Just look at Microsoft and their internet strategy, they chose the other route; push their internet browser(IE) down their massive distribution pipe called Windows and then introducing their search engine to this massive userbase. Fortunately this didn't work out for them but unfortunately that worked out for Google. And now Google essentially controls the Web in the more than half of the world.
No, Google was better, then they used Chrome as an extremely powerful moat to protect their situation. Google at first was like magic compared to the Altavista of the time.
No portal, no news, no header, no login, no advertise with us, no punching monkeys.
It was a refreshingly different take on the web at the time.
It’s not that Yandex is particularly better in any way, it just chooses to not filter the content one is looking for.
Headquarters: Moscow, Russia
Every argument I can think of is just worse with Google (spying, propaganda, censorship, security etc).
My neibhours never heard about the need to “denazify” us from Google’s home government.
War is much much worse than google. (Btw. Kagi is nice alternative, where you are the customer, not the product)
> what is the concern
Additional inteligence channel for their three letter agencies.
When somebody asks Yandex for data, decision making is done in such environment: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable...
(such environment also suggests how accountable are the people requesting said data)
Plenty of people think Trump is "literally" Hitler... Maybe your neighbors don't think that, but plenty of people do.
- the browser is undeniably critical as everyone's window through which they view the online world;
- the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc
- browsers aren't really a self funding product
- having a single for-profit US advertising company control everyone's view of the online world, however slightly (e.g. by obstructing adblockers), is Not Good
Splitting it off solves the latter problem but immediately raises the question of how to pay for it. A very artificial arrangement where Google pay "arms length browserco" to maintain Chrome?
After the separation, Google won’t have an incentive to promote Chrome - so it’ll lose market share eventually, and Chrome won’t have an incentive to require things like Google accounts or use Google search by default - opening space for other companies to compete.
A better solution is to implement a bill like DMA in the EU to enforce competition among web browser vendors and fight monopolies.
I expect there will be some material constraints that emerge in what browser features they're actually allowed to ship as shipping without a browser also seems to be anti-consumer.
No there was never a browser choice mandate in the US
You can surely do better than these examples. Nobody would be better for lack of action against IBM, and lack of serious action against microsoft continues to hurt us today. C'mon. Break these useless, unproductive fuckers up.
Their monopolistic behavior in Windows led to their current browser, mobile, cloud, and game console dominance.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2001/sep/07/microsoft...
That's the difference.
If they're not competing well, then that's entirely their fault. Microsoft is not at any kind of disadvantage here.
The original comment was saying that Google is able to perform anti-competitively because they control the most popular browser.
The followup (which I responded to) is saying that the existence of Windows as the most popular OS, and Microsoft’s control over the default browser there, mitigates this anti-competitive potential.
The fact that Windows is not the most popular OS (and that, in fact, the most popular OS is controlled by Google) undermines that argument.
Linux is not the most popular OS in any context that includes doing searches with the thing, unless you include Android, but Android just uses Linux for the kernel mostly, and an OS is more than a kernel.
I’m not clear on what they meant by Linux. But if we use a definition of “Linux OS” that includes Android and is restricted to devices which people typically use to perform searches (aka consumer devices) (since that was the original topic), then Linux is mostly Android and it is a kind of pointless distinction to make.
If we want to use some definition of Linux that precludes Android, and covers all devices that use the Linux kernel, then we have a bunch of servers, streaming boxes, smart lightbulbs, whatever.
If we want to use a definition which is, like, what I think everyone means when they say Linux in the context of market share: GNU/Linux or BusyBox/other/Linux (I was hoping to avoid the GNU/Linux meme, but here we are), then that doesn’t have much market share.
It's actually more embedded in Windows than Google is in Android.
If you change your default engine in Android it changes across the OS.
In Windows, there are dialogs that say "search bing for" embedded into places like the right click menu when you have text highlighted that remain even after attempting to express a different search choice. Another example is the search bar in a new tab.
Not that I disagree with the overall point, but this is something the DOJ does not do. They would just look at the current laws and decide who to prosecute based on their interpretation of events.
Sounds almost like Firefox.
Seems like it didn't work though.
If another entity buys Chrome, they’re only doing so based on the belief of increased future value/revenue from it. Google doesn’t want to sell it because they see more future value in it. If Chrome sucked, there’d be no antitrust case. So this is all a “you’ve done too good a job, now give it all up.”
I don’t use Chrome or Chromium based browsers because Safari works well for all of my use cases. But I want to see alternatives prosper. I don’t think needing Chrome gets anyone there.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al...
Yeah... Because massive companies use them anti-competitively as a moat against other companies, and as a loss leader to enable massive data collection and vendor lock in.
"browsers aren't really a self funding product" is a symptom of dysfunction, not the inevitable conclusion of a fair market.
The synergistic effects are so strong that most users would prefer there to be The System, in which everything works together and there's no risk of incompatible choices. They don't necessarily care which system.
The market in things like, say, file explorers is tiny. There's a few shell replacements (free), Midnight Commander and clones, and maybe over in the corner someone making a few thousand dollars a year from an Explorer replacement.
There are probably plenty of such examples.
I'm not sure this is fundamentally true, but regardless of whether it is or not, our political systems have followed an historical path of development such that it behooves political leaders to think like this, and encourage their followers to.
If you removed the money you paid me could say you're being more efficient, but I don't know if that's a useful definition of efficient. Just as you could steal some raw materials and say you're being efficient.
But the browser market is not currently highly competitive.
The best thing about open source is that cooperating on it is very easy.
Specifically, this one:
> browsers aren't really a self funding product
What do you think will happen if Google is forced to divest Chrome?
But not everything must be for-profit. Free/Libre/Open Source Software is a prime example. Projects like GNU, Linux, GNOME, KDE, WebKitGTK, LibreOffice are sustainable for a long time.
Konqueror and Epiphany are Webkit based, so presumably benefit from Apple's funding of Webkit.
Ladybird and Servo aren't real browsers yet, and have so far been funded by grants which doesn't seem to be long-term stable.
Brave is into crypto scams and advertising scams, so I guess you're right there. Their revenue is also tiny.
The rest aren't what I'd call "real" browsers, most don't have the same level of functionality and compatibility as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge... Servo for example is literally just the rendering engine Firefox gave up on.
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/wiki/Deviations-from-...
Maybe you could carve out a niche that's willing to pay, the same way C# did before dotnet core. But for a mass product the best-case scenario would be something similar to today's Opera.
However what it would do is open up the market to competition. Right now Google is spending a lot on Chrome development and Chrome advertisement. Opera and Edge both have given up on their own engines because they couldn't keep pace with Chrome development, and Firefox kept its engine but can't compete with Chrome's ad spend. If Chrome had to compete on a more even playing field there would be more room for diversity and competition. That could be a net positive, even if it makes Chrome worse.
So who would buy “Chrome” when they can get Chromium for free and fork it?
There was a "Gold" version they sold at retail for some time that had a WYSIWYG editor in it, until they made it standard as part of the Communicator suite.
What if the browser had a similar model? The manufacturer pays a certain 'browser development fee' into escrow, then on first boot, the copmuter shows a browser ballot, which gets set as the default, and the fee goes to the chosen browser developer? There's probably a bunch of problems with this approach, and, at least initially, wouldn't break the monoculture, but it might be a good starting point for how to fund browser development.
The new Chrome company will struggle for a year or two then Apple will try to buy it but lose out after Oracle submits a higher bid.
We're in the worst timeline, so I could see that happening.
In all seriousness, I kind of wish that someone could build a sustained non profit like apache to take over chromium - if Google or Microsoft or others want to custom roll their own flavor fine, but Google being for-profit has been making decisions against the best for everyone browsing the web (such as the new plugin stuff around adblocks) (conflict of interest)
so, an utility.
create a (partially?) state-owned steward with a legislated mandate to develop the browser, self-funded via extra tax on digital goods and services.
I don’t think these engineers have the right incentives, and their interest is not aligned with mine. I don’t really care what they do to Chrome and their efforts benefit me only indirectly. I am also not convinced by the "best browser" thing, even using it every day on my office computer. So, meh. I don’t care too much either way but I won’t lose anything if Google has to spin it off.
Create a consortium or interested private entities but let's not give such an important piece of technology to governments where meritocracy is non-existent (also based on personal experiences).
Just wait until you have to justify IT expenditure to a for-profit corporation that isn't solely focused on technology.
Government screws things up because it's (by design) slow. Business screws things up because f*ck your needs, we need to get a check to a retiree who never even worked here.
Either your business is spending the economically optimal amount on IT or you're running at a net deficit disadvantage.
Note that the economically optimal amount may not be what people want or expect, which is why in general we rely on (mostly) free markets and not centralized human planning like the USSR.
The problem with this is that people think that the net deficit disadvantage matters.
It doesn't. Companies are now owned by shareholders that are set up to not have to care about that company within a fairly short period of time. They're not owned by people who have any pride in "winning" that market or an existential threat to their finances if things go poorly. Most publicly-traded shares of companies on stock exchanges are owned by pension and retirement funds, and the person at the head of that fund has exactly one job: make money for the members. If that means gutting the company they hold shares in like a fish, while simultaneously setting up to exit the position, that's what that means. The company's net deficit disadvantage is not the fund's net deficit disadvantage, and that's by design.
Now, that has massive economic consequences for the people who are at the company (and, y'know, actually do the work), and for customers who relied on the product or service, but the fund has made money. Whether its members spend it on anything that will create more economic value over time is another matter. For example, fast-rising homeowners insurance rates in places in the Southeastern US that have been popular with retirees over the last few decades would indicate that they aren't spending it wisely, but, hey.
But even then one party in the government wanted to defund PBS for being too liberal
https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-poten...
If 90% of the contributors were non-Google, then it would effectively be controlled by non-Google, because they could fork it and their fork would still get 90% of development.
See Terraform for a live example.
The only reason Google "controls" Chromium is because Google funds almost, but not quite, 100% of its development.
On a similar note, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from investing equal or greater amounts and forking Chromium (well, arguably they might already have with Edge). Except that they're benefiting from all of Google's investment, for free. Why turn down a massive developer investment from your competitor with no strings attached?
They are, see how both Safari and Firefox, the 2nd and 3rd most popular browsers, have brought in tens of billions of revenue per year. Safari is immensely profitable, Firefox too would be if Mozilla wouldn't be run in an absurdly poor manner.
> the user gains a huge amount of value by a browser being integrated into the OS, webviews in other applications, etc
What is the huge value gain that e.g. Safari being integrated into MacOS is bringing me? Why couldn't webviews be backed by a browser of my choice?
The point was that developing Safari isn't what makes apple the money, it's setting Google as the default search engine of the default browser. So if Apple would stop maintaining safari tomorrow and would switch to preinstalling Firefox, they would still get the Google money (for setting Google as the default search engine of their Firefox installation). So Safari isn't profitable for Apple, as was claimed before.
Similar for Windows.
The exact way Safari itself is immensely profitable is under scruity in this exact DOJ case!
> As set forth in Section IV, the PFJ prohibits Google from offering Apple anything of value for any form of default, placement, or preinstallation distribution (including choice screens) related to general search or a search access point.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.223...
To what extent and I holding a stupid belief, and why? I think I might like to be talked out of this, if reasonable. Want to try?
You can use Firefox 3, programs don't rot.
In this specific case I'd be willing to bet that Firefox 3 probably doesn't handle current HTTPS/TLS standards and might not be able to browser the modern Internet at all (let alone display modern webpages, HTML5 video players, single-page web apps, WebRTC live calls, etc.)
Put it behind privoxy. All those SPA blogs exist solely due to google. No google - no SPA.
- Why would Google (which famously didn't index Javascript well, and liked clear super-optimized URLs) have contributed to the existence of single-page applications (which used to have terrible drawbacks for SEO)? Where's the incentive?
- And what is a SPA blog? That seems like such a far-fetched idea.
I have yet to see evidence that Google uses browser sync data for advertising.
Go do something in chrome (look for cruises maybe), then delete the activity from myactivity.google.com, then wipe and reinstall chrome. You will see that you aren’t advertised based on that activity yet it’s still in your chrome history.
Then you probably don't get out much:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/31/24167119/google-search-al...
Another major point highlighted by Fishkin and King relates to how Google may use Chrome data in its search rankings. Google Search representatives have said that they don’t use anything from Chrome for ranking, but the leaked documents suggest that may not be true. One section, for example, lists “chrome_trans_clicks” as informing which links from a domain appear below the main webpage in search results. Fishkin interprets it as meaning Google “uses the number of clicks on pages in Chrome browsers and uses that to determine the most popular/important URLs on a site, which go into the calculation of which to include in the sitelinks feature.”
It could be marked as chrome because Firefox doesn’t support it (without a default-off config value) and Safari technically implemented it at a later date than Chrome, with non-chromium Edge supporting it years after chrome.
This would indicate Google is using chrome to tell it when (via its support of the ping property) but wouldn’t indicate they are decrypting and analyzing chrome sync data.
Who's going to buy Chrome that also doesn't suffer from the same anti-trust problems? Who would want to buy Chrome? Who would want to fund Chrome?
What browser would Android ship? In one view I kind of like the idea that Google would have to shop around and 'buy' a browser for its OS (competition good!), but also that seems ridiculous and easy to fall right back into the same trap.
Open source browsers are either bad and non-competitive, or they're Firefox and still get criticism for being in the pocket of Google.
This is interesting question especially when companies are usually just use Chromium instead of creating new browser (not even making hard fork of Chromium).
[1] https://chromeenterprise.google/products/chrome-enterprise-p...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-30/enterpris...
Hmm. It's a good question, and I don't know the answer. I think there's a compelling argument that the problem is the scale of the harm. That is, even if the new owner has the same problems, the new owner won't also be the largest web company. So the problem still exists, yes, but becomes smaller. In particular having the #1 web browser strongly tied to the #1 web company has a lot of problematic dynamics that the #1 web browser being owned by the #25 web company doesn't. Maybe that company would be more open to forming beneficial relationships with the #2 and #3 web companies, for example.
[0] Unless if today you take Chromium and make your own browser, and it still has all the stuff in about logins and tracking.
Why would Google continue to fund Chromium development without Chrome?
If FF can get millions for its default search option, Chrome can easily command more and if Mozilla can afford to venture into other product areas with their budget, it doesn't sound impossible to have a self-sustained chrome development once you eliminate all the non-essential feature work that helps only Google.
Chrome is only the default on Pixel devices...
WRONG
Before a couple of weeks ago where a Google Play Services update changed the first set-up process, almost all global (non-CN market) devices forced Chrome as default: Xiaomi, OnePlus, Realme, Motorola, Oukitel and whatever other weird brands there are left in the Android world. AKA anything other than Samsung
The YouTube videos in higher bitrates (like 4K) is generally due to Firefox's ability to hardware accelerate things, and there's a bit of difference there, yes. But on Linux and macOS (moreso in sequoia), I see no extreme CPU use. Just testing it on Firefox 132.02 on Debian Testing with Radeon 550 with open drivers, While I see a spike in CPU load, there's definitely some GPU load is also being produced, pointing to at least some GPU acceleration.
On the other hand, Intel N100 with on board graphics can visibly struggle at 4K as far as I can tell. That one runs Firefox ESR though, I need to retest.
I don't use WASM based Google Workspace tools (docs, sheets, etc.) heavily, but they don't crash when we use it on other pepople's documents that we collaborate on.
I sign in browser-wide and I do takeouts regularly. I don't see my browsing data.
> It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP.
And back when they were part of AOSP I never saw these example apps in the wild. Every vendor ships their own phone app. Every single one.
There's some "hey we compile a extremely old and vulnerable version of AOSP"-style Android distributions, mainly advertised for builtin su/Magisk or "degoogle", which did use these example apps, though.
I agree with other critics, they are toxic.
I always enable every data collection option in my privacy page, because even if I don't they get the data anyway, so why bother?
I do see my entire Google Search history since 2006.
And that's one aspect of one product. Company-wide list would be probably impressive in the worst way possible
Even for the matter of the browser, Apple does not have the same push as Google does. Yes, Safari is the default browser on a phone. But outside of the mobile world, Safari is a rounding error.
No, but they're trying to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42185080
This article accurately captures all tech monopolies, Apple included.
Probably worse so as Google don't seem to copy the features of companies and then spin them as their own all the time like Apple gets away with. Or to kill/remove/restrict competing apps when Apple decides to get into the market for something, or just generally as a "punishment" for not following Apple's strict rules (that only exist to benefit Apple, whilst they tell consumers "it's all 4 u baby").
I don't do web dev, but from what I've heard, web devs also suffered trying to support multiple conflicting browsers, and Chrome's dominance actually makes life much easier.
In order to dive any further, it would have to begin excavation.
In principle there is nothing wrong for example with a shared account for multiple products from the same company, many even prefer it. The problem only appears when this gets concentrated into too much power and can be leveraged in ways that distort the market and hurt consumers.
To me this option seems more practical. And we already have some precedence for this kind of solution.
For aviation we have entities like EASA issuing standards like ED-109 and for healthcare we have the HL7 organization issuing the HL7 standard. Another example in the healthcare industry is the DICOM standard created by the NEMA organization. This is not a new idea.
I'm not arguing this approach is without problems. But we are already doing this for some pretty important topics, and I don't see why we couldn't use the same strategy for an "open web standard" that all browsers have to implement.
Seems reasonable they’d push for a browser standard as well…. Even though we kind of have one.
But most people seem to think that just removing Chrome from Google would fix this issue. People seem to forget that Chrome isn't the only tool Google can use to steer the web standard in a particular way.
The Google crawler is probably an even more effective tool in shaping the web standard. "To be indexed by Google your page needs to comply with these requirements" puts A LOT of pressure in everyone working in the web.
This is why I think creating and enforcing a web standard is the only practical solution to this problem.
Wrong? Or at least where's the citation to back this up?
"UNIX Standard" presumably means POSIX which was a work of the IEEE, not a government body. If some government had something to do with making it happen, I'm not aware of that. At the time (1988) UNIX wasn't used much outside of academia and niche industries.
It didn’t sound like the US government made it, just pushed for it and probably contributed to the initial versions
If only anyone fully respected the standards instead of everyone implementing their own twist...
This particular example is a bit misleading as those apps are still available; they're just unbundled from the system image: https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/unbundled_apps/re...
I don't think Google owning Chrome is really a factor here, but just a raw traffic question where FF Mobile has basically zero uptake. The experience they serve on FF Mobile is just the "we arent subscribed to validating that all of our shiniest JS works with this version of this browser".
The extension spoofs the user agent and arbitrary obscure features that only trigger on specific queries may be broken.
Google does do the effort of validating on other browsers where the traffic threshold is higher, including Firefox on Desktop. If they didn't own Chrome nor Firefox they still wouldn't really have incentive to spend more time supporting the tiny fraction of users.
- They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more hardware and software lockin to their platform: see unexportable passkeys
Can't say I've noticed that, but YouTube definitively feels like it's getting an especially slow-loading version on Firefox.
Here are more:
- (jumping off of your second point...) Play Services does more than just handle stuff you sign into as a user -- it's also a dependency for everything from push notifications to screen casting. This actively poses issues building competing platforms, in that in order to give developers a path to shipping in your ecosystem you have to provide functioning alternatives to all of those ancillary features. The compatibility issue also impacts user adoption, and then the user adoption and the barren marketplace impact each other... Even the combined resources of Amazon and Microsoft weren't enough to overcome this. (Facebook did, but I'm also not sure forking the OS into a separate VR platform is necessarily the same thing.)
- It also comes with integrity checking, so even if you do find a good third party image, and sideload Google packages, numerous things won't work unless you take part in a dumb arms race that ironically requires you to also root your device. By which I mean a feature that was originally built for banking applications is now used everywhere from streaming services (as an additional layer of DRM) to gacha games (for anti-cheat). This is actually the entire reason I dropped Pokemon Go, personally.
Obligatory link to the excellent Ars piece on this topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
Pedantically, their resources were never combined. They independently tried to compete, and they independently failed.
For what it's worth though, Amazon seems to be doing tidy business with entrypoint tablets and FireOS, which is a fork of Android, but still one they own.
Microsoft's exit of mobile was a short-sighted decision IMO. They have the entire office suite. They have windows and Windows has essentially become an app store model too.
I can easily imagine a future where Microsoft leaned in hard on Microsoft Mobile-exclusives for Word/Outlook/Excel/Teams/etc., bundled it with the rest of Office/Windows subscriptions, and had every office worker in the world carrying a windows phone for their work device.
I know, I know - everyone wanted only an iPhone. But it feels to me like Microsoft didn't try very hard.
I'm talking about Windows Subsystem for Android, which leveraged Amazon's app store.
Though honestly, their application strategy since Windows 8 has been fascinating. Watching them:
- ship Linux and Android app support
- replace their first-party browser with a Chrome derivative (and inherit all the PWA support of its parent)
- ship first-party support for .NET and PowerShell on other platforms
- ship React Native builds for Windows and macOS
...all suggest they're really trying not to get into the same hole as what happened with Metro, by giving you a lot of different ways to build something that can then run on modern versions of Windows -- regardless of whether that's even necessarily your goal.
What's the difference, and where can I find this extension?
The most recent example being Gemini now deeply integrated into Chrome. Had Gemini been a stand-alone product, it would have to fight for every user. Now billions of users have it at their fingertips.
Huh, I wonder if this is why I have perceived a drop in quality from Google Search. What a stupid move from them -- not only have I stopped using Google Search and now pay Kagi (yes I know money still flows from Kagi to Google but even still) and have been evangelizing Kagi as well as taking every opportunity to shit on Google Search.
Great job G, you made the product worse and made me a customer of someone else
That's OK: these days, the phone (voice calling) app is only useful for receiving calls from scammers and telemarketers. I wouldn't miss it.
- When you sign in to Google, you sign in browser-wide. Google now gets all of your browsing data, perfect for advertising. (If you ever doubt it, go check out Google Takeout. You'll be shocked at the amount of data you see there.)
- They have special APIs and features that they get to use, and nobody else. Only because they own Chrome. [1]
- They get to move forward with enabling and pushing features that allow for more advertising: see Manifest v3, FLoC.
- Google specifically serves a worse version of Search on Firefox for Mobile. You have to get an extension to get the full experience.
This isn't an isolated attempt. You can see more of the same thing with Android.
- AOSP (the open source counterpart of Android) is now unusable. It doesn't ship with most essential apps, including a Phone app. In previous versions of Android, all of these were a part of AOSP.
- Most third party launchers/stores struggle to implement features because they are only available for Google themselves.
- The signing in with Google thing from above continues here too: you sign in to Google system-wide.
[1]: https://x.com/lcasdev/status/1810696257137959018