This is the point. Google's products integrate with Chrome better than non-Google products. Including its ad platform.
There's really no rational reason for third-party cookies to still exist. The only reason they're still around is because an advertising company's browser has like 97% market share.
The order doesn't mandate that. It mandates google SELL the data it has collected on people to third parties.
There are also privacy focussed, ad blocking focussed alternatives trivially available on the market....and people are not choosing them.
Any company which buys Chrome (Microsoft?) will have just as strong an incentive as Google to track people and run ads.
FWIW, Chrome has a 66% market share: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
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Disliking a company doesn't justify any arbitrary policy against that company
It already owns Edge. I would rather bet on Meta or Amazon.
There's no way Meta or Amazon will (/should) be allowed to buy chrome.
Doesn't really seem like much of a win for consumers though... it's just trading one personal data hungry megacorp for another.
I suppose it would help Meta greatly expand their ad business, to places far beyond FB/IG.
That would have been nice in 2014 but in 2024 the big ad industry is ready.
The only ones who will hurt the most are the ones without tie ins to authentication systems like Google auth or FB auth or apple ID etc.
Although I'm sure theres plenty of mega databases which don't need overt auths to ID a user. And contextual ads work just fine.
Start with the Sherman act and then see that "what antitrust means" has had a long, changing history. By the way, the European understanding of antitrust still includes harm to competition as well, which often pops up on HN (e.g. how does Facebook's action harm consumers? That was not the question!).
Yet, you have lots of people in this thread claim that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
>This law aims to promote fair competition and prevent unfair business practices that could harm consumers. It prohibits certain actions that might restrict competition, like tying agreements, predatory pricing, and mergers that could lessen competition.
>The Antitrust Division enforces federal antitrust and competition laws. These laws prohibit anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the benefits of competition.
Both are aimed squarely at consumer benefit. Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers *where those things impact consumer benefit.*.
Mergers and actions against competitors are obviously allowed in the normal course of business.
Lots of people have other ideas about what kind of antitrust law they'd like to see, but such a law has not passed the US Congress.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you#:~:text=T....
“Taxpayers” is an extremely broad category as well, though you need an appetite for it to argue through that clause.
Though I think you can easily make a consumer argument for Chrome being unbundled (competition for Chromes default search engine pick)
Monetizing browsers requires either subscriptions or (further) enshittification of the web experience. Forcing /market/ competition into the space will not be great for consumers, IMO.
Perhaps some antitrust action would help with this.
So, it's plainly written - ations don't have to actually harm consumers, the fact they could do so is enough - and the key criteria is that they might restrict competition.
You paraphrased incorrectly. The correct paraphrasing would be, “Restrictions on anticompetitive behaviour and mergers where those things deprive consumers of the benefits of competition.”
Competition is the heart, NOT consumer benefit.
It would be nice to have a completely open source browser that can be built with a simple one liner from cargo. Having several thousands of eyes on the code daily to check for telemetry violations, privacy issues, security, and performance daily in mostly a single language, small, and well structured browser repo would be phenomenal compared to the disjoint jumbled messes we have today.
Most developers work with a Unix mindset (do one thing well, with focus on simple and easily managed code), which tyically means telemetry is _wildly_ out of line (offers no real benefit for the basics while adding huge complexity), so privacy and security are naturally far better. Lynx like TUI browsers are a nice idea, but unfortunately sometimes an image is desired to be manually viewed, or javascript is required. It would be wonderful if javascript were simply dropped from most websites, but we don't live in that world, so we're stuck with the next best thing (disabling all js until explicitly allowed by the user).
These are the types of things people in software devs typically care about, which there are many in HN.
2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?
It’s not, other than Google has a way larger market share (especially if you count Edge/Opera/Brave/etc.) and has been (ab)using that position to push web standards in a direction that favors their business and that other browser vendors have to follow to keep up.
If Safari had Chrome’s market share and was throwing their weight around like Google does and Microsoft did with IE, it’d be the same argument and I’d also personally support forcing them to divest it.
Really the main difference is that Apple has a captive audience on iOS and no incentives to improve so they don't do anything with it.
It is a magnitude higher.
So instead of "10x" substitute "by a large enough factor or margin to make a significant difference". That is totally true globally speaking. Locally, in the US, you could however argue that apple abuses it's iPhone market share to sabotage competition (e.g. streaming, webstandards,etc). That just means you should sue both not neither.
The easy fix is to make them slow down development, but I fail to see how that's a good thing.
For a more practical example, Linux is also developed mostly by paid employees, but they are from many different companies and thus improvements can't be weaponized as easily.
Or they could do what Brave, Vivaldi and others do and simply use Chromium as a base.
Don't you even see the problem?!
Even Microsoft dropped out from developing a web browser, it literally has a larger scope than a whole OS.
But sure, enjoy your Chrome OS proprietary "open" web.
Not sure if you remember all the "native" applets that actually were proprietary before Chrome came on the scene and made JS fast enough to kill them... ActiveX, Flash, Java... Those were the dark ages, because of Google the web is more open and better than ever...
https://www.w3.org/membership/list/
It's a lot more than just Google...
my ad-blockers ruin plenty of websites. never met a site that was broken due to FF itself.
Apple hasn't been found to have a monopoly like Google has [1].
[1] https://apnews.com/article/google-antitrust-search-engine-ve...
Look at the EU, levying multiple billion dollar fines against Apple. But in the US, Apple is free to abuse customers since their market share is a few % short of a monopoly...
So far the US has had little desire to regulate big tech in any significant manner.
For example, Chrome has replaced IE as the corporate browser, due to the integrations with Workspace accounts and Authentication mechanisms. In order to use the fingerID on my/employer's macbook pro, I have to give my employer root/sync access to Google Chrome.
That only tells me that governments can no longer leave technical aspects of the internet (standards/APIs, etc.) to market forces. There are many historical precedents for such action such as flight/aircraft, RF spectrum management, road and maritime regulations, health/food standards, etc. There's a myriad of them.
Regulations would enforce interoperability and uniformity. To say this would stifle innovation is nonsense, it would be like saying that road rules and maritime law have stifled the development of motor vehicles and shipbuilding.
It's not like supporting a completely different OS..
Strange, thought it was Edge, as it integrates with MS products much better. Must be an US thing then.
Although Edge is Chrome plus OS search & telemetry integration so there's extra over and above just browsing.
- [auto-profile-login]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26200298
- [gSignin]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/185277
- [gSync]: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139?hl=en
> Keep your info private with a passphrase With a passphrase, you can use Google's cloud to store and sync your Chrome data without letting Google read it.
Thank you appealing to reasonable expectations, but Google, as their own docs make clear, ties uses together quite aggressively^W conveniently.
2) Whatabout Apple and Safari? Apple doesn't offer an email service supported in part by scanning email content for ads.
Apple has gone to some lengths to engineer a system where they can credibly(-ish) claim to "protect your privacy when you browse the web in Safari," [Apple private relay].
- [Apple private relay]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102602
Google re-engineers their browser to prevent ad-blockers from working.
You're unwittingly describing the textbook definition of anticompetitive practices only made possible by abusing a dominant position.
> 2) how is it different to Apples integration with Safari?
Safari does not represent >65% of all web traffic. Also, there's the major liability of having a single ad company controlling the browser that the average internet user uses to browse the web.
You can still use Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (and in fact the UI will (or at least used to) tell you that).
It's only different in the share of the overall market they hold - and it's notable that the EU has already acted to break Apple's monopoly over specifically the iOS browser market.
But then again, I wonder if part of the reason is that they can't make the law too prescriptive because that would create other problems politically (especially if it ever got pointed towards European companies)...
If we're serious about this, separate search and ads. Force ads-Google to pay search-Google for data on the open market, and let other people pay for the same data, make it transparent, and let consumers see exactly what's happening.
While we're at it, separate Google's display ad network from its RTB facilities, basically carving DoubleClick back out again.
Then watch the stock tumble.
Isn't that what we want companies to do?
I have two frustrations with this kind of decision:
1. It's not clear to me that the judge has any interest in creating value. 2. It does feel a bit like being punished for success.
It's one thing when it's ill-gotten success, eg via coercive contracts (like Android has with play services), and we should aggressively deal with that sort of contract! However, what often seems to happen in these types of cases is the judge identifies a behavior they dislike and bans it without really considering more targeting / surgical treatments
Just like for example how a car company can make cars without being a monopoly. Not the best example, but we’re so used to a monopoly it’s tough to imagine what a competitive browser market would look like.
What business model do we expect chrome to have? The same DOJ doesn't like Google giving Apple money for traffic acquisition. Why would that be allowed for spun-out chrome?
Why do we expect the rest of the ecosystem to remain static? What do you think Google's next move is if they sell chrome?
Who do you expect to buy Chrome? Not Facebook. Who else could and would want to?
This is a solution that has been proposed without really considering any second order effects. Or if they were considered, it was done badly (it would be easy to prove me wrong: they could just write up what they expect to happen, and it would have to be even mildly believable)
I do not have a solution for the business case I have to admit, but it has 60%+ market share I believe, I’m sure someone will figure out something to monetize this.
It might end up with chrome becoming a worse browser though, that’s not an unlikely outcome at all. But Internet as a whole would be better for it in my view, if google‘s grip got loosened a bit…
Sure, this has gotten worse over time (if Reddit is closed, goog can pay for access), but they've been a reasonable steward of the web. Chrome is good. I use it intentionally. (Generally, my devices do not come with it installed and I choose to install it)
There are lots of reasonable pieces of anti competitive behavior that we should be punishing. This one will make the internet worse for consumers
I’m not saying they are the worse monopolists out there though, just that I find the logic of splitting chrome sound, in the interest of a more open internet.
Safari works fine?? It's web kit based and is better for both memory usage and battery life iiuc
I almost exclusively use it on my phone. I also use it on my laptop (I have chrome FF and safari but primary use safari and chrome because I prefer them)
This seems to be working as intended. Apple makes a great browser that runs great on their devices and is beautifully designed. Chrome works everywhere (that is important to Google!)
We have choices!
Safari is amazingly fast and energy efficient, but I really really like the total cookie protection feature of Firefox. It’s unique to Firefox and I wish it would become the standard.
> It does feel a bit like being punished for success.
Nobody is being punished. Punishment would be like "you're going to prison because the thing you started turned into a monopoly". That's not what is happening. It's more like "whoops, you created a monopoly, time to reset, but you get to keep everything you reaped so far".
There are many cases where we like monopolies because it's more efficient to only have one entity do a thing (eg build infrastructure)
It's useful to correctly punish illegal things monopolies do, but in this case, google has created a browser that is good! Better than alternatives!
If you spin that browser off, it will need to figure out how to monetize. It will get worse due to that monetization effort.
Google has other services that would be competitive without Google: drive, YouTube are easy examples.
If we made them spin off Gmail just because Google is too big, that doesn't make sense! Gmail is useful to Google in its current form, but there's no way it's pulling in significant profit (possibly as part of drive - I'm not certain).
You can't just pick a company you don't like and attack it with a hatchet. That's worse for consumers than the thing you're attacking, and the number one rule here should be for regulators to make things better, not worse!
I only use Chrome to interact with Google properties. I'd love to use Firefox for everything.
"These actions are unavailable using the Edit menus, but you can still use: Ctrl+C - for copy, Ctrl+X - for cut, Ctrl+V - for paste"
So for some reason some functions are just not present in other browsers. I can guarantee they could implement these functions if they wanted to.
Could it be due to Firefox not supporting the clipboard APIs until quite recently?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Clipboard_A...
And that is exactly why Chrome should be broken up/out. It is unfair competition. And you say there are many other well working options out there but that is simply not true. Googles web applications work best on Chrome and often break on non Chrome browsers. Mostly because of changes to those web applications and not because of random browser bugs. This is how you win people over and complete your browser world domination.
Exactly, we saw this with MS's IE 2—3 decades ago. That governments didn't learn from this and let it repeat with Chrome is so damn annoying.
Two decades ago IE6 was already 3yo, Safari 1 was 1yo, and it would take 4 years for Chrome to drop[2].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
When you use decades, it is implied that the precision is rough, interpreting it as exactly 30 years ago is just bad faith.
OP is correct - in the timespan between 2 and 3 decades ago, MS / IE implemented its full range of anti-competitive practices and at least partially through them became even more dominant than Chrome is today.
I thought that one had been retroactively deemed a pretty silly decision
No points for guessing why as it's damn obvious.
Same people = same mistakes.
For how long, though?
The trajectory for Firefox doesn’t look good at all (and it’s completely dependent on Google too).
Apple are doing their share of anticompetitive shenanigans with Safari on iOS, although the other way around.
Everything else is based on Chromium and therefore not contributing to any heterogeneity of implementations.
Servo is upcoming, but so far it is fantastic in comparison to any other browser out there.
I tend to focus on any software that does not require 12 teams of people 6 weeks to determine how to build a single binary because of the use of 20 different programming languages and mixing and matching of paradigms and solutions to subconponents. I very much appreciate simplicity and look for highly secure and private programs that highly discourage JavaScript from ever being run.
Servo is finally a breath of fresh air in that regard.
Can you elaborate on this? I am using Firefox since it was released, and it is getting better, not worse.
In this case, the "customers" are other companies.
Antitrust markets can be defined broadly or narrowly. In this case, the market was "general web search advertising" (among others).
Who are the consumers in this market? People and companies that want their ads placed where (and to who) it matters.
I'm sure everyone will be thanking the DOJ for their poorer Web experience, knowing that their sacrifice is allowing other ad companies to earn their fair share.
There’s multiple browsers, and people might choose Chrome because it has a better ecosystem around it. That means it’s a better product for those people.
It will benefit you in many ways, including: Better compatibility of Google with multiple browsers, and a browser which doesn't actively encourage you to use Google products and services.
Indirectly, a reduction in Google's centralized power will make life easier for many people and organizations which offer you services and products (yes, I realize that's a bit vague and needs some elaboration).
No, the way you do that is to pass a law that says Google can't intentionally make their websites work worse in other browsers. That's not what the dumb DOJ is doing.
Then end goal is fostering competitions in a market where there is basically none. So yes, it obviously benefits would be competitors. That's the point.
This is good reasoning. It is overreach for a regulatory body to do something that could impact the business model of a monopoly. Monopolies are bad, unless being a monopoly is part of that monopoly’s business model and an important part of how the monopoly makes money, in which case nothing should be done.
Can you expand on this?
What is the problem with government regulating, say, the ingredients that can be used in foods, forbidding addictive drugs from being added to them? Or selling drugs that are completely fake or outright dangerous?
This obsession with small governments (and basically, libertarianism) doesn't really stand on proper grounds.
Why can't the government work for you? Maybe it's an inherent bias given that I'm from Europe, but I think the stereotypical utopia about "big government" is much more true for huge corporations (which have absolutely no safety mechanisms built in to prevent a paper clip factory going overboard in the name of profit) compared to the slow-moving, democratic, slightly corrupt governments. Only one of these have accountability in a humane form, while the only metric for corporate is a single number.
Isn't that kind of the complaint though? Google, by controlling the platform and therefore sort of indirectly controlling the entire web, can make it artificially easier to push you to their products, and push you away from others.
If I wanted, for example, to make a competitor to Google Docs, I'm not just competing with Google Docs, I'm also competing with the integration of Google Docs with Chrome, meaning that Google Docs can be artificially better than my product. While I don't know if Google has actually done this, it would be pretty easy for them to actively gimp any Google Doc competitor in Chrome so that you're more likely to use their service instead.
The only reason I still use Chrome is because I already use other Google products and they integrate well together. There are many other better options out there otherwise, and they are all free. Breaking out Chrome from Google will not in any way benefit me as a consumer.
> The agency and the states have settled on recommending that Google be required to license the results and data from its popular search engine
> They are also prepared to seek a requirement that Google share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear.
It sounds like the end goal of this is to enrich other companies, not customers. And if the DOJ has their way, they want to crack open Google's vault of customer data and propagate it across the internet.
Not only does this sound extremely bad for consumers, the DOJ is trying to completely change Google's business model and dictate how they are supposed to make money. Regardless of how you feel about Google, this seems like a far overreach from the DOJ on finding and fixing market manipulation.