Note: Original report by Bloomberg, article by Reuters proxied by Neuters to bypass paywall.
Sell off? So who will buy
This seems like a sensible consumer protection to not let the ad company control the biggest web browser. I won’t hold my breath, but I’m glad they are trying something.
AWS should also be split from Amazon.
I think this is something even Elon Musk could get behind.
Google: Sure, we’ll sell it to anyone who pays off our Russian Govt fine.
What Lemmy client do you use?
I am asking because it caught my attention that you didn’t upvote your own comment.
Also, funny reference 😂
The Lemmy web client, same as Reddit, allows you to de-upvote your posts.
It feels weird to upvote your own post anyway and I don’t do so unless I am asking for help and want it seen more, urgently.That is so odd, if you dont think what you are saying is relevant or necessary why say it?
Your conscientiousness will be lost in a sea of others self importance, at least level the playing field and support yourself.
if you dont think what you are saying is relevant or necessary why say it?
If I worried about necessity, I would probably not have a Lemmy account.
level the playing field
I’m not playing dependent upon others, just upon my own ideals. I feel like an upvote needs to mean something. In my case, it means, I need more people to see it, for me.
In most cases, the feeling behind my posts/comments are: If someone sees it, good, have fun.
It will never happen. But it would be a good thing for the openness of the web. More Firefox, less Chrome.
I heard the same for Android and I was pretty supportive of the sentiment until I listened to the Android Faithful podcast episode discussing it…
If Google doesn’t develop Android, nobody will. Whoever buys Android, we don’t know if they will maintain the AOSP. Android has been an equal parts rollercoaster of good and bad ideas thanks to Google, but it has had someone do that…
Maybe LineageOS could take over, but that’s just insane wishful thinking.
Nokia, Siemens, Oracle, Linux Foundation, Tesla, IBM, OpenAI…there a hundreds of companies wealthy enough in that space that would not pose a consumer protection issue.
They are going to ask a judge like they have no fucking balls.
It’s called “Distribution of Power”.
We should be thankful it’s still here.Distribution of power into corporate hands. Oh, im willing to bet it is here to stay.
Chrome isn’t even developed by anyone but Google.
Oh, the DOJ is ran by idiots, my bad.
What? The fact it’s owned & developed by Google is the whole point
This is how the DOJ is planning to approach dismantling Google’s illegal monopoly, by breaking chrome - the world’s most used browser - away from them
If this happens, I’d be interested in seeing how this effects ChromeOS. I don’t use it but my mom does.
Also, if you’re confused as to why ChromeOS would be effected, while it’s based on Gentoo Linux, ChromeOS uses a modified version of Chrome as it’s Desktop Environment.
Yes I would like to know what that means for ChromeOS and Chromebooks. If the new “Chrome” company got ChromeOS also that would be huge. But if that is not a requirement Google could just put another Chromium browser in ChromeOS. They could also continue to sell Chromebooks but based on a ChromiumOS fork.
Its based on debian now :(
Depending on what version
According to Wikipedia, it’s still based on Gentoo, it just uses Debian for running Linux applications in Crostini.
Oh go figure, my bad :P
Google will bribe trump and this’ll be undone immediately
Google is such a good company, one the best. Everybody says it. I was just talking to John Google the other day, and he tells me, no really he did, he tells me we’re going to do amazing things together. Oogles of googles. That’s what we’ll sell. Everybody will know about google by this time next year. It’s true.
Username checks out
You forgot the unrelated rant in the middle about toasters being too dark these days or some shit.
And a series of words that sounds kinda like a complex sentence when you listen to it, but actually means nothing whatsoever
And he says to me… a very smart guy, Mark, he’s really doing… he’s really got to show… when he does things he really does them, you know, like he really does, very impressive, very modern
He also didn’t say his name three times in 10 seconds. Then sort of fade off and vaguely look off into the distance.
They said to me Donald, Donald, they said Donald, they do amazing things, real bigly things, my father, my father, said to me Donald, they do big things Google land. Really good things… Yeah… Big things…
<Fellates microphone>
…I mean, you do you buddy.
God damnit.
That would be the logical thing according to common sense and probably according to pichai a few weeks ago, but trump just nominated an anti big tech and musk friend to the FCC. musk is behind almost everybody in ai and autonomous cars so he’ll definitely push to hamper all competitors.
Sure, we don’t know how far would they go or how long will musk keep having white house influence and I personally think breaking up google is now off the table, but I don’t think they will get off the hook too easily.
So surely a very big bribe.
Lit. It’s a good ask although it’s not clear what separation means here. Not going to hold my breath, the big corpos seem to usually win these kind of games.
Chrome is now owned by a separate conpany with the same major stock holders.
It’s like they’re a company pretending to be another company, disguised as another company. Tropic Thunder all the way down.
Chrome is now owned by a company, owned by a company, owned by another company, that is owned by Google.
And even in the case where there is actual separation, and competition, it will only be temporary!
If they split Google, MS, Apple, Meta and Amazon all simultaneously, with some condition for the splinters to not merge back, and that contaminating the results of their allowed mergers, there may be good outcomes.
Or there may not. It’s about people, not laws, after all.
Why doesn’t this have sprint?
LoL they won’t, even if they buy it for 1 trillion dollar
Rad. Do Microsoft next.
If you’re talking about edge browser, edge is chrome.
Ew. So if someone likes their girlfriend to tie them up and edge them, that means they enjoy a breach of privacy, and getting google involved?
Google does like to watch.
Again! Again!
What’s to stop them just making another browser?
What’s to stop them just making another browser?
Nothing. Chromium is open source. So they could just fork it and declare a new “official” google browser and it would be a lot like Chrome.
I’m not sure why the govt thinks forcing google to give up a particular fork/branch of an open source browser is all that meaningful. It might make more sense if Chrome was a closed source one of a kind browser.
I’ve worked in the aftermath of DoJ agreements like this one. The DoJ is not stupid (or at least didn’t used to be) and will have stipulations about removing Google employees from governance/write permissions to the project, with follow up check-ins every few months to make sure any shenanigans aren’t occurring.
…none of that matters though now that the DoJ is going to be dissolved.
They need to ban them from forking the browser. Google has the ability to get people to install the new Google totally-not-chrome browser. Especially if they keep Android as well.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. It also makes Chrome essentially worthless to anyone except Google.
Maybe as a whole package, but node.js servers are ubiquitous and have a ton of stakeholders that have nothing to do with web browsers.
What does Chrome have to do with a node.js server?
Same JS engine, same maintainers, same iron-grip control by Google.
I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about here.
Not needed. Internet Explorer existed for years after the 90s. It wasn’t killed by the courts. It was killed by the fact that it’s only function was to install a better browser on first boot.
I think you are severely underestimating how many people don’t even understand the difference between windows, explorer, a web browser and even the Internet itself during the 90’s well into the 2000’s even 2010’s.
That’s who kept IE alive
No offense but it was the US Government. Most of their websites were coded for it, and quite a few of them didn’t work properly or reliably in other browsers as a result. This was true up until it was sunsetted and they were forced to update to edge and some of the websites still haven’t been properly moved over to chromium. When the pandemic hit and the Armed forces had to setup remote work for thousands of people Microsoft basically built them a fork of Teams. The US Government is kind of running hand in hand with Microsoft on a lot of stuff if you just hazard a cursory look.
With blackjack and hookers?
I’m 40% internet browser.
Potentially.
They didn’t make the first one! They got it from Apple, who themselves got it from KDE.
What if Linux foundation buys Chrome?
Do they have the money? What is the value of Chrome anyways, if you can’t do monopoly things with it? About as much as Firefox?
They already have Servo.
[Google controls how people view the internet]
This doesn’t quite make sense. How does Chrome “control how people view the internet”? Isn’t html/css the main thing that controls how people view the internet?
[ and what ads they see in part through its Chrome browser, which typically uses Google search,]
But it is trivial to change your default search agent right?
Is this move something we should view as a good thing, and if so, then why?
Chrome has a massive market share and Google abuses that market share by breaking web standards, and pushing people towards Chrome because “the competition doesn’t work”.
They act in bad faith and abuse their position to more deeply entrench their position in anticompetitive monopolistic ways.
That’s the Crux of it.
Essentially, everything is Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
Brave, Edge etc are chrome.
Most people are using chrome.
Google controlling chrome controls what the vast majority of people use to see the internet, and then they change chrome to make it harder for you to block ads that they want to show.
There’s no reason for chrome to break ad blockers unless it’s owned by an ad company.
Edit: Google done some other shady things by owning it in the past as well.
Steam, Spotify, Discord. Whoops, all Chromium.
Breaking up monopolies is a good thing, and Google arguably holds too much power. Chromium is being used in 70% of browsers, and the decision how to implement and develop web standards are all in the hand of one for profit company, which had little interest in keeping things open and accessible (and private).
A quote from this Register article sums it up nicely:
What we are forced to assume in turn is that Chrome is built by the professional developers working for an ad agency with the primary goal of building a web browser that serves the needs of other professional developers working for the ad agency’s prospective clients.
Chromium is being used in 70% of browsers
To me, I don’t think that should be an issue in anything. That’s up to browser makers. They are able to use whatever they want, and they will use whatever is easiest/best for their usage. They are also free to use WebKit (Safari’s engine), Gecko (Mozilla), or roll their own. This just sounds like you want to punish someone because they made something everyone preferred just because everyone preferred it.
It’s different when you are “forced” to use it (use ours or we won’t let you on our devices, like iOS, or use ours and we will lower/cut our fees for other things you want/need, like many different companies). But when the public is truly free to use what they want and they all want the same thing, then it shouldn’t be used as a reason to punish them.
