is that people are alway complaining about ads and they're not putting "delete web ads from your life" front and center of their value proposition. Go to firefox.com and look at the the "why Firefox" copy. It's could be about basically any modern browser. It's like selling a car with "it has wheels!".

I guess that might threaten their tie-up with the world's biggest adtech company which is why they keep it at arm's length, but that's just slow death by strangulation.

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paradox460 7 months ago | parent [-]

I bought a car a couple years ago. It advertised am/fm radio in the feature sheet

	▲	harvey9 7 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I read the parent post as meaning 'wheels!' being front and centre of the brochure.
	▲	7 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

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stickfigure 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox is insane.

What do you mean? There's a huge amount of money, via getting paid to route people to a search engine.

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bryanrasmussen 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

as I have understood there is also talk of forcing them to sell of Chrome - but

https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/is_chrome_even_a_sellable...

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godzillabrennus 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

BRICS is a cancer on par with Google.

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echelon 7 months ago | parent [-]

I won't argue on this as it's orthogonal.

Sovereignty of your country's smaller businesses over monopolies, and sovereignty over data and data privacy is paramount.

Every country should be trying to tear Google apart. It isn't just too big, it's a black hole that is eviscerating competition.

The US, Canada, all of the members of the EU, India, and even our geopolitical rivals should be trying to regulate and/or break up Google.

	▲	HexDecOctBin 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		India won't. The call of the hour is re-industrialization, and manufacturing Pixel phones is one piece of that puzzle. Give employment to millions of people is far more important in the short run. And there are other ways of enforcing sovereignty.