The sad thing is I think Google keeping Chrome is actually likely the better of two possible bad outcomes... Anyone else interested and willing to pay the true value of owning the entire Internet ecosystem is almost certainly going to look to extract value from that, and that's almost certainly worse than what Google does today. E.g. using everyone's browser to extract training data for AI without getting IP blocked.

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ACCount37 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

A year or so ago, I would have agreed. Not anymore.

Sure, a company can buy Chrome and proceed to sell user browsing habits data to the highest bidder, or use it as a backbone for decentralized scraping - backed by real user data and real residential IPs to fool most anti-scraping checks. But if they fuck with users enough, Chrome would just die off over time, and Firefox or various Chromium forks like Brave would take its place. This already happened to the browsing titan that was IE, and without the entire power of Google to push Chrome? It can happen again.

The alternative is Google owning Chrome for eternity - and proceeding with the most damaging initiatives possible. Right now, Google is seeking to destroy adblocking, tighten the control over the ad data ecosystem to undermine their competitors, and who knows what else they'll come up with next week.

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overfeed 2 days ago | parent [-]

Why do suppose Chrome would die off for user-hostile actions under a non-Google entity (2nd paragraph), but not while being controlled by Google (3rd paragraph)?

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AlotOfReading 2 days ago | parent [-]

Not the OP, but Google spent years advertising Chrome front and center on the Internet's most visited pages. Money doesn't buy that kind of real estate, ownership does.

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ACCount37 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

OP, agreed.

Prior to Chrome, Google actually used to promote Firefox on its own pages instead - which was a major driver of Firefox adoption. Google did it because they had a partnership with Mozilla, and were very much in favor of users switching to a browser that's not Internet Explorer.

Then Google decided they wanted more control over Firefox. Mozilla decided that Google isn't going to get it. This resulted in Chrome.

Firefox was evicted from Google's promotion, and it never quite recovered.

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overfeed 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Money doesn't buy that kind of real estate, ownership does.

If this is the reason, the remedy doesn't attack the root of the matter. If Chrome were unbundled from Google, what's to stop Google from creating a new Chromium fork - and naming it Cobalt and marketing the hell out of it to achieve the same market share?

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AlotOfReading 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Antitrust orders are more complicated than just declaring a business unit spontaneously independent. They usually include provisions to ensure the the situation is actually fixed, like prohibitions on the parent competing in that entire market and financial/infrastructure support for the new companies on their transition to independence.

	▲	overfeed 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Are you able to share a case when an American court issued such a broad order on a F100 company? There was a stronger case for breaking up Microsoft, but the DoJ shied from that remedy, there was never a chance that Google could have been broken up in this case, IMO.

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palata 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Split it to a point where no one company can own the entire Internet ecosystem. Apply antitrust laws to keep it like this.

Maybe the development will slow down, but let's be honest: we would still be fine if Android and iOS had stopped "improving" years ago. Now it's mostly about adding shiny AI features and squeeze the users.

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gruez 2 days ago | parent [-]

>Split it to a point where no one company can own the entire Internet ecosystem. Apply antitrust laws to keep it like this.

Facebook was once small too. Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process. What makes you think the remaining companies offering a free browser wouldn't try to monetize users in a similar way? How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?

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palata 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process.

When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.

> How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?

If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer. If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.

Also does it have to be 5$ per month? Do browsers need to keep adding so many features, and hence so many bugs and security issues, that only huge companies can keep up and nobody wants to pay for that work?

Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.

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gruez 2 days ago | parent [-]

>When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.

Insurgents like tiktok show that even today, people will happily give up their privacy for some dopamine.

>If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer.

Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?

>If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.

No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.

>Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.

Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?

	▲	palata 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it? That is unrelated to the sentence you quote: if people can use Google Chrome for free, they don't pay for a browser. But if Chrome disappeared, they would still need a browser. Maybe they would pay if they didn't have a free choice? > No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money. If there are more browsers instead of a monopoly, then websites will work on the paid, secure browser that I will use, so I'm happy. I don't want to prevent people from using bad software: I want to make it possible for companies to build good software. By not using Chromium today, many times the websites don't work correctly because devs don't care, because Chromium is a monopoly. I say split it! Then websites will have to work on more than 1 browser. > Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go? It was a huge success? WhatsApp is still a huge success.

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cosmic_cheese 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Browsers should be classified as critical infrastructure and be run by NPOs or PBCs. There’d be no need for end users to pay anything if the tens of thousands of companies all relying on the web chipped in to sustain the infrastructure that allows them to exist and be profitable.