This piddly open source effort pales in comparison to what we should really be doing:

Horizontally splitting Google into multiple companies.

Not division via department splits, but equal partitioning across the company into multiple horizontal businesses that compete on the same offerings.

The EU and next DOJ/FTC need to force this.

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microtonal 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree, but the probability that this is going to happen anytime soon is near-0. The current US administration is not going to rein in the tech broligarchy and if they did, it would be done out of spite and the pieces wold sold to administration-aligned oligarchs (e.g. Ellison), which might end up being worse.

The EU is not going to force this, because it has enough fights to pick with the US, and this is not the hill that they are willing to die on. It would be far more likely for them to financially support an AOSP-based OS.

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lukan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The EU simply is not (and should not) be able to split up google who operate international. But they can regulate the EU market and declare that a monopolist cannot operate there as a monopolist and introduce any arbitary rule achieving it.

	▲	microtonal 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, though I think that is what echelon was aiming at - the EU saying either you break up or you cannot do business here.

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burningChrome an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Not sure if you know this, but both Biden and Trump (in his previous admin) had their DOJ file lawsuits against Google. "United States v. Google LLC," which was filed in 2020 and focused on Google's dominance in search and advertising markets. A separate case was filed in 2023 targeted Google's monopolization of digital advertising technologies. The State of Texas also sued them in 2020.

Google lost all three cases. The DOJ in all three recommended the company be broken up, but the judges disagreed. If you want to blame someone, then blame the judges, not the current admin or Bidens DOJ - both of whom said Google should be broken up.

	▲	microtonal 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Trump 2 is very different from Trump 1 though. Trump 1 still had competent, less corrupt people in many positions. Grifters are going to grift. Anyway, I am going to stop here, since this will probably derail in a non-productive political discussion otherwise.