Speaking of Google, the United States Department of Justice is pushing for Google to sell off Chrome.
Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the biggest tech companies in the world.
The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolized the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.
↫ Leah Nylen and Josh Sisco
Let’s take a look at the history and current state of independent browsers, shall we? Netscape is obviously dead, Firefox is hanging on by a thread (which is inconspicuously shaped like a giant sack of money from Google), Opera is dead (its shady Chrome skin doesn’t count), Brave is cryptotrash run by a homophobe, and Vivaldi, while an actually good and capable Chrome skin with a ton of fun features, still isn’t profitable, so who knows how long they’ll last. As an independent company, Chrome wouldn’t survive.
It seems the DoJ understands this, too, because they’re clearly using the words “sell off”, which would indicate selling Chrome to someone else instead of just spinning it off into a separate company. But who has both the cash and the interest in buying Chrome, without also being a terrible tech company with terrible business incentives that might make Chrome even more terrible than it already is?
Through Chrome, Google has sucked all the air out of whatever was left of the browser market back when they first announced the browser. An independent Chrome won’t survive, and Chrome in anyone else’s hands might have the potential to be even worse. A final option out of left field would be turning Chrome and Chromium into a truly independent foundation or something, without a profit motive, focused solely on developing the Chromium engine, but that, too, would be easily abused by financial interests.
I think the most likely outcome is one none of us want: absolutely nothing will happen. There’s a new administration coming to Washington, and if the recent proposed picks for government positions are anything to go by, America will be incredibly lucky if they get someone smarter than a disemboweled frog on a stick to run the DoJ. More likely than not, Google’s lawyers will walk all over whatever’s left of the DoJ after 20 January, or Pichai will simply kiss some more gaudy gold rings to make the case go away.
Well, the thing you have to remember is that the old rules of logic no longer apply when it comes to the laws of the united states. I mean well, they apply even less now. So this is my so freaking dumb it will probably happen forecast:
Google is forced to sell chrome. It sells it to Mozilla, which gets a boost of revenue from Alphabet to facilitate the purchase. The firefox browser is retired, while Alphabet pays Mozilla a yearly sum to keep the home page at google. Of course their is a very very firm line between the two companies, as Mozilla only provides user tracking data to the highest bidder which is not just Alphabet, but also Microsoft, and various shady companies that sell to governments and shady Musk related entities. . We’re now down to a single browser, and less privacy, having the good intention completely warped by the incoming administration.
It’s not hard to understand why some competitors would like this to happen, and who they are.
Chrome is central to everything Google does.
They probably believe taking Chrome off of them is like unplugging Youtube, Google Workspace, Gmail, GCP, even Android and Search.
Then again, it’s… open source.
So a new Chrome is going to respawn as soon as the old one is gone, and old Chrome’s new owner will be totally effed up.
And of course, developpers are going to fly back home faster than light.
No one is going to be crazy enough to “buy Chrome”.
At the end of the day, forcing Google to sell it really makes no sense.
Chrome is Google’s infrastructure, heck, it’s even public infrastructure, and every other tech company is damn glad they’re maintaining it for them, and making the Internet just work.
The only goal that can be achieved here is a total waste of money, not only for Google, but for IT at large.
Also, Thom is trashing all browsers around but Edge, which is the only one that would actually deserve it.
Its really funny to see how everyone complaining about Google and privacy issues find it totally acceptable to use this Edge browser that won’t allow you to change your start page, constantly resets your settings to them aligned to Redmond’s interests, tracks your activity on every new tab you open and so on. So sadly funny.
Finally, back to the DOJ thing: that judge is either being stupid, or working towards totally different goals.
If he really wanted to break Google’s search monopoly, he would push for the sale of the search engine, not the sale of the browser. And maybe look at what’s been done in the EU for this very same issue: force the end user to make an explicit choice for its search engine on every new install. And maybe go one step further, and make it an educated choice.
How does this even work?
I mean Chrome, or rather Chromium is open source after all.
Will Google not be allowed to contribute anymore? What about to Firefox? Any other open source browser or fork of Chromium?
And what about Chrome OS? How will that work? Will they abandon millions of students across many countries that use those devices?
We can come with many more about the logistics of this. And not only from the Google side, but the Chrome’s own survival as well. As Firefox shows us, without a corporate sponsor, the browser will have difficulty keeping up.
(Or do they just want Edge to take over? It is IE5.0 all over again)
Anyway, if they were making a move against YouTube or another part that is easily severable, it would make sense. But Chrome is too much integrated into Google to make this move.
Nothing is going to happen. This is Microsoft’s breakup on the verge of GWB’s presidency all over again.
And the winnner is…. Microsoft. With Chrome and Firefox dead Edge will naturally take the market. Sigh. Depressingly predictable.
I am not sure that the government understands how the browser market works. These things are all Open Source. Control over the direction of browser development comes from FUNDING, not revenue. Can they still pay whoever does make Chrome to influence it? Are they allowed to contribute code to the Open Source project? What does it mean for Google to “sell” Chrome?
If Google did stop making Chrome, Microsoft and Apple are two of the few companies that can afford to fund consumer browsers ( and have a reason to ). There are other reasons to fund a browser engine. The company backing Servo these days is doing it as part of their ad display business I think. And of course, we have Ladybird.
The browser that may be in the most trouble is Firefox as Mozilla really relies on Google revenue to pay for all their employees.
I am not sure what “selling off” Chrome means in this context. Chrome is a souped up Chromium and if Chromium isn’t included in the “sell off”, what is Google severed from?
If it is just Chrome, it is the DOJ forcing Google to say, “Who wants this useless-to-you-and-unsellable browser?” If it is the kit and caboodle, it is saying, “Who wants to take over the development of the Chromium project?”
If it is the latter, I don’t think we will be better off. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple all have their agendas and consumer protection is not on their list. Would IBM/Red Hat be interested? At least we don’t have to fear anything Chinese, as the US is pretty averse against them these days.
Oracle would probably take Chrome off Google’s hands.
I don’t believe Google will need to sell Chrome, what will likely happen is Chrome will need to operate as a separate (enough) entity and on the same terms as other web browsers on the market. What Google will hence need to do is to open up advertising APIs in terms of conditions, on how to sell user privacy to Google on equal terms then Chrome. As for cancel culture, on how Eich is supposedly a homophobe, Stallman misogynist and pedofile, Ladybird not to be mentioned for not merging toxic PRs … It’s time to cancel such cancel culture, no sane person can agree to that. On top of that companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft … consist of al lot that and do all that to much greater extent and nobody is calling them out to cancel Windows, Chrome, iPhone … Double standards. The focus of cancelling should only be on individuals and small potatoes. Thanks but no thanks.
Once the threat of breakup is implemented, Google will have little/no interest in keeping Firefox afloat.
The current situation mirrors when Microsoft funded Apple to keep it viable for years so there was always “competition”.
I’m assuming here it’ll be sold to some multi-brand consortium/guiding group. I also wonder if Linux distros will be less anti-chromium once the Google association is cut or where they’ll turn post-ff
A big red flag should have been raised on Google the moment they banned extensions like Video DownloadHelper from offering YouTube download functionality on Chrome (it works fine on Firefox). This is anti-competitive behavior from Google, plain and simple.
I have a way simpler remedy for this. Make Googgle to support the sync of passwords, options and bookmarks of user accounts, in Chromium and every competitor that used Chromium as base.
That way users can keep that important part of the functionality, with code forks that would allow ad-block and other stuff.
protomank,
I honestly don’t know what would be workable. But that’s an interesting idea. Instead of changing ownership, make google release the proprietary bits and open things up to 3rd party integrations.
One reason I don’t think this would work is because the DOJ seems to favor solving conflicts through changes in ownership rather than babysitting corporate activity (for better or worse)…this way the solution can be checked off a list rather than remain as a long term ongoing process. Another factor that’s relevant right now is that the DOJ itself is about to face a major restructuring so as long as google can stall for a few months, google along with most corporate entities will probably by off the hook for antitrust issues.
Oh, I didn’t know Brave was made by Brendan Eich. You know, the guy who gave us JavaScript and Firefox (when it was still a popular and loved browser). Time to check it out.
If Google would be forced to sell it’s browser, Microsoft and Apple will be too?
I don’t know, maybe? Microsoft would certainly benefit on Windows, and I’d argue they already kind of are. But Windows isn’t the dominant platform it once was. Most users are accessing the internet using their mobile devices, and none of those run Windows, and even fewer run Edge. In this case, in the new diverse platforms ecosystem we have, I’d say its fine if Microsoft can take back some market share.
This is a bad idea in my view.
The business world is full of ‘weird’ financing models. Just as an example, the open-source world of the old BELLs wasn’t out of some value system. It was because the old telecoms (BELLs) had a monopoly over the phone system in places like Canada and the US. They used this monopoly position to fund R&D and also release a lot of the software for free. But let’s make note, they could only do that BECAUSE they had a guaranteed supply of money from their monopoly position.
Google today doesn’t even have an actual monopoly. They may have a monopoly due to scale and popularity, but no physical limitation as there are with say phone lines.
So Google sells ads and collects data. They use their powerful revenue stream to make a browser that is largely open source. This model has worked quite well and I’m happy about it. They’ve been relatively open in terms of allowing other browsers on their platforms. I’ve never had an issue installing Firefox on my android device.
In my view, this is the area regulators should focus on. Making sure Google doesn’t pull any shenanigans in terms of interoperability or fairness. Fairness in terms of say search results not showing competitor products or something like that. Beyond that all software needs funding and you need to look at the revenue model. Again, like the old BELLs funding was due to their actual phyiscal monopoly position in the phone industry. We need to allow industry to have proper funding. Unless the government wants to fund common open source projects, but that’s another area rife with potential problems (bringing politics, monitoring, and other initiatives into it) that may be worse than Google having that power.
Yamin,
On the one hand, subsidized browsers may lower costs, but on the other it kills off competition. This link is about a different industry (walmart), but most monopolies have the same problems and the result is ultimately an erosion of viable competition.
https://time.com/6307359/government-ftc-walmart-prices/
Average consumers might not understand this, but over dependency and mono-cultures are quite bad for a lot of reasons.
Chromium is open source, but the vast majority of users are actually on chrome. In terms of privacy chromium is the better choice since google’s data collection and telemetry is closed source and proprietary. However, chromium lacks media codecs that chrome has. So 3rd party developers have to provide their own…
https://superuser.com/questions/1541739/h-264-video-support-in-chromium-missing-codec
https://superuser.com/questions/655605/how-do-i-add-mp3-mp4-and-h-264-support-to-chromium-on-windows
There’s other differences like extension restrictions. The point being that for better or worse it’s the proprietary chrome browser that holds the monopoly.
Not for nothing, but google have already been testing the waters. They pushed for web DRM. Fortunately the industry pushed back on that initiative, but with the layoffs in mozilla’s open advocacy program, future resistance could be significantly weakened. Google are pursuing the crippling of 3rd party extensions, most notably adblockers. Since this would give 3rd party browsers an advantage over chrome, naturally google have also been testing adblock busting technology on youtube targeting FF users (as many of us can attest to over the past year). They’re likely waiting for the right political moment to flip the switch for everyone. If the trump administration does away with most government regulation, that could be a good opportunity for google to take action without facing legal repercussions.
I agree that government funding is a no-go. With the trump administration threatening to slash every agency including those that provide public services, we can guarantee FOSS funding is not on the agenda. But this does not mean we should give corporations like google free reign over the browser market. That fast tracks us to a new robber baron era where a few entities control everything and alternatives are all but dead.
Chrome is the web to basically everyone including standards bodies, and this has had a horrible effect on web standards. HTML is a “living standard’, which basically means whatever Google wants because Chrome is the de facto web standard. For instance, HTTP/3. Do we need QUIC/HTTP3? No. Does Google need QUIC/HTTP3? Yes, so everyone gets HTTP3.
Dude, go touch some grass. Ad tech is one of scummiest sectors, and it needs to get erased. That data needs to get shot into the sun. All of it. It’s dangerous, and a lot of people are going to find out why data collection shouldn’t be allowed.
Maybe this is the wrong target. I’m not sure. It is trying to disrupt vertical integration, and that’s a good thing. The problem is the cloud lock-in in this case, more than the vertical integration, because the browser itself is open source, and there are already 20 different venders offering different versions of the same platform (and Firefox). Moving from one browser platform to another (and I’m talking about cloud stored data – passwords, browsing history, etc.) across devices, is the challenge here, and that is the value Google extracts from the browser. Even if someone else “owns” Chrome, they’d still likely get that benefit if their services are still tied to the browser. I choose my service lock-in myself by going with Firefox on all my devices. But it’s not a simple task (and Firefox is missing a desktop password manager – they so often have missed the important stuff in favor of crap no one wants or uses, like Pocket…)
A way out for both Google and for the real concern of lock-in, would be engineering a way to make that lock-in portable, and easier to configure. I can imagine a new browser API that lets Google users integrate with Edge or Opera directly (and vice versa) more easily. Google with this regulatory threat, may even have some incentive to do it, but it’s probably not enough alone.
The regulators should be targeting cloud lock-in. I’m not really sure what to do about it (other than maybe a EU imposed browser choice style interface in Chrome, but you choose your cloud provider, rather than your browser), but that’s the thing across the industry which is literally breaking capitalism (see Technofeudalism.) The same problem exists in the games space, increasingly so – where users are “buying” games usually from vertically integrated hardware bound game stores, and getting kind of siloed in to that space – which is why Microsoft’s Phil Spencer thinks they already lost the market, permanently, and can’t just release great games to get it back. The counter argument to that is that men like Spencer are over estimating that lock-in, maybe bitter that they lost the “most important generation” that lead to much of that backward compatibility based lock-in. The truth there is probably somewhere in between. Some lock-in is a problem. But it’s not as strong as anyone thinks (see Nintendo, who doesn’t usually even bother offering backward compatibility).
Also, PC *gaming* has a solid answer. Hardware and software are not linked. You can run as many cloud-stores as you want on the same hardware (this extends to Steam Deck – the defaults advantage Steam, but you can literally use whatever else you want on there – to me a fine tradeoff). This is a solid demonstration of value of disentangling vertical integration. It’s possible a way out – break up vertical integration. I’d argue, and I have before, that Android already does this, although they are making it harder…
CaptainN–,
There is no chance in hell. It’s clear the next administration wants to do away with regulation.
Regardless, you’ve identified a huge peeve of mine: cloud lock in. It’s not that really cool things can’t be done with modern IoT hardware and software, but they’re all being gimped by “cloud lock in”. There is so much innovative potential we are missing out on it because corporations don’t actually want to empower consumers with open standards and interoperability, they just want to control us. 🙁
I’m on the market right now for off-grid battery monitors. An IoT one would be neat and potentially useful but I’ve also been burned by IoT devices many times. Vendor/cloud locked IoT hardware can be much worse than legacy hardware. I hate when devices are functionally dependent on a 3rd party services that cannot be self hosted. IoT would be awesome if consumers would get control over the whole stack, but the industry has evolved around lock-in and now it’s become painstakingly difficult to buy IoT products that aren’t locked.
Unless Chrome is put into the hands of some entity who…
– Reinstates manifest v2, or restores v2 functionality,
– Actually disables third-party cookies,
– Removes the “Privacy Sandbox” spyware, and
– Disables “Secure DNS” by default
… Then it won’t have mattered a lick.
Thom,
I think if they divested Android and Chrome it might be a remedy. Getting rid of Chrome alone? Ridiculously lame. You say, “if the recent proposed picks for government positions are anything to go by, America will be incredibly lucky if they get someone smarter than a disemboweled frog on a stick to run the DoJ”, your anti-American bias is annoying, but seriously, you think Merrick Garland, Pete Buttigieg, Rachel Levine, Alejandro Mayorkas, etc. are sterling specimens of intellect? WTF :).
decuser,
I wouldn’t call it anti-american. Criticizing political administrations is a tradition rooted deep within the american zeitgeist.
There it is, you have it too.
Nah, I’ve been following Thom’s political commentary for almost two decades now, always demeaning American interests and spouting continental positions, call it globalist, if you will, but really, it’s just outside looking in nonsense that is informed by global media and what not. I would hesitate before laying into another country’s politics without having lived there as a citizen. I can speak to my own travels, sure, but only as an expatriate or tourist, having no idea what it’s like to live under the rule of that country as a citizen. Also, even though I despise the positions he takes, I haven’t demeaned Thom. He’s very true to his positions and I think he’s reasonably intelligent so far as I can tell, but intelligence is not highly correlated with rationality oftimes and suggesting that Trump’s picks are unintelligent is uncalled for and untrue. That said, I kinda smacked on Biden’s picks unfairly, they are “intelligent”, just not in the kinds of intelligence that I personally find valuable. I find their positions untenable and without merit, more often than not. As, I’ve mentioned before, I wish OSNews would stick to the technical side of things, but sadly, so often the site weighs in on the political. Sigh, I miss Eugenia.
Yes Victoria Nuland was sucha an “intelligent” pick in Biden administration.
decuser,
Foreign people can and do have informed opinions on american politics Besides it looks you’re portraying Thom’s opinion as being uninformed only because you disagree, but there’s a hell of a lot of people right here in the US who you’d disagree with as well and calling it “anti-american bias” doesn’t really hold water or address the topic on merits.
Of course everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Personally I don’t like everything about Biden or Democrats either. Neither party really stands for my interests. but the degree to which the Republican party has been overtaken by autocrats should be extremely alarming to everyone who knows their world history. Unfortunately most people are very uneducated in this respect. The autocratic strategy is to focus people’s wrath on scapegoats, which is very effective and easy to do. Most people are ignorant of the real agenda to consolidate power and dismantle the co-equal branches of government. While it’s great that people got out to vote, many of them seem blissfully unaware of how democracies end under authoritarian leadership. If that comes to pass in the US, future generation *will* regret it, but it may be too late. 🙁
Ultimately I blame our two party system duopoly for depriving us of better representation. A majority of people hate both parties, but due to the way our elections work in the US, they have 0% representation and instead their “protest vote” just ends in promoting an incumbent party. It’s absolutely maddening and doesn’t really solve anything long term.
Of course he is anti-American, he is a Globalist.
As of Brave, while I really dislike the cryptotrash, I approve of its founder’s political view. It’s a very good thing. This is what makes it ethically different than Mozilla. Finally someone who is reasonable and doesn’t fall for the woke trash!
I fail to see how selling Chrome will solve anything.
Let’s suppose Microsoft buys it and put Bing there. Theintegration with Google password and bookmarks sync will be disabled, right? So how this new Chromne will be different than Chromium or even Edge? If Google builds a new browser, the next day, with those integrations, it will reaquire the whole market.
It would be WAY smarter to force Google to give the option to easily pick your search engine when installing (or first time using after the update for those already installed) and changing it at any time. You know, like Microsoft had to do?!