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.