What if this browser killed lots of other viable browsers because it was "free" (yet supported by and supporting a monopoly)?

You never get to compare the products that never got to exist.

related, I think google supported firefox to have a "viable" competitor to chrome and prevent monopoly scrutiny.

Same as Microsoft keeping Apple alive back in their own antichrist days.

> Same as Microsoft keeping Apple alive back in their own antichrist days.

Antichrist seems like a typo here. Perhaps you meant antitrust?

Maybe it isn't ? MS was the antichrist in Open source circles before Satya Nadella

Still is, even if some have let themselves be tempted by the devil.

No past tense or qualifier necessary.

It sounds like you want to artificially make the dominant product worse (i.e. non-free) just to make the life of competitors easier.

And noting that Chrome doesn't have anything close to a monopoly - people can use any browser they like. Having >90% of the market doesn't make it a monopoly, it just makes it good. It is the last sort of product people should be attacking, Chrome is a free market success story and Google's strategy is an exemplar of good corporate citizenship.

Didn’t Google change YouTube to hinder Edge?

At first it was a free market success story, now it’s not

Why are you saying that like it's a bad thing? That's what antitrust means. Chrome is free because it's unfairly subsidized by Google Search. Standard Oil was also cheaper because it was a monopoly.

Because for that to make sense you need to have some strong evidence that the resulting status quo will be better for consumers than the present situation. You don't break monopolies just for the sake of breaking monopolies. You do that to avoid locking into some suboptimal outcomes for consumers.

so, we will all pay for browsers for google don't be a monopoly anymore, that is the plan?

Most of Google is "free" products that feed into its surveillance advertising platform. That's the problem. How are you supposed to break that sort of thing up without destroying most of the products? They were never designed to work independently from the network.

This exactly. An independent Chrome’s best path toward financial sustainability is closing down the source code and selling everyone’s browsing data to the highest bidder.

We all like to have a high minded ideal of some kind of wonderful fully independent for-the-good-of-society entity stewarding Chrome, but history has shown us that’s not what will happen.

hopefully the fines you get from some of the worlds wealthiest nations wouldn’t eclipse the profit you’d make

But they sell everyone’s browsing data to the highest bidder already, how would this be different? That’s their… entire… business model…

cite?

Chrome is already closed-source. The chromium project can't be closed because it's already free and released.

The new Chrome company could stop contributing back to Chromium if they wanted, but it would mean they'd diverge from the other browsers backed by the OSS project which is one of their big advantages.

I'm not saying they wouldn't do that or it wouldn't work out, but it's not an obvious win.

Selling user data to highest bidder wouldn't fly in Europe.

There are examples of good stewardship in open source projects: Epiphany, Servo, Ladybird.

Chrome is like a service not a product it is effectively Google installing a window so you can see it's fresh baked goods. It isn't something they should break up because it isn't something that inherently makes money and nor should it.

That’s a “half baked” analogy if ever I heard one. With you on the service but the rest of it is just stupid. To align with your analogy Google would have to restrict chrome to accessing only their sites and services, which would be useless, compared to other browsers.

Google could do this if they wanted very very easily but they wouldn’t make any money because as you know they sell advertising, for things they don’t provide.

You can walk into the store and see the store across the street. Chrome is akin to a loss leader like hotdogs CostCo.

The problem isn't the Browser it is the other services it has that makes it a monopoly.

Don't let, "Oh we sell off our loss leader so we are not a monopoly." fool you. It has YouTube, office solutions and even every other software under the sun.

Without Chrome being managed or maintain it becomes vulnerable exposing customers to viruses or attacks. It is a service because it stores passwords and manages bookmarks in a secure location for Google products. It is ingrained.

To me this sound like Edge wants to be king, but oh wait Edge is also part of a monopoly. So should not Microsoft experience this too?

Monopolistic practices are not necessarily monopolies, but rather require regulation to encourage fairness.

Didn’t dispute it was a service. What I was saying that Google run everything at a loss, and it’s all paid for by advertising. They don’t sell themselves advertising. No advertising no money.

Right, but the problem with most arguments supporting the break up of Chrome from Google are really not looking at the bigger picture. YouTube is more of a monopolistic threat than Chrome will ever be. If it was sold off it would mean most browsers could monetize and we'd be back to the AOL age. I don't dislike that era but it is 10 steps back. While Google isn't great applying simple policies would be easier to address monopolistic practices than just telling Google to sell it off.

Agreed, and I’m not fully aware au fait with DOJ reasoning. Perhaps it’s an anti-trust thing as it gives them a way to steer the development of the web to their own ends? That would be my key concern about Chrome anyway.

But to come back to the original point I was making, is that it’s really not akin to a bakery window. If I wanted to allow the metaphor to be further tortured I’d allow “Sears” or something.

But it’s more than that, as Google’s business model is largely parasitic to what users would be doing anyway.

That I do now disagree with. It is a portal to something and data.

do not disagree with* late night typing and auto correct...

Yeah I got ya

> Pushing for something that will clearly in not too distant future kill the split product is not helpful.

They’re not considering this because of Chrome’s market share, but because of Google’s power in the search engine market. Indirectly killing Chrome may be acceptable if it makes the market for search engines more competitive.

Having said that, I don’t think it will matter much as long as Apple and, in particular (because they also have a search engine) Microsoft can ship browsers with preconfigured search engines with their OSes, but we will see.

The product is never free, it’s just you’re not the one paying for it. This setup prevents new entrants from competing just the same.

[edit] the same way zero rating certain data traffic is still a net neutrality violation.

> This setup prevents new entrants from competing just the same.

Look at the new entrant browsers out there: all of them are based on Chromium. The existence of Chrome as an OSS project enabled competition in practice - the cost of entry is orders of magnitude lower when you have a mature browser engine at your disposal.

Not all of them, see: Floorp, Zen Browser, Epiphany, Ladybird, Servo.

Three hours a year of nagging window in rich countries will provide all the financing chrome, the web browser, will ever need.

We are talking about the most advertised, most installed most used program. Asking users to pay will do more good than harm

I think there are 2 products. Google Chrome and Chromium. For one of them: Good riddance! For the other: Well, actually you cannot really kill that, because anyone can fork it or contribute patches, so if the world thinks some change is needed, the world can make it happen. There is no need to be worried about the project. We could also put it under a copyleft license that obligates anyone to contribute modifications and we will be fine, if some company decides to fork it.

So you‘re saying Chrome can only survive because it feeds Alpahabet‘s ad service?

Seems like a good reason for a product to die.