Justice Department asks judge to order Google the "immediate" sale of Chrome

[adamada72]

That's hilarous. You think they care about the browser, it's just an ad delivery platform. It cost peanuts to develop and brings them billions in revenue alone. There's Chromium which 99% of browsers are based on, there's Firefox and there's Safari. It's laughable you don't think that's a monopoly.

Apple is being dealt with separately by EU, them being scumbags with their locked down eco-system doesn't change a thing about Google.

99%? No! That's not right at all but thanks for posting that. Makes my response much easier so we can get to the facts. It's actually ~66% Chrome, ~18% Safari, ~5% Edge. 66% is a hard argument to make that's a monopoly. But here goes the twist! That's worldwide stats. For the USA, ~53%, ~31%, ~8%. I don't find that's in any way a monopoly. I work in this field for a very long time though so again most people get this wrong. Not an issue glad to help

For Apple, yeah the EU is doing good work but the USA dropped the ball. Apple is 100% scumbags we can agree. I'm sure they don't want to be but the USA fan base will let them get away with anything. Kind of hard to watch but it is what it is. They created the app store, killed flash and nurved their own browser to extract $ needlessly from people with that one (smart but scumy). They do make a good laptop now so there's that. Personally I feel you but Google does more good than bad in my view, the Doc's, Maps, Photos, AI and Sheet's app's alone, for free are really nice. I'd give them a pass and a warning. Thanks for the reply!

 

[Dreadcthulhu]

99%? No! That's not right at all but thanks for posting that. Makes my response much easier so we can get to the facts. It's actually ~66% Chrome, ~18% Safari, ~5% Edge. 66% is a hard argument to make that's a monopoly. But here goes the twist! That's worldwide stats. For the USA, ~53%, ~31%, ~8%. I don't find that's in any way a monopoly. I work in this field for a very long time though so again most people get this wrong. Not an issue glad to help

For Apple, yeah the EU is doing good work but the USA dropped the ball. Apple is 100% scumbags we can agree. I'm sure they don't want to be but the USA fan base will let them get away with anything. Kind of hard to watch but it is what it is. They created the app store, killed flash and nurved their own browser to extract $ needlessly from people with that one (smart but scumy). They do make a good laptop now so there's that. Personally I feel you but Google does more good than bad in my view, the Doc's, Maps, Photos, AI and Sheet's app's alone, for free are really nice. I'd give them a pass and a warning. Thanks for the reply!

This whole anti-trust issue is not about Chrome having or not having a browser monopoly; it is about the various business practices that Google has engaged in breaking various anti-trust laws (and as a reminder, a business DOES NOT have to have a monopoly to break anti-trust laws, just a large portion of the market); Google lost its court case on those anti-trust issues last year, what is being discussed now is the punishment for violating those anti-trust rules. The DoJ is wanting to remove Chrome from Google as part of its punishments, to make it harder to engage in anti-trust violating actions in the future related to its search and advertising businesses.

The idea that a business needs to be a complete monopoly for anti-trust to apply is one of those weird misconceptions that seem to stick into people's heads even though it simply is not true. For anti-trust laws to kick a business needs to merely have a large amount of market share, and then use said market share to bully & stifle competitors; for example a few years ago OnePlus wanted to partner with Epic to release Fortnite phones, but Google threatened to pull all Google Play apps from all of the OnePlus phones to stop that. Or Google uses the funds from its very large share of the online ad market to pay Apple & others to make Google the default search, crowding out smaller search engines.

 

[adamada72]

This whole anti-trust issue is not about Chrome having or not having a browser monopoly; it is about the various business practices that Google has engaged in breaking various anti-trust laws (and as a reminder, a business DOES NOT have to have a monopoly to break anti-trust laws, just a large portion of the market); Google lost its court case on those anti-trust issues last year, what is being discussed now is the punishment for violating those anti-trust rules. The DoJ is wanting to remove Chrome from Google as part of its punishments, to make it harder to engage in anti-trust violating actions in the future related to its search and advertising businesses.

The idea that a business needs to be a complete monopoly for anti-trust to apply is one of those weird misconceptions that seem to stick into people's heads even though it simply is not true. For anti-trust laws to kick a business needs to merely have a large amount of market share, and then use said market share to bully & stifle competitors; for example a few years ago OnePlus wanted to partner with Epic to release Fortnite phones, but Google threatened to pull all Google Play apps from all of the OnePlus phones to stop that. Or Google uses the funds from its very large share of the online ad market to pay Apple & others to make Google the default search, crowding out smaller search engines.

Yup, and just like the idea they have a monopoly same with the anti-trust issue. It's kind of a delusional notion. They have 50% market share of a free product anyone can switch, kind of a nothing burger. Even with that stat all iOS chrome installs are really Safari in the US so that just makes it more suspect. I didn't see it from the evidence but I didn't see it all. Personally I'd never have wasted the money on the case (who does it even hurt?) and the punishment should be something like say you're sorry and don't give money to other companies and put FireFox out of business? It's all crazy.

 

[Karlos95]

uBlock Origin Lite works though it's not as good : cannot select and disappear pieces of webpages at will...yet

I replied to someone else as to why this won't work for me.

 

[acrossthestars]

Wouldn't the best option for Google to spinoff Chrome and Android, into their own independent companies? Their parent company will still be Google, but they would have to compete on the open market, instead of being tightly-integrated with the rest of Google's product stack.

Google still owns Mail, Maps, Calendar, Drive, YouTube, Search, Gemini,etc. and those are just web-based products. Google also owns Fitbit, Nest, Pixel and Watch, and they own the company Waze. Asid from Waze, eachg one of these products could be its own company. There is no reason they all have to be specifically under the Google Brand. If Google simply divested some share of control over these products, they'd have like, what, 10 new companies? Which means of them would be resourced by enough people to actually be competitive, instead of only a few for every single brand.

That's probably why the mind share of their products is declining year-over-year: they've spread themselves too thin and it would look bad to their shareholders, if they started selling off these companies, seemingly because of bureaucratic incompetence. Which is probably the case, but they wouldn't want to admit it, by doing so.

 

[cacarr]

Without Chrome or Android, what exactly does Google do? Just the search engine and ad service?

Google Cloud Platform, Pixel devices, Gemini services

 

[cacarr]

What exactly does selling Chrome mean? Chromium is an open source project. Can they not have a Google skin and services version of Chromium? I'm not sure the DOJ understands this stuff.

 

[cacarr]

Wouldn't the best option for Google to spinoff Chrome and Android, into their own independent companies? Their parent company will still be Google, but they would have to compete on the open market, instead of being tightly-integrated with the rest of Google's product stack.

Google still owns Mail, Maps, Calendar, Drive, YouTube, Search, Gemini,etc. and those are just web-based products. Google also owns Fitbit, Nest, Pixel and Watch, and they own the company Waze. Asid from Waze, eachg one of these products could be its own company. There is no reason they all have to be specifically under the Google Brand. If Google simply divested some share of control over these products, they'd have like, what, 10 new companies? Which means of them would be resourced by enough people to actually be competitive, instead of only a few for every single brand.

That's probably why the mind share of their products is declining year-over-year: they've spread themselves too thin and it would look bad to their shareholders, if they started selling off these companies, seemingly because of bureaucratic incompetence. Which is probably the case, but they wouldn't want to admit it, by doing so.

Pixel sales are increasing, not declining. Gemini is growing.

 

[acrossthestars]

What exactly does selling Chrome mean? Chromium is an open source project. Can they not have a Google skin and services version of Chromium? I'm not sure the DOJ understands this stuff.

According to Wikipedia's entry on the license, "Chrome's WebKit & Blink layout engines and its V8 JavaScript engine are each free and open-source software, while its other components are each either open-source or proprietary. However, section 9 of Google Chrome's Terms of Service designates the whole package as proprietary freeware."

So, there are two system in contention here: Google Chrome the browser and Google Chrome the service. Based on Google's own ToS and the way in which Google makes money, they aren't selling the browser. They are selling Chrome the service, but not to the user. The user makes use of products provided by Google and in exchange, Google sells information related to the user's usage of their products. They are, first and foremost, an analytics company. They don't sell user data, they sell metadata—data about the data—and that is why they are the preeminent market for advertisements.

Therefore, what the DoJ probably means, when they tell Google to sell off Chrome, is they have to sell shares of those analytics systems or license them, to third parties. They cannot make Google sell the data collected by the browser, because that is Google's property—a condition the user agreed to, when they clicked "I Agree" during the initial setup process—but they can make Google divest its tracking capabilities. Given that Google has a massive operation to facilitate their analytics operation, it is likely that other companies would buy shares in those services. Managing and storing data for hundreds of millions of users, in real time, is no doubt very computationally expensive, so only a few companies in existence have the resources to do the actual tracking. Amazon would be one of them, but it's possible that even AWS has its limits.

Pixel sales are increasing, not declining. Gemini is growing.

Sure, but that's generative AI, which is still developing and in-demand—hardly a stagnant, "established" utility like Mail or Maps.

 

[disinfect8280]

What exactly does selling Chrome mean? Chromium is an open source project. Can they not have a Google skin and services version of Chromium? I'm not sure the DOJ understands this stuff.

Open source but managed and controlled by Google. Earlier there was some talk of it being managed by the Linux Foundation because of this.

 

[yannus]

Even though Chrome and Google are a really big problem, it seems to me that weakening them looks like a gift to China, probably the last one as China already owns the rest.

 

[Billak1]

Wow. Imagine the hypocrisy in a world where state and federal governments are allowed to monopolize education. Microsoft had Explorer but shut it down because it realized the developers of Chrome had a better solution to browsing and adopted as "Edge". Other companies have also freely chosen to do the same. Social media companies have "monopolies", but the DOJ says nary a word about them because they are favored by politicians. The word monopoly means "exclusive control". Google does not have exclusive control, unless a person uses the term loosely. Google has a large share of the market, but it is not exclusive. The governments interference in the free market has enabled the growth of large corporations by interfering with free competition by passing laws that make it harder for up and coming companies to compete. And, what is the governments answer to the problem they created? Claiming to be the cure to the disease they created.

 

[ibnMuhammad]

Fantastic news!

Long overdue!
Just hoping it goes ahead, and shameful the EU didn't force the move earlier.

Perhaps it might finally limit Google's gigantic out-of-control data collection on everyone!

Android spyware should also be separated.

 

[Jon Heil]

Thats the fruity desperate DOJ fools. Federal workers acting like sheep!

 

[LimyG]

That's hilarous. You think they care about the browser, it's just an ad delivery platform. It cost peanuts to develop and brings them billions in revenue alone. There's Chromium which 99% of browsers are based on, there's Firefox and there's Safari. It's laughable you don't think that's a monopoly.

Apple is being dealt with separately by EU, them being scumbags with their locked down eco-system doesn't change a thing about Google.

Well said.

 

[LimyG]

99%? No! That's not right at all but thanks for posting that. Makes my response much easier so we can get to the facts. It's actually ~66% Chrome, ~18% Safari, ~5% Edge. 66% is a hard argument to make that's a monopoly. But here goes the twist! That's worldwide stats. For the USA, ~53%, ~31%, ~8%. I don't find that's in any way a monopoly. I work in this field for a very long time though so again most people get this wrong. Not an issue glad to help

For Apple, yeah the EU is doing good work but the USA dropped the ball. Apple is 100% scumbags we can agree. I'm sure they don't want to be but the USA fan base will let them get away with anything. Kind of hard to watch but it is what it is. They created the app store, killed flash and nurved their own browser to extract $ needlessly from people with that one (smart but scumy). They do make a good laptop now so there's that. Personally I feel you but Google does more good than bad in my view, the Doc's, Maps, Photos, AI and Sheet's app's alone, for free are really nice. I'd give them a pass and a warning. Thanks for the reply!

Your figures are probably true, but that's not really the point. As has been pointed out, it is the browsing Engine and attatched services which make massive bucks.

google.com search can be opened on any browser. The browser is, (not a great example I know): A bit like a driver. The driver allows hardware to connect and work with the PCs software.
A browser is only a means to connect to the internet, and search etc.

Granted, Chrome does make user info collection easier (I would imagine). It's designed to optimize the massive data mining google.com/google.uk/google.jp etc etc. So it's not totally black and white, but it is the services, OTHER, than the actual Chrome browser software by itself that is the data collection hog. On a massive scale.

 

[PierreJG]

Yes, and no. Unlike other type of platforms, Edge, Mozilla etc I never got hacked through chrome. My gmail account also has never been hacked yet my Facebook, yahoo etc got hacked. They will chrome > bad for business as the new people will just mess up and Solely go for the money and not run it as it should. This is an stupid argument as this is money motivated over what the community wants or needs. This is why Government should not get involved in stuff they do not know...

 

[Vanderlinde]

Chrome got so much attraction in a era where Internet Explorer and Firefox where slow. Chromium even made slow PC's in regards of surfing, fast again. And no longer a era where we had to design a different CSS or "Hacks" to get web pages working on several browsers.

While doing that, and the majority shifting to Chrome, Google had a tremendous amount of surfing data from their users - best example is since I work as a web dev, websites getting crawled and indexed while not even online for 30 minutes and that is pure the polling coming from the DNS queries Chrome is sending.

I do believe organic SEO has been made far more difficult over the course of years where Adwords (Paying to be on top) made it far more easier. Every move by these big companies is usually at the cost of their user base. Ofcourse it's free, you are the product, but the V3 extension and the latest Core updates in Google search makes me doubt the future quality of those products.

 

[p51d007]

`Didn't we go through this several years ago with MS Explorer?

 

[Northy]

That's hilarous. You think they care about the browser, it's just an ad delivery platform. It cost peanuts to develop and brings them billions in revenue alone. There's Chromium which 99% of browsers are based on, there's Firefox and there's Safari. It's laughable you don't think that's a monopoly.

Apple is being dealt with separately by EU, them being scumbags with their locked down eco-system doesn't change a thing about Google.

Think of the part where they spy on everyone's movements using this delivery platform gobbling up that sweet and juicy metadata, which allows them to target advertising on every site you visit, which is what makes them so powerful.

So yes they absolutely care. It is a critical cornerstone of their online monopoly.

 

[Northy]

`Didn't we go through this several years ago with MS Explorer?

Something like it. Same crap, different reasons.

As a lowly tech back some time ago it wasn't too uncommon for people to hear people call and say they'd deleted the internet. Haha. What they meant was the IE shortcut was missing, and that's how MS wanted it.

 

[p51d007]

Something like it. Same crap, different reasons.

As a lowly tech back some time ago it wasn't too uncommon for people to hear people call and say they'd deleted the internet. Haha. What they meant was the IE shortcut was missing, and that's how MS wanted it.

LOL, I remember once when dialup AOL was a thing, friend wanted me to look at their computer because it was "slow". In the system tray, there were FOUR AOL icons, one for each family member. Showed them how to switch, deleted the other three, got rid of the 3-4 virus programs etc and gee it was FASTER...go figure.
Reminds me of this...

The IT Guys-Browser

 

[GoldenGoat]

What is the business model for Chrome without Google? Meaning, who could buy it, and once they did, what tools would they have to maintain its momentum?

Many of the core parts of the browser are open source. Many of the proprietary parts serve specific Google business interests. Excluding all those that are hard-linked to Google back-end services, there is little to be excited about as standalone user features. So what exactly is the buyer buying?

And what would stop Google, immediately after selling Chrome, from starting a new web browser, this time probably with a Gemini/AI focus, that all their web properties could effectively promote and would likely again gain market share.

I do not understand what they think they can accomplish with this other than maybe as a bargaining chip in some other negotiation.

They were saying previously that part of the DOJ plan would be that Google would not be allowed to own a browser for at least 5 years. This would stop them from making a new one for 5 years. The Chrome buyer would likely also get Chromium and the new owner could decide to close the source. I don't believe they could stop others from creating their own fork of the last version on the Google-controlled https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src site.

 

[GoldenGoat]

What exactly does selling Chrome mean? Chromium is an open source project. Can they not have a Google skin and services version of Chromium? I'm not sure the DOJ understands this stuff.

Google owns chromium. It is open source, but they are still the owner. They would be forced to sell it too. The new owner could decide to close the source. However, some of its source code could be forked before that depending on the license. The BSD portions could definitely be forked.