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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.

- 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

Since Chrome at its core is the open source chromium browser engine the ability for your competition to leverage what you do is already there. The dynamic here is fundamentally different than many other monopolies of the past due to this fact. It must be asked are people gravitating toward Chrome because they feel there is no other viable option to offer a similar experience or is it because they choose that because it feels to them to be the best choice to make in a free market.

Sure, there's a userbase, but you need a business model to take advantage of it in the first place because the benefit was the Telemetry (Google's) and Google's Ecosystem.

Also, the article specifically mentions Chrome, NOT Chromium (which again, is open), so what incentive would Google have to maintaining the project without their own version of it? Would they be bared from starting a new one? Would someone else take over Chromium? Who would have the resources to do such a thing other than say Microsoft who currently uses a Chromium browser?

Why not just go for the jugular and separate Adsense from the rest of Alphabet? It's the main driving force in all their dark patterns for all other platforms (Youtube, Android, Chrome, Search...)

One could ask, "How is Apple a Monopoly, and do they abuse that position?". In my view it is, since you can't have a business or build connected hardware without an iOS app. And as for abusing that position for gaining market share, there are just too many examples starting with say, watches.

Chrome can’t exist as a standalone business without being even more consumer hostile.

I know the focus by the DOJ here seems to be more on search and less on the technical control that Google has over the web experience through implementation complexity, however I can only hope that by turning off the flow of free cash more "alternative" browsers are given some space to catch up. Things like manifest V3 show that Google is no stranger to tightening the leash if the innovation of web technologies impact their bottom line, I'd like to have a web where this type of control isn't possible.

Personally I would prioritize spinning off Android though, and partly pragmatically since at least that would have a clear revenue stream. Maybe the Chrome App Store will experience a sudden surge in importance. A degoogled Chrome OS could almost start to look better than the direction Windows is going in.

It's true that Google adds a lot of things to Chrome or their own benefit or even the potential detriment of others like Mozilla.

That being said, they also do a tremendous amount of work to push the state of the web forward and, most importantly, they release Chromium 100% free and open source. That's not to mention the other incredibly impactful free projects that have stemmed from it like V8/NodeJS, Electron, Puppeteer, Chrome Devtools, etc.

On the flip side, it's been argued that Google's control over web standards is too strong and they can essentially strong-arm other browser vendors into implementing whatever they want. It's also been argued that Google pushes too fast and makes it impossible for other vendors to keep up, leading people to use Chrome if they want the latest + greatest web features.

But when we look at the other browser vendors, I personally feel like Google seems like a much better alternative. Mozilla feels like a dried up husk of the company it apparently once was and Apple pushes a buggy, closed-source, locked-down browser which has been purposely held back from critical features in the past (I think they did that to try to keep users off web apps and keep them paying Apple huge app store fees).

----

Anyway, I certainly have very mixed feelings on this one. My main hope is that this doesn't spell the beginning of the end for Chromium because I truly believe it's a piece of software that has provided immense public benefit.

I don't think Google are fully clean in all this by any stretch, but for all the people saying that Google is just privacy-violating data junkies, did you catch that aspect of the DOJ statement?? The DOJ wants the advertisers to have MORE information (about us). That makes me sick.

The main problem is that, thanks to Chrome's massive market share, Google is in a position where they can effectively dictate the future of the Web as a platform.

We've already seen a few instances of this: Manifest v3 and FLoC/Privacy Sandbox, for example, were met with widespread opposition, but eventually they made their way into Chrome; WEI, on the other hand, was withdrawn due to backlash, but make no mistake, it will come back at some point.

The current state of Web standards can be summed up as: whatever Chrome does is the standard. The other browsers have to follow along, either because their modest market share doesn't afford them the luxury to be incompatible with Chrome, or because they're based on Chromium, so they hardly have a choice. The only exception is Apple, but let's be honest, they only do so because of their own business interests.

Ideally, Chrome/Chromium should be spun off as an independent non-profit foundation set up to act in the public interest. Obviously there would be trade-offs: a slower development cycle, new features taking longer to be shipped, etc. But in my opinion that's far preferrable to having Google continue to exert this level of control over the Web.

Unfortunately, the current administration has two months left in its term, so it's not going to happen.

Google sells Chrome, then immediately forks Chromium and starts a new “completely unrelated” browser with all the same features called “Magnesium”

Chromium exists - literally as a baseline for several other corporations to build a browser.

If you wanted to do something meaningful - you must separate search and ads, everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Sure, Google doesn’t always prioritize developments that don’t align with its ad monopoly. Still, Chrome remains a polished & widely used product.

As far as I can see, it would be best to establish a "Chromium Foundation," akin to the Linux Foundation, with emphasis on advancing web standards, unencumbered by corporate priorities.

That said, the more entrenched monopoly Google maintains lies in its "Search Experience," integrated with complementary products like Maps, YouTube, Android, and others.

I don't see any other viable alternative that serves the needs of most users across the board. Bing doesn’t come close, and while private search engines cater to power users, the average web user rarely switches search engines. For many, Google Search has become the de facto entry point to the internet and their view of the Web.

This should have happened years ago.

TBF, I worked in Chrome almost 7 years and I didn't see anything outright nefarious. I don't know how user-hostile decisions (like breaking ad blockers and serving advertisers better) get made, but they do get made, or defaulted into. Trust me, the leadership of Chrome knows exactly how to justify its $300 million+ budget to the rest of Google, revenue numbers and all.

It isn't wrong to point out how harmful to society monopolies are, and to identify them, but the development of Chrome, Android, etc, do also present genuine value to anybody who wants that code.

Without Google making money from the search/targeting/advertising model, who is paying for Chrome, Firefox and Google Search? Who is paying for Android after third party marketplaces take off?

I'm not making any recommendations here except that I think we need to be careful what we wish for. Tools we rely on might evaporate.

Chrome google pulled the entire browser market forward by investing in chrome. A stand alone chrome is just going to make money by charging by default status or be bought by someone else trying to create push their defaults.

It seems none of them bothered to read Kagi’s outstanding suggestions on the topic. [1]

1: https://blog.kagi.com/dawn-new-era-search

While you can sell access to the existing installations (control over the update url), if Google continues to invest development into a fork (and just drops the information about it on Google frontpage) then that new fork will become defacto Chrome.

EDIT: To clarify, the value of Chrome is not only the userbase, but also its placement in Google products and importantly, the development effort on a scale few can afford.

I'm struggling to see how Google is truly behaving monopolistic here. Chrome is available for compile, and is part of other browsers like edge. It's like suggesting linux has a monopoly because almost all web servers run on it.

Maybe not only Google, but everyone needs to rethink the concept of a browser.

"Selling" off chrome is probably not even really possible in any reasonable business way.

Hey Google - I'm both, and your trend over the years of degrading products I used to love with increasingly user-hostile choices has already caused me more harm than I can imagine could arise out of fixing the incentives.

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/doj-will-push-goog...

No SNI:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241119090808if_/https://news.b...

Google's sole business is to make people look at content they don't want to look at (ads), and I find it deeply problematic that they not only control the operating system and software distribution platform for a large fraction of devices, but now also the browser and by extension the standards of what used to be the open web.

Who might buy it? I can list them:

- Apple

- Microsoft

That's it. Turns out you can't properly invest in a Browser without conflicts of interest. Apple might buy it to help drive more users toward the App Store. Microsoft might buy it for similar, all-too-familiar reasons. They both have the funds and incentives to want this massive "captive" audience, and the means to exploit it, and I can't think of anybody else who would care enough to bid much.

So what would happen to Google? That's the real question. Seems like the point is not selling anything. The point is to ban Google from having influence over any web browser. I wonder if Judge Mehta will be able to craft an effective order to that end.

And splitting hairs over Chrome vs Blink (the engine), or switching to the multiple other Blink wrapper browsers that are there, or Chrome's controlled opposition Firefox() makes no sense either; by using any of these you only help maintain Google's hegemony over the web and its standards.

() - they don't get to call themselves a scrappy little privacy crusading rebel when bankrolled by Mozilla whose multi million dollar revenue remains primarily from Google being the default search engine in Firefox, plus their own shenanigans.

Full circle ⭕. Back to where we started.

It seems weird to single Google for this. Wasn't the core issue behind this that these other search engines couldn't compete with Google?

Vivaldi is a much better browser than their Chromium re-skins. Perhaps if their browsers were better people would use them instead of using Chrome. Additionally, perhaps if their search was better than Google, they would use it as well!

Google shoves AI overviews in your face now, and if that sucks, the only reasonable alternative is to use Bing currently. I can't use Brave's search or Mojeek. Brave ignores underscores. Mojeek doesn't even have a business model so it stops anyone from actually using it as a search engine. Yandex is full of results in Russian.

I wish someone would tell me what is this fabled competitor to Google that would benefit from crippling Google because so far I haven't been able to find one. I'd say the only engines better than Google are Wiby and Kiddle, because they focus on a specific niche instead of trying to compete on general web search.

Who will buy chrome? And how will they make a profit from doing so?

Presumably they will charge google for good to remain the default search engine? But then we will just end up in the same place as now won't we? (Chrome being a popular but not the only browser; Google being the default but not only search engine).

So how will this make the end user or the advertisers (don't forget, they are the consumer here, since they are paying, not the user) richer or happier or whatever else?

People seem stuck on "monopoly bad" and that something has to be done. But are not clear on what the harm is here, or how to prevent that harm. Instead, this is something and something has to be done...

That said, this might be my favorite of the DOJ remedies I've heard because it would probably do the least harm.

I am always baffled with the widespread use of Chrome.

On all my machines (including work) I use Firefox. Even on Android I disabled Chrome, so that the feed will have to use Firefox.

Chrome is neither faster nor more convenient than Firefox, so it is a bit of a mystery to me - I guess on Android it comes as the default.

I realize Chrome is partially open source, but IIRC Google still has some special abilities that no fork has the ability to access.

I just have no idea how we get from here to there. And let’s be real, with Trump re-elected the chance of the DOJ following through with this is very low.

At the same time, it might be just a thread from the DOJ to get Google to play ball on something else, but it's hard to assume competence and forethought for something like this.

Chrome doesn't have a business model to make money. If it gets calved off into its own thing, it'll either need to find another line of business to supplement the cost of building and maintaining a browser, or it'll go bankrupt. Close-to-nobody is willing to pay money for a browser alone, so it's unlikely they'll be able to float a business on selling the browser itself.

Right now a healthy web ecosystem is Google's existential hedge, against all the closed platforms of the world coming to devour the web and Google's business.

Getting rid of Google as a patron for the web would be one of the most harmful damaging & awful things the DOJ could do this world. Strongly opposed, what a godforsaken heinous crime against humanity to consider leaving no one funding the web at scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=United_States_v._...

Chrome Web Store

ChromeOS

Chromebook (somewhat intertwined with Android)

Chromecast (discontinued, sort of; succeeded by Google TV Streamer)

Web.dev (not Chrome branded, but probably wouldn't exist if Google didn't start Chrome)

Also, I have to wonder, if breaking off Chrome makes sense to the DOJ, does breaking off Android also make sense? Is that the next piece that they will propose?

“If Mehta accepts the proposals, they have the potential to reshape the online search market and the burgeoning AI industry. The case was filed under the first Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden. It marks the most aggressive effort to rein in a technology company since Washington unsuccessfully sought to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago.”

The thing is chrome isn’t as sticky or important as the ads marketplace. Google would be wise to let chrome go and hold on to the cash cow that is the ads marketplace where they make most of their money.

Why is this considered a good move anyway? The obvious way to split google is to separate the buy side from the sell side of ads market

https://www.bbspot.com/2000/05/04/linux-kernel-delayed-by-mi...

(yes, that's 24-year-old humor, sorry.)

Do they become like Firefox and make themselves dependent on Google to pay top dollar for the default search engine? Wouldn't that just make them beholden to their original owner anyways?

IF Google is a monopoly that abuses search and ads, IMO it would make much more sense to split it like this: - Google Search - Ads - Consumer facing everything, so Chrome, Android, Pixel devices, Nest, etc... all together - YouTube

This kind of split would prevent Google dominating search, abusing their dominance of ads while also enabling their device division to become a proper competitor to Apple and Samsung.

Simply splitting off Chrome is weird, kills Chrome for absolutely no reason, does nothing to help consumers and most importantly doesn't prevent Google from dominated search and ads which is the whole point of the suit in the first place...

It's also strange that the DOJ is letting Apple, MS and Meta off the hook when those businesses clearly engage in anti-competitive practices.

I can't see anybody else. They are all monopolies and is gonna screw it up big time for us consumers.

Push notifications in PWA was one of the big big ones. Apple blocked it for years and years.

I see some argument for google paying firefox to be the default search engine, but is that worse than firefox not existing at all?

In terms of search engines, I think there's just a lack of good competition. The search engines I'm aware of are:

Google: Just works. The only problem is you need to add "reddit" to most searches to get actual real, human-written non-seospam text, but I doubt that's unique to just google.

Bing: I'm greeted with an uncomfortably flashy layout shift, a page full of american news and some popup about AI. They also cover up and censor for the CCP.

Kagi: Their website is literally broken right now and I can't even see the pricing or other pages. I tried safari, chrome, firefox and edge, the hamburger menu doesn't open. Ultimately though, nobody except the kind of audience on HN is going to pay for it. If I told anyone else about a search engine that costs $16/month to use, I'm sure they'd think i'm joking, irregardless of how good it may be.

Yandex: Good for the reverse image searching, but otherwise probably not good to use.

Most of this article is ads, and it's paywalled so I can only read the first couple sentences, so if this is addressed in it I apologise.

google's monopoly powers come from its ads business, and the data collection network that comes with search and other facilities.

Split crawling/indexing (for search), search itself, and search ads/display ads out into separate businesses. Search has to pay for the index, and others could buy access into the same index. Ads has to pay search for data. etc etc.

Then you'll see some changes.

it is wishful thinking to assume that maintaining a dominant browser can be done if not through subsidizing through other means. as time has shown repeatedly that nobody wants to pay for this directly, it seems like any new ownership would resort to things that would ultimately ruin the browser for everyone.

maybe that is the goal all along, but it is hard to debate whether that is going to be a net positive.

The two big questions however are:

1. Who would buy it?

Because if it's someone like Microsoft, then we're back to square 1. It's another IE6/Chrome situation, with conflicting interests and unfair marketing efforts. Personally I can't see Apple, Meta or Microsoft buying Chrome though (or being allowed to under anti monopoly laws), so lord knows who'd end up with it. Mozilla or an open foundation of sorts would be the best option, but I somehow doubt it'll be those either

2. How is it going to be funded?

You ideally don't want the Firefox 'solution' where Google basically pays them to exist, but you can't really sell a browser either. So how it could be standalone and remain a viable venture is anyone's guess.

why not to give Youtube instead tho? (even if the revenue/monetization of every single channel would be heavily impacted)

Android and chrome are necessary for google to live, so Youtube or something else would be better

Chrome and Chrome-related employees of Google worrying about their future compensation under a smaller company.

Don't worry, I'm sure that Chrome / Chromium will be picked up by several big players together, Microsoft is involved via Edge, ... I don't see much changing.

I think that government should limit its interference in the market as much as possible, but Chrome is just so monopoly-oriented from the get go, it's no wonder it will deservedly get split off.

Also, look from the bright side, multiple large players have it in their interest to keep Chrome / Chromium alive, so it will survive the death of Google and it's main ads business.

What should be done is having strong privacy laws, requirements for encrypting user data, 100% transparency on how user data is sold (require all buyer and seller information to be public), prohibiting sale of user data in most cases, super fine control privacy and security settings.

Google already does a good job on some of these things, and they and other tech giants need to be fenced in by strong privacy and user rights laws.

Corporations are good at still making profits when they have to follow laws that are inconvenient to them.

If members of the US Congress were prohibited by law from stock trading, that might help clean up the logjams preventing better laws.

Splitting the surveillance giants into different vertical markets makes no sense at all, and this particular division illustrates it well. We might have had a chance if government, two decades ago, had worked towards creating new specific types of regulations that reflected what competition in the digital realm actually requires - for example prohibiting this now widespread bundling of proprietary client software with hosted services, by mandating that hosted services must only be offered through published APIs. Instead we got some token opposition of "selling off" (checks notes) a web browser that's ultimately "open source".

the new owner needs to recoup a

twenty billion dollar investment

eg Just spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out why links in outlook open in edge even if browser is set to chrome. Microsoft chose to just ignore what browser you select (in their OS). It’s just so blatantly monopolistic behaviour

Alternatively, the Trump admin forces the issue, Google sells off Chrome, and Musk buys it.

In what way

The DOJ knows this is pointless. The DOJ knows where Google's profits come from.

The DOJ is pretending that thr public still thinks about the internet in terms of Microsoft/Internet Explorer bundling.

Shame on you DOJ for wasting everyone's time and money.

I mean, it won't matter by mid-2025, but the thought is nice.

NOW Microsoft is primed as they have defacto control of the windows chromium branch to go full force Internet Explorer with Edge .. i been seeing the features creep up toward that end. Re-interpretations of 25 year ideas that frankly would have been better then than now.

GOOD WORK TECHIES you just handed the web back to Microsoft. Guess that counts as part of .. some sort of great reset huh?

-Tobin, former Pale Moon Asshole

100% bet, Trump gonna be easy on corporations that kiss his butt.

Every "normie" knows about edge, it comes with your new Windows. no one uses it, people know quality when they see it and everyone prefers chrome. If there was a better browser we'd use it.

The default should definitely be: Companies should be incentivized to create great products.

If the incentives include, get 90% market share, that's great! No one would put it the amount of work Google has if the incentives were small

* Android

* Search

* Advertising

* YouTube

Smash it into tiny pieces. Then the same for Apple and Facebook.

We've been stalled for technological progress for 15+ years. Tear down the giants holding us back.

While I agree that monopolies era bad for consumers and that the position Chrome currently have is pretty much a monopoly I don't think this particular move would be good for consumers in the short and mid time-frame. Maybe in the long run this is the correct decision, but this will cause quite a lot of pain for quite a lot of time.

I think one of the ways this could backfire against the users is that removing Chrome from Google will create a 'power vacuum' in the web standards. Currently Chrome is this de facto standard, for better of for worse. Removing that can create a situation where we have a couple of competing standards.

In my opinion the problem with this kind of competition is that making browsers will become significantly harder, because now instead of just copying Chrome you will have to implement several standards. And this is why I expect the web experience to become significantly worse in the short term.

And you know what will happen when the web experience degrades? Every company will push their own app. And even more experiences/services will be locked behind an android/ios app with the excuse "we want to deliver a great experience to our users". And this is WAY worse for users than the monopoly Google has in the browser.

Maybe a better solution would be for the US government to create/adopt a web standard and create a rule that says "if you want to sell to the US government you need to be fully compliant with standard XYZ". This way you create a goal that everyone can work towards.

As far as I know this is how the government handle this situation in the medical sector, where they have HL7 to create the relevant standards. And I'm fully aware that this brings a lot of problems to the table. The first one is that definition of standards for the web will become a political topic, and this is never a good sign. However, I think this is really the only option if we want the web to be a place with fair competition.

This is what the folks at Google have all feared and why they started to run away from the company, spurring up 'Google' competitors (including Microsoft & OpenAI) all bringing it down.

Google will appeal and fight back and either way will survive. But we have given Sundar enough time to turn it around and it's time for him to leave and a wartime CEO to step up.

It's possible as Sataya Nadella did this for Microsoft. Google needs to do the same.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37116034