There won't be an anti-trust suit. The implicit deal will be we will prevent "misinformation" (favor news sources you support and censor anything you request with our algorithm) and you will allow us to monopolize the internet.

That's far fetched. Mozilla still breathes and they have enough cash to start an anti-trust lawsuit in Europe.

Cash that comes from Google. The EFF might start an anti-trust lawsuit, but I don't see Mozilla doing anything of the sort.

Time to start donating to Mozilla.

Maybe if I donate to American Petroleum Institute I can help tilt their agenda in a more green direction.

Maybe if I donate to NRA-ILA I can tilt their agenda towards gun control.

you’re not going to tilt a think tank against its master, and the point of Mozilla is controlled opposition so google can point out they’re not quite a monopoly.

What do you propose as an alternative? Safari?

There are many, many, many web browsers that are not corporate-controlled. Some of my favourites lately are the Argonaut Constellation [0] – mostly because of the interesting technical decisions going in the development (particularly the CSS and the Haskell), but also because Rhapsode is already better than eSpeakNG + AT-SPI2 + Firefox.

There's also the venerable lynx, and elinks (which I reluctantly admit is better than lynx, even if I don't use it much), and Dillo+ [1] (a fork / continuation of Dillo that supports Gopher and Gemini). And could I forget NetSurf, with its graph-y history navigation? And of course, Ladybird, [2] probably the best-funded of the lot.

These are just the ones I've heard of. There are surely dozens more you'd be interested in, and thousands of little hobby projects. Why not try making your own web browser?

[0]: https://argonaut-constellation.org/

[1]: https://github.com/crossbowerbt/dillo-plus

[2]: https://ladybird.dev/

Other countries can do anti-trust as well.

What I am getting at is this is fundamentally a pro-government proposal. Governments like the open web even less than Google.

> “We (Microsoft) are in a very unique position to be able to go spend Sony out of business,” said Booty in a December 2019 email, referencing spending $2 billion or $3 billion in 2020 to avoid competitors getting ahead in content at a later date.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23774547/microsoft-sony-x...

The FTC lost that case.

I think at this point, if a big tech executive avoids doing something due to the threat of antitrust lawsuits, they're just incompetent.